As promised, here is the 9th installment of Ember. If you haven’t already, please read: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.

But first, a blurb:

Everyone loves Prince Charming. They have to—he’s cursed. Every man must respect him. Every woman must desire him. One look, and all is lost.

Ember would rather carve out a piece of her soul than be enslaved by passions not her own. She turns to the dark arts to save her heart and becomes the one woman in the kingdom able to resist the Prince’s Charm.

Poor girl. If Ember had spent less time studying magic and more time studying human nature, she might have guessed that a man who gets everything and everyone he wants will come to want the one woman he cannot have.

Charm is a curse. Love is a fire. This story is no fairytale.

And now, the continuation of Ember…

9. The Happily

You are thinking I was either callous or stupid to leave my sisters unprotected though the Prince had twice used threats against them to bring me to him. Believe me, I’d no doubt he would try a third time, and I was not ignorant of their vulnerability. If you insist on finding some sort of lesson in my tales, it must be this: few situations are what they appear to be. Yes, I left the city, but I did not flee the Prince. I left because I needed time and distance to craft my spells of retribution.

I went into the Dark Forest again, and headed east. I was better prepared this time, for I’d returned home to scrub the paint from my face, exchange my finery for sturdy woolens, and retrieve three strands of Rian’s—the Prince’s—dark hair from my pillow.

After three days travel, I made camp again within the ring of pagan standing stones, and built a bonfire there. By firelight, I sewed a little doll of burlap and stuffed it with ash. I put the Prince’s hairs inside before I stitched it closed.

I’d tried to snare a hare or some other small forest creature to use as fuel for my spell, but growing up amidst the crowds and cacophony of city streets has left me loud and clumsy in the relative quiet of nature. I did not catch so much as a mouse. Lacking lesser lives to spend in my spells, I made a fist around my knife’s blade and used my own blood to paint features on the little doll.

I was, perhaps, too careful in the likeness I drew of Rian’s face, for once I’d finished it I could only hold the doll and weep. I’d sketched the bump in his nose, the crooked tilt of his smile, the way shadows fell across his deep-set eyes.

I remembered the burn I’d left on his cheek when we argued in the gardens. Even now, though I meant to curse him, I hated that I had hurt him. I stroked the doll’s opposite cheek. It felt as warm and rough as Rian’s unshaven jaw.

The miles between us dissolved. I felt his face beneath my fingertip, his breath against my still-bleeding palm. From his bed in the palace, the Prince said my name, his voice rough with sleep and desire. He sounded as close as when Rian and I had lain in my narrow bed, sharing the same pillow.

He spoke in the same yearning whisper he’d used so many nights in the cookshed after the first frantic coupling was behind us and we lazed sticky, naked and replete, entwined in damp, twisted sheets. He spoke in the whisper that had once roused me to his kisses and made me ready for him though I was yet half asleep.

Memories assaulted me, wrestled with me, and won. I relived the rough, exquisite urgency of his hands on me in the darkness. I trembled in remembrance of the hazy, sleep-muddled fever of my response. And I hated him anew when my mind recalled the acid burn of guilt I’d felt upon waking from all those passionate nightmares in which my lover and the Prince were one man instead of two.

Anger chased away my memories of pleasure. I unclenched my hands and let the doll fall to the dirt at my feet. As if from a great distance, I heard Rian shout, “No! Please!” He sounded broken and desperate, like a gambler who has risked everything and lost.

The pain in his voice made me hurt for him. For all that I hated him—and hated how he’d hurt me—I could not douse my love, nor smother it, nor starve it. For me, love was not a Fire. It was a thing outside of magic. It was a power beyond my control.

Had I loved Rian less, or hated the Prince more, I might have had the strength to wreak a witch’s vengeance on my former lover. But as it was, I yearned and wept and worried for him—this man whom I would have tortured, if only I could have made myself enjoy it.

After a long, sad moment of self-pity over my soft heart, I retrieved the hex doll from the dirt. I did not let my eyes linger on it, but instead picked apart its seams while reciting backwards every word I’d said to make it.

I scarcely had an hour of sleep after I finished unmaking the doll. Just before dawn, the fire crackled and flared to wake me, as it had done two times before. I did not open my eyes right away for fear of what I would see—the Prince using some new threat against my sisters to force me back to his side. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and glared into the fire’s yellow light. “What is it?”

