Chapter 24 Rumple
twenty-four
Rumple
Boy’s lean legs, clothed in tattered and too-short breeches, were stretched out long up the damp stone wall and his bare feet were crossed at the ankles.
His hair was splayed out over the filthy floor like a halo, and his skin had an almost ethereal glow that drew Rumple in.
Boy was the most brilliant creature he had ever seen, and Rumple’s shadowed form swirled around him in the small, dank cell.
Despite his environment, he seemed at peace, and Boy let his hand drift from where it rested on his chest, to extend his arm out wide. His fingers reached softly for the shadows that hovered nearby.
“Why did you come back?” There was a genuine confusion in Boy’s tone, but he continued to stare up at the ceiling when he spoke, even though he most likely couldn’t see the moss-covered stones through the dark.
Rumple’s shadows wasted no time accepting the invitation to wrap themselves tightly around Boy’s cool palm, but the geist himself was rendered speechless. What did he mean, “why did he come back?”
Then Rumple remembered, the last time they were together Boy had asked him to stay, only for the Queen to then literally tear him away.
His shadows thickened and pulsed with the echo of the pain that caused.
He wanted to manifest into his human form and curl protectively around Boy, but he lacked the energy.
Instead, he pushed more shadows forward, tracing the bluish veins along the soft skin on the inside of Boy’s forearm.
“Did it not work?” This time, he turned his head, as if he could make Rumple out perfectly despite the dark and knew exactly where his eyes were.
“Did what not what work, my He—” Rumple cut himself off.
A flush rose under the cinnamon freckles that dusted Boy’s cheeks, and Rumple’s shadows chased it as it spread across his face. Beautiful.
“I thought…” he began. “I mean, I’d wondered why you worked for the Queen.
You’re the legendary shadow geist of Falchovari, and I didn’t think it would be for money or prestige.
But then…” Boy closed his eyes and leaned into the shadows that caressed him so tenderly.
“Then I saw how she compelled you, felt the pain she caused you, and I remembered.”
Rumple pressed his heavy shadows closer still. “What did you remember?”
“Your name.” Boy said it so simply, so plainly, that for a moment Rumple wondered if he’d heard him correctly. “I figured that she, too, must have learned your true name and then used it against you.”
Rumple couldn’t speak. Had he been in human form, he wouldn’t have been able to draw a breath. His shadows paused their gentle ministrations along Boy’s jaw and through his honeyed hair, and a pair of rich brown eyes opened to search the darkness in earnest.
“I wasn’t sure it was you. Not at first.” Boy curled his fingers around the shadows that still held his hand and squeezed. “But then, last night…” His voice broke off on a hiccup, and Rumple’s shadows condensed further. Boy’s pain had become his own.
Rumple sealed his Heart safely within his shadow’s embrace and rubbed them up and down the length of his notched spine.
The swaddling had worked to soothe his human once before, and when Boy’s ragged breathing evened out, he knew it had done so again.
Even without physical form, Rumple found himself smiling into the top of Boy’s head.
“But last night,” he spoke in an intimate whisper. “When I saw what she did, when you couldn’t stop her from summoning you and when you said she’d taken your name… that’s when I knew for certain.”
Boy straightened his back and raised his head, as if he could see Rumple’s human face in front of him and he wanted to speak directly.
“The Queen is the most powerful person in Falchovari, and if she were going to enthral anyone, it makes sense that it would be the most powerful shadow geist, doesn’t it? ”
A low rumble of pride vibrated the air between them. How clever his human was.
“When I was little, Grandma used to tell your stories as a warning for us to behave.” The corner of Boy’s mouth curved upward in a smile.
“I was always so scared my siblings’ antics might draw you to our mill that I would leave the curtains open at night to let the moon shine through the window onto my bed. ”
Boy’s fingers flexed and relaxed rhythmically against the tight hold of the shadows, as if they were a blanket and he were a kitten, but Rumple’s focus was caught on how Boy had lost his shy stammer—finally, he was at ease in his presence.
“You weren’t the only geist I feared,” he continued.
Rumple made a sound of low surprise that came out more like a chuckle.
Boy smiled and continued on, Rumple content simply to be in his presence.
“On my eighth summer, one of the farmer’s daughters three homesteads west of ours was snatched by a korndaemon because her family didn’t thresh the harvest in a ceremony. ”
Boy’s sunny disposition fell. “Grandma had warned it would happen… that when people no longer held to the old ways, they gave power to the geists that would harm us.” He shuffled in Rumple’s shadowed arms.
“That’s why she told me your true name, because she believed there was power in knowledge.” His wide brown eyes filled with tears, and Rumple reached out to wipe them away. That same soft sizzling sound came upon their contact with his shadows, and Rumple felt himself grow stronger.
Boy took a long and deep inhale through parted lips.
“But it’s also why I was forbidden from seeing her again.
My father feared it, that power in knowledge.
Grandma died the next summer, and he took away our names to keep us safe.
If a geist couldn’t know it, they couldn’t use it to lure us away from him, like they did the other children in the area, and leave him without help for the mill. ”
He sank his teeth into his bottom lip as uncertainty crept back in, and lowered his voice when he asked, “That is what happened to you, isn’t it? The Queen used that knowledge to gain power over you.”
