Danika sobbed and hugged Jericho’s neck with such joy that Aeric couldn’t understand it. Something had just happened, but it was more than he could currently process.
He was stunned when he turned to look at the smoky mirage to note that no longer was it smoky or hazy, but now there was a woman there. A very mundane looking woman dressed in a red silk gown that fitted her poorly. Her blond hair hung around her shoulders, lank and lifeless. Her eyes were a cloudy shade of blue and her face wrinkled and pitted, as if from sun damage.
He could only assume her to be Siria, she was hunched over, sobbing loudly and muttering that they’d gone too far.
That was enough to make his deadened emotions flare to life.
“Too far?” he snarled, shaking his fist at her. “Not far enough in my opinion. You deserve to die for what you did. For how you used her. She is dead and you’re still living.” He spat.
“Siria, no longer are you a denizen of Kingdom, your home is Earth now. You cannot stay and you can never return,” Esmeralda said with a shake of her head, and there was a glow of tears in her green eyes—as if somehow she felt bad for the hunched over woman before them.
“No, please. This cannot be. This…”
His lip curled, and before he gave in to his need to strangle a woman, Aeric turned on his heels and walked away. No longer caring what happened or what they did.
No one tried to stop him, or called his name. They no longer cared. He didn’t matter to them, and the one person to whom he had mattered was gone.
The second he made to step foot out of the demarcation between Wonderland and the rest of Kingdom the roar of a steel horse caught his attention.
A gloating Rumpel lifted devilish brows. “And now, huntsman, you belong to me…”
Three months later
“And you’re sure of that?” Rumple lifted a blond brow, twirling the jewel-encrusted dagger between his fingers.
“Yes,” Aeric nodded. “I’m sure of it.” He slapped the parchment into the imp’s chest and turned to leave. His debt had been paid in full. The rest was up to the bastard himself.
Grabbing the sheaf and tucking it into his pocket with a tempered sort of glee, Rumpelstiltskin nodded. “I don’t trust you, hunter, and if you’re wrong—”
“You know where I live. Got it, beelzebub.”
The blond haired sorcerer nodded as he leaned back in his leather seat. His steel horse rumbling and purring with its need to seek out their next adventure.
Aeric had been right the first time he’d seen the imp’s mode of transportation. The thing was part sentient and as mean as the devil’s dog.
The cliffs they stood by whistled with the strength of the winds coasting up from the Seren Seas.
“I’ve debated for months now whether to share this with you, because sharing isn’t really my thing,” Rumple laughed.
“So why start now?” Aeric leaned against the slate shelf of a protruding rock. For months he’d been on the hunt for the so called ‘enigma’ a being that would supposedly lead to the destruction of Rumpel.
Of course the imp hadn’t out and out told Aeric that, but he’d gleaned the truth from the bits and pieces of information he’d gathered.
Rumpel was as powerful as they all said, but even the most powerful had that one enemy they all feared. But rather than wait for the destruction to come to him, Rumpel decided to find it first and end it.
A solid plan if Aeric had anything to say about it. But now he was done and he was ready to go. Not back to court either.
He was through being the Red Queen’s goon. Aeric was tired, it’d taken him months to get over the loss of her.
He still couldn’t bring himself to even say her name. Some days were harder than others, but each day he could breathe just a little easier. All he wanted was solitude.
Rumpel chuckled. “While your self-flagellation has been a delight, truly, there are… shall we say, mutterings of something strange happening in Wonderland.”
“There is always something strange happening in Wonderland.” Aeric kicked at a rock, watching as it sailed over the cliff, tumbling end over end, before finally crashing and breaking apart into a hundred smaller pieces below.
Revving his engine, Rumpel nodded. “Indeed. But humor me for a second with a riddle.”
“Dear gods, what?” he snapped, at the end of his rope and desperate to go. As if three months of his life wasn’t enough, the imp was goading him.
“What is blue and black and purrs like a kitty?”
Head snapping up, eyes narrowing, everything inside Aeric went very, very still. “What are you saying?”
His answering smile was his only answer.
Breathing hard, Aeric didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t believe it. Rumpel was lying. He had to be. Except there was a problem with that theory.
In all the time he’d known the imp, Aeric had never once caught him in a lie. Either the man was really good, or he did not lie.
Which meant…