The fire flickered and formed a picture of Maison d’Aube on the Avenida Delpalacio. The Prince faced my sisters in the front parlor. Despite the veneer of perfection his Curse stretched across his features, he looked rumpled and worn, as though he hadn’t slept. Half a dozen soldiers had crowded into the room behind him.

“No,” Minette said. “We are done with you. We won’t help you find her again.”

“She came back to save you once.”

“She won’t need to save us again.”

Rian glared at Minette. Even in the inexact image formed by the fire, I could see the power of his curse burning in the air around him. Dulcie and Sylvie clasped Minette’s hands, and all three shook their heads no to the Prince.

Perhaps the Prince was as shocked as I at my sisters’ newfound ability to defy him. He paused and regarded them in silence for several moments before concluding, “She gave you some sort of spell to let you resist me.”

“We did it ourselves,” Dulcie said, a note of pride in her quavering voice.

After another moment of silence, Rian shrugged. “Very well. There is just one thing you must do.” He nodded to the soldier standing at his right with a wooden box.

The soldier knelt and opened the box to reveal the shoes I’d worn to the ball. The white satin was stained with dirt and grass, and many of the glass gems had fallen from their tin settings.

The soldier lifted out the right shoe, the one made to fit my twisted foot. “If you would each try this on,” he said, “to prove you aren’t hiding beneath an illusion.”

Oh, my Rian was clever. He knew that no matter how I changed my appearance, I would not be able to change the real shape of my body. No matter what face I wore, the shoe would fit my foot, and only my foot. Had I stayed in the city, he would surely have found me.

Minette removed her slipper. The soldier recoiled. Her right foot was short its smallest toe, and the bandage she’d put there was wet with seeping blood. Sylvie and Dulcie took off their shoes to reveal matching wounds.

“You did this because of me?” Rian asked.

“We did it for her,” Sylvie said. “Not that I would expect you to understand.”

Rian raked a hand through his messy hair. “I understand. I would do anything for her.”

“Anything, save give her up,” Dulcie smirked.

“Yes.” Rian’s mouth drew into a grim line. “Anything, save that.”

The fire’s image faded as my sisters each donned the shoe. I sat in silence for a long time after, listening to the crackle of the fire and the night sounds of the forest.

* * *

Some days later, I came upon a house, deep in the woods. In my wanderings, I’d passed remote cabins and cottages, which housed hermits and madmen who could not stand to live near other people. But this house was no cottage, cabin or shack. It was a marble-faced three-storey townhouse, the exact twin to our house on the Avenida Delpalacio though it sat amid the ancient trees and brambles of the Dark Forrest.

This house was more than a duplicate; it was the very image of my home just as I would most have liked it. I saw Minette, Sylvie and Dulcie through the parlor window playing cards on the ebony arabesque tea table beside the settee. And if I circled around to the back of the house and looked up at the wavering leaded glass window of the master suite, I would see the shadow of a man staring wistfully out at the rear yard.

It was illusion.

Presently, a woman swept out of the door of the house. She was beautiful, graceful, tall and slender. Perfect in every way. The ghost of my lost finger burned. I closed my eyes.

“That’s very rude of you,” I told the witch.

“Oh,” her voice was melodic as the chiming of distant temple bells. Then, she spoke again. “I’m sorry.” This time her voice sounded weak and strained with age.

I opened my eyes to see a bent old woman standing before a tidy cottage. The old woman had dirt rubbed onto her cheeks, and twigs twisted into her long white hair. She was an Earth witch. Where I had given my finger to the fire for the flames to burn, she’d given hers to the ground for the worms to eat.

“It’s been a long time since anyone but superstitious peasants visited me. Come in and have a cup of tea.”

“This isn’t a visit,” I said as I ducked beneath the low lintel of her cottage door. “I happened on your home by accident.”

“Oh, no,” said the witch filling a teakettle from a tall water barrel. “I’m afraid that’s quite impossible. The only way to find my home is by looking for it. Are you on a quest to right some grievous wrong? Do you yearn for something you cannot have?”

I thought of Rian. Of how I wanted him, but not the Prince, though the two were one in the same. “You’re Gaetane.”

“Oh, my!” The old woman giggled like a little girl and covered her mouth with her left hand. “You must be here about the Prince.” She paused and looked at the kettle in her hands. “Would you mind?”