Rumple hummed in the affirmative. How many years had he searched for someone, anyone, who would know his true name?
How long had he wished for an end to Queen Schon’s hold over him?
He’d wasted time salvaging scrolls and trinkets, when he should have been searching for his Heart.
The same Heart now encased within the safety of his hold. He couldn’t believe his fortune.
Boy nodded against Rumple’s slowly solidifying form, his forehead brushing over the shadowed and leathery skin of his chest, before he spoke. “I sat on the stool by the spinning wheel after you were summoned and watched your magick turn the straw to gold.”
When he raised his head, damp lashes framed Boy’s thoughtful gaze, and Rumple lost himself in their chestnut depths.
“You were in such pain when she summoned you, and yet you kept your promise. While your magick spun the straw, your shadows comforted me.” Boy pressed his palms flat against Rumple’s half-formed torso, then felt his way in the dark up his sternum, across to his shoulders, and down his arms where he pulled them tight around his slender frame. “Like this.”
Rumple indulged in the intimacy—feasted on it, even. With each word, with each moment spent in Boy’s proximity, he felt his tether to the human realm grow stronger.
“And that’s when I knew,” continued Boy. “All these years, I’d never understood why father feared like he did, why he let it rule him. But he was right; there’s power in knowledge.”
He placed a gentle kiss between Rumple’s pecs, and a shiver rolled through him.
“By the time the Queen came at daybreak, I knew what I needed to do.” Boy brought his hands to rest back over the hollow of Rumple’s chest. “She barely glanced at me at all. She held a parchment in one hand and a quill in the other. When she asked for my name…”
Boy took a shaky breath, closed his eyes, and exhaled slowly. “I gave her yours.”
There, on the damp and cold floor of the palace prison cell, time ground to a halt.
How had Queen Schon not struck Boy dead on the spot?
Then Rumple remembered that Boy still wore the shadow-infused collar and all his thoughts aligned with perfect clarity.
She would have tried, and when she couldn’t, she would have had her guardsmen drag him here.
While she waited, she searched all her grimoires for a way to reverse what Boy had done, which had been the chaos in her private rooms.
Boy’s eyes opened and their gazes locked.
What Rumple saw there was akin to standing on the overhang of a sheer cliff.
He knew now, beyond doubt, that he had approached everything wrong.
The search for his Heart had never been about prolonging his time in the human realm, nor about possessing a magickal artefact that would make him stronger.
Where Rumple had wanted to claim, he should have nourished.
The longer he looked into the abyss that stretched out before him, the more certain he became that he would willingly plummet to the very bottom before he allowed any harm to befall his precious human.
Boy had come into his life when Rumple had needed him most, but Rumple’s pride and ignorance had almost let him slip through his fingers. Instinctively, he tightened his hold.
Boy chewed on his lower lip. “Did it work? Are you free now?”
“Yes.” Rumple struggled to find his voice and cleared his throat. “Yes, it worked.”
Boy released his lip and lowered his gaze. Silence permeated the space between them, and Rumple couldn’t resist reaching up with a newly solidified arm to cradle the side of Boy’s head. The more he touched him, held him, the more he revitalised.
“So why…?” Boy hesitated. “Why did you come back?”
The space where Rumple’s Heart should have been stung. Boy had no idea how important he was—because he’d never been told. Not by his father, who’d willingly sent him to the palace as tithe, and not by Rumple.
A sudden urge for sincerity struck, and Rumple commanded his shadows to form a low lying cot on which to seat his human. To answer his question truthfully, Boy needed better than to be lying in the cold and grime.
Rumple’s shadows took a supportive hold of Boy, and transitioned him to sit on the edge of the bed, then ensconced him within their dark shroud.
Only Boy’s head and neck, as well as his grubby and scratched bare feet, remained visible, and Rumple’s anger at Queen Schon renewed at the reminder that she had dragged him here from the throne room without the protection of his shoes.
Rumple knelt before him and placed Boy’s feet on his thighs in an effort to warm them.
“I came back for you.” The simple words exposed Rumple in a way nothing else ever had.
Boy tilted his head to the side as if he were trying to solve a puzzle, and Rumple inhaled.
He had teetered on the edge of a metaphorical precipice earlier and knew his next move would be a leap of faith.
This was the moment he had longed for with his fading breath, but now that it was here, he found he was still afraid.
How had Boy always made it look so easy?
He wanted nothing more than to tell him the truth, but when he opened his mouth to speak, no sound came out. What if, after he knew Rumple’s dark secret, Boy denied him?
Boy had set him free, yet the Queen could still recast a new spell. The only way for Rumple to remain in Boy’s life, like he wanted, was to claim his Heart, but it was Boy who held all the power now. If Rumple wanted him, he would have to be worthy.
Boy’s smaller hand slowly reached out from inside his shadowy blanket and pressed lightly against Rumple’s face. His work-hardened fingers slid over the shell of Rumple’s ear and into his hair, and Boy’s strong thumb swept an arc across Rumple’s cheek.
With an exhale, Rumple found his courage.