“Will she live?” he asked her.
Her rosebud lips were thinned. Not wanting to hear her say no, he turned his face away.
A sigh of relief escaped him when the first touch of her felt normal. He traced the column of her throat, the breadth of her forehead, and the sloping line of her nose. She was as petal-soft as he remembered.
But she did not stir at his touch, though she looked healthy and normal again, as though merely a woman in slumber, her eyes did not open and smile up at him.
“My boy,” Rumpel’s broken voice broke through Giles’s reverie and finally he glanced up.
Shayera had a fist covering her mouth as Erualis and Rumpel hugged fiercely for the first time in a millennia. The chalice sat on the table ignored.
All that work, all that effort and there it sat.
And Giles couldn’t help but feel that Lilith had traded her life for Erualis.
The princess was the first to look back at him. “Giles, we thank you for giving us such a gift.”
Bowing his head, he accepted her gratitude with a heavy heart. Though manners demanded he should get up and give his royals their due, the thought of leaving Lilith alone on the castle floor like she was nothing more than rubbish, a simple casualty of this war, made him want to rage.
But he held it in. Not for Rumpel, or Shayera, but for the boy who was laughing with tears falling from his eyes and telling his papa just how much he loved him.
Shayera came over to him and gazed down at Lilith with a slight frown marring her lips.
“Giles, I’m so sorry.”
He swallowed the hard ball in his throat and clung to Lilith’s hand. Running his thumb along her knuckle over and over, needing to feel the comfort of her touch even if she couldn’t give it back.
“Danika, will she wake?” Shayera turned to her godmother.
Lifting off of Giles’s shoulders, the wee fairy came around and dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a section of her baby’s breath gown.
As though finally aware of the commotion Rumpel and Erualis finally came to join them.
His prince gazed at Lilith solemnly.
“Can you do nothing?” Giles swallowed many lifetimes’ worth of indoctrination to never rock the boat, to never make requests of his prince, but he would do anything for her.
“I’m sorry, Giles.” Rumpel grabbed a section of his wife’s gown and rubbed it as though silently seeking her strength.
The anger that he’d swallowed down now came bubbling to the surface. “Do you need me to pledge my soul? My life? I would.” He ground his molars and curled his hands into fists. “I would even trade my life for hers. Anything.”
“No, my friend, it cannot be.”
“Why?” he thundered, jumping to his feet. “In all my years I’ve asked you for nothing. Give me this.”
Shayera bit her bottom lip, casting worried glances between the two of them.
Rumpel refused to look at him.
“Answer me!” he finally snapped and slammed his palm against Rumpel’s left shoulder, causing him to stumble back. Practically begging for his prince to trade blows with him, needing to feel something other than the smothering desolation crowding his bones.
Shayera stepped in front of them and yanked Erualis into her arms. “Remember yourself, Giles. There is a child present.”
Her stern but gentle voice snapped him from his haze, and when he looked down at the boy it was to see him wide-eyed and terrified.
Turning his face aside, his anger was defeated, but the questions and the sadness still remained.
Danika, who’d been unnaturally silent, now came forward. Growing as she did until she was able to peer directly into Giles’s eyes. “I believe I know why Rumpel cannot undo what has been wrought.”
“Tell me, Danika?” His voice cracked as he whispered.
“To undo her curse would also undo Erualis’s cure. She gave her life to gain the use of the chalice.”
“It should have been me. If I’d only—”
Rumpel shook his head and his voice came out as a rumble. “You could have changed nothing, Giles. I did not know when I sent you the truth of Fyre Mountain; I only discovered its power very recently.”
“Explain.”
“We watched the majority of your journey and you two were so brave.” Shayera smiled sweetly. “We honestly believed that you would both return back to us no different as you were. It’s why we asked Danika to go to you, to give you encouragement. But when you escaped the dwarves, we spotted the mountain and knew immediately that something was very off.”
“I went in search of my books,” Rumpel picked up where she’d left off, “trying to discover why the mountain looked as it did. I sent you, Giles because of your affinity for fire. But the mountain looked ice-cold and I knew it would be a problem.”