She set the kettle on the stove and I called the Fire to heat it. The water was hot in the blink of an eye.

“What a convenient skill,” Gaetane sighed as she poured the water over the tealeaves. “I never regret pledging myself to Earth, except when I want a quick cup of tea.”

“How did you know I was here about the Prince?”

“Your twisted foot. Last time I checked my scrying mirror, his soldiers were running all over the city forcing people to try on a cripple’s shoe.”

She poured our tea. It smelled of roses and tasted like dirt. I kept a polite smile on my face as I sipped at it.

“Will you remove his curse?”

“Heavens, no! I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“But he suffers!” I almost shouted the words.

“Not so much as the rest of the world would suffer if he were free of it.”

“What do you mean?”

Gaetane leaned across the table and almost whispered her answer. “Surely you’ve felt it, the power in him? He’d have been a great sorcerer if not for my blessing.”

“He could have been,” I did not bother to hide the acid in my voice, “if not for your curse.”

“What would have happened to Tierra del Maré with a sorcerer-king upon our throne? He would have raised armies. He would have built an empire.”

“And what is so wrong with an empire?”

“The hum of Fate filled the air around him when he was just a babe. It whispered he would be the greatest king in our land’s history. And he would be our doom. When he died, his empire would crumble and all the enemies he’d made would pick our kingdom to bits like vultures on a dying cow.

“Whatever unhappiness I have caused the Prince, it is but a small sin when compared to the greater good of saving the kingdom.”

“But why did you craft the curse to make people love him?”

“Conquerors and emperors crave adoration. They want every woman to desire them, and every man to respect them. They want crowds of citizens to chant their names. I gave him those things so he wouldn’t raise his sword to get them.

“Thanks to me, a man who would have spent his life in pursuit of love and respect won through conquest and fear has, instead, learned to hate the forced adoration of strangers. He doesn’t care to rule. He doesn’t want to conquer lands or wave to cheering crowds. He wants only to have someone who will see him as he is, someone who will love him as he is.”

She paused to smile at me. Her shriveled lips parted to reveal crooked, yellowed teeth. “You’re more valuable than an empire, my dear. You should be proud.”

“Proud because a mad Prince has made me his obsession and played cruel games with me?”

“Posh!” She dismissed my words with a wave of her gnarled hand. “He loves you. He did not deceive you to be cruel, but to be certain you returned his love.”

I looked into the thick dregs of my tea. “You don’t know what agonies of guilt I suffered when I thought I had betrayed my Rian.”

“And now you suffer agonies of rage. Neither guilt nor rage diminishes your love for him.” She reached across the rough wood table and put her gnarled hand on mine. “Come, now. Would it not be easier, and far more pleasant, to forgive the man you love and spend your lives together than to begrudge him and try to live without him?”

I thought of Sylvie and her long-lost lover. I thought of how she had forgiven him rather than live another day without him. I wanted to be truer to my anger than she had been. I did not want to think love could make me so weak

“I do not forgive easily.”

“Of course not, you are a witch. You believe you must repay pain with agony.

“Tell me, will you make a little doll of him, as you did with Lord Campos? Will you torture him with phantom pains, with chills and fire?” I looked away, my face hot with shame. Merciless, Gaetane continued, “Or will you punish him, and thereby yourself, by renouncing his company and spurning his love?”

Her little gnarled hand clenched mine like a vise until I thought my bones might break. “How do you punish a man when your heart beats in his chest? How do you hurt your beloved without also hurting yourself?”

I pulled my hand away and looked into my tea. I did not want to think of Gaetane’s questions, for if I did, I knew must surely decide to forgive Rian’s deception. I’d fled him, but I did not want to give him up.

“You will return to him,” she whispered. “You look away from me, but I can see it in your eyes.”

“I might forgive Rian for his deceit, but I won’t spend the rest of my life fighting off his curse. I demand you free him from it.”

Gaetane folded her skinny arms across her sunken chest. “No.”

I lay the back of my hand on the table. A lick of flame burst into being above my palm.

“Are threats your answer to everything? I won’t remove the blessing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t alter it. Current behavior aside, you seem like a smart girl. Use your head instead of your magic, for once. Use light instead of fire.”

My vision blurred. My eyelids drooped as fatigue washed over me like a storm-driven wave. My control faltered, and the lick of flame in my hand burnt me before Gaetane snuffed it with a tea towel.

“You drugged my tea.”

The old woman smiled as the illusion of beauty settled back over her features. “My girl, you’ve said it before. We witches are an untrustworthy lot.” She laid one graceful hand upon my nodding head. “Good luck to you.”

* * *

I woke in my bed in the cookshed, back in Ciú Dellos Reyes. The shed was dark, but my moonlight pendant glowed softly on my chest. I heard a footstep outside, the door swung open, and I was blinded by the sudden brightness of lantern light.

I squinted against the light to stare at the man holding the lantern. The Prince stood my doorway. His perfection tugged at me, sapping my will, soothing my qualms.

Pulling my gaze from his face, I glared at the flame in his lantern, and it snuffed itself to please me. The Prince’s curse faded in the light from my pendant. He became my Rian again.

He set his lantern down and approached me. I noted the new pink scar across his cheek.

“Ember.” He knelt and took me in his arms. I didn’t have the heart or the strength to push him away.

I brushed his scarred cheek lightly with my fingertips. “I hurt you.”

“No more than I hurt you.” He kissed my lips, my cheek, my temple, and my brow. “You came back.” He whispered the words into my hair. I did not have the heart to tell him my return was not my doing. “You love me. You must forgive me.”

I pushed him away. “Yes, I love you, but I hate your curse. And there is nothing I can do to rid you of it.”

“We’ll figure something out,” he growled. “Don’t leave again. I went a little mad without you. I behaved abominably. Your sisters cut off their toes to defy me. The citizens grow tired of being asked to try on your damned shoe.”

“It’s not my fault you behaved so poorly.”

He smirked. “Of course it was. Ask any citizen on the street, and they will tell you their Prince is broken-hearted because he cannot find the woman who stole his heart at the ball.”

I felt my cheeks grow hot with rage. “Of course they will say that, they are all fools for your curse! They want to believe the best of you and will believe any lie you ask of them.”

“But you won’t believe it.” Rian’s dark eyes were steady as he watched me, and I remembered all the times he’d goaded me into anger as a form of foreplay. “You always tell me what you think of me. You treat me like a man instead of a golden idol who must be appeased by constant smiles and adoration. It is no wonder I go mad without you.”

His breathing was as fast as mine, and hot upon my cheek when he leaned in to kiss me. I opened my lips for him, and he bore me down to the bed, his hard body and hot hands working wonders on my senses. I put up no fight against his intentions, but I struggled to take control. We wrestled as we stripped each other, caressing and restraining in equal measure. When we were both naked, I straddled his hips and took him into my body.

He put his hands on me, ruthless, skillful and unerring. I came too soon, and then too often, trembling in honest adoration of his every touch until I was sated and sedate, on the edge of sleep. He smiled as he watched me struggle to keep my eyes open. He was smug as any man who thinks he has the upper hand.

I met his smile with my own, and he seemed glad to see it. I leaned down and kissed him until we were both gasping for air. I rode him hard until he shouted my name and spent himself inside me.

Afterwards, we lay together in a pile of twisted blankets and rumpled clothes with no light but my little vial of moonlight. We lay silent, stretching our contentment until it was thin and taught, and barely worth its name. Neither of us wanted to admit that nothing had changed.

Finally, he whispered, “Please forgive me. Tell me what I must do to regain your trust and your affection, and I will do it—only, do not leave me again.”

“Can you shed your curse?”

“We can meet by moonlight, or in the dark.” He ran his hands along the silver chain around my neck. “I should have undressed you the day you came into my chamber. This moonlight would have shown you my true face and saved me weeks without you.”

I looked down at the pendant, the only reminder I had of my mother, save my freckles and my red hair. I had not taken it off since she’d put it on me, since she’d spent the last crumbs of her waning strength to save me from the Prince. And now I was in bed with the man from whom she’d sought to protect me.

I wondered if I had betrayed her efforts, until I remembered what she’d said to me that day in the parlor. I must know you’ll be safe from his curse. She had not said, “safe from the Prince.” She’d said, “safe from his curse.”

I weighed the little vial of moonlight in my hands. Choices and change require sacrifice. My mother’s voice whispered from my memory. Then, her voice twisted and became stronger, older. Gaetane’s voice. Use your head instead of your magic, for once. Use light instead of fire.

My hands hesitated to remove the silver chain from my neck. I’d worn the pendant so long; it was almost a part of me. I remembered the feel of the knife against my finger. It was best to remove the pendant as quickly. I pulled it off over my head and laid it over Rian’s shoulders in one swift motion.

A shiver of magic ran up my arms when the vial touched his skin. I thought I heard the sound of distant laughter, sweet as chiming bells.

“The curse feels different.” Rian looked down at the pendant. “Have you cured me?”

“I hope so.” I took a deep breath, and called fire to the lamp.

I almost screamed with rage when Rian’s features blended into my mind’s perfect image of them.

“I no longer feel the weight of the curse on my shoulders. It is gone.” His voice was low and full of wonder. “You saved me.”

“No, the curse is not gone. It still masks your features. It still—” I paused. I’d been about to say his curse still made the ghost of my lost finger burn, and it still tugged at my will, but it did not.

Just as the vial of moonlight alone had never fully protected me from the Prince’s curse, so it did not fully negate the curse when it hung from Rian’s neck. It was a half measure, only. But it was enough. Though the curse still hid his true face, it no longer pulled at my will or sought to fill my mind with desire.

“Is it…?” He put his hands on my shoulders.

“It is enough. The moonlight has weakened your curse enough for me to resist it, though I fear it will still have a strong hold on anyone who has all of his fingers and toes.”

Rian whooped with joy. “It is as well part of the curse remains. I will need some measure of unnatural Charm to convince my father and the council to allow me to marry a commoner.”

My heart seemed to fall into my stomach. “Rian, you shall need an act of the gods to convince them to allow you to marry a witch. I am a lawbreaker; I practice dark magics. I’d have hanged for my crimes, if ever I’d dared cross anyone with the power and wealth to buy protection from my spells.”

I stopped and sucked in a long breath. I had to force the words from my lips, but because I loved Rian, I could not let them go unsaid. “We cannot marry.”

His face grew fierce. “We will marry. I won’t give you up.”

“I did not say you had to give me up.” I kissed his hard, angry lips. “You credit me with stricter honor than I possess. I do not need a wedding to love you, to fuck you, or to sleep beside you at night. Find some vapid virgin girl of noble birth to marry and get heirs from. Let me be your mistress. We shall think of your marriage as an act of sacrifice. Your marriage will keep our love safe from those who would do it harm.”

He reached down and grabbed my left hand. He kissed the stump of my missing finger. “A sacrifice, like this one? You sacrificed when you made the Witch’s Bargain for protection, but you became a witch in truth. I will make no sacrifices with my freedom, for I want to be no woman’s husband but yours.”

I was silent for some moments. Everyone who knew of my witchery, save Rian and my sisters, had come to fear me. Rian would be king one day, and taking a witch to wife would earn him only enemies. He needed a wife who was sweet and kind, pretty and biddable. He needed a woman like the Cinder Girl.

“I know just the girl the Prince should wed.”

“I told you,” he almost shouted the words. “I will only have you.”

I held up my hand. “Hear me out.”

Without ink and ash to anchor my spell, it was an effort to don the image of the Cinder Girl. The illusion itched at my skin and wavered in his sight, but the idea was clear enough. Rian broke into a broad smile.

“Can you stand to see this pretty face every day of your life?”

“I will endure that dull façade, so long as I may see your freckles and your dark eyes every night.” He kissed me. “I know you won’t believe me when I tell you this, but you are beautiful.”

He was right. I did not believe his words, but he believed them and I loved him for it.

Watch out next week for the conclusion of Ember, suckers…

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Bettie Sharpe is awesome. Period. Her novella Like a Thief in the Night will be released in January by the awesome Samhain Publishing as a part of their Strangers in the Night anthology. YOU WILL BUY IT. If you don’t, I will slaughter a baby duck. And I will post pictures. Just kidding. What kind of sicko do you take me for?

Oh, and seriously? DO NOT post any part of this story on your site without attribution to Bettie or a holla-back at her site. If you do, I will not hesitate to sic Jane from Dear Author on your thieving asses. Copyright © Bettie Sharpe 2007 and seventy years after her death, bitches!

Note: Hey, other writer-types, do you want to contribute to The Serial? If so, email me and I’ll hook you up, yo. Peace!

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