Part 17 (1/2)

A man bowed in front of me and took my hand to kiss it. He was so gentle and careful and he gave me the same smile you did. I wondered if it was you as well. Had you become a man for me, like you had been that younger girl? I let the man lead me out in the middle of the floor to dance, all the while believing it was you. He pulled me close while he whispered to me how beautiful I looked and drug me along in the steps I fumbled through.

That man mesmerized me with his beautiful smile, his perfect soft face, and the gentle touch. But I never would have let him take me in a dance if I hadn't thought it was you. I lost count of the dancing and he attempted to kiss me but he only kissed my cheek when I turned my head as the bell struck midnight.

I pulled free from him, the worry rus.h.i.+ng over me as I dashed away and back down the steps. I felt a shoe free from my feet but I never stopped to pick it up, I just kept running, hoping you would meet me out front while my darling dress turned to shreds and my hair fell around my shoulders. The carriage had already become what it had been previously, so I kept running away, limping at some point because of the damage to my foot from the shoe I was missing.

I can't remember when I started crying on the way home, but it must have been at least half-way home when I realized you wouldn't be coming for me like you had said you would if I past midnight. Why had I trusted you like a fool? You probably had thought I was just some stupid girl to toy with.

My heart felt torn, thinking you had given me the perfect night then abandoned me when I had needed your help most. You had given me everything I could have dreamed of, then it all fell apart at midnight, leaving me with even less than I had before and so much pain that I just wanted to curl up on the street and lay there until I stopped crying.

I made it home. I forced myself home rather than breaking down in the street. My aunt scolded me when I got home, asking me repeatedly where I had been and yelling at me about losing a shoe and how much it would cost to get a new one. Even if we both knew she would fetch one from the trash or something and throw it at me later.

I spent that entire night crying in my tiny room, silently as I could so my cousins and aunt wouldn't hear me. I thought I had cried you all out of my system that night, but I must have been wrong.

Days of even rougher ch.o.r.es than before had gone by before the man I had danced with that night came to my door, holding the gla.s.s slipper you had made for me. When he had asked me to try it on, I realized that man hadn't been you, since you would have known it was mine and where to go. But at least he had come for me, unlike you had.

When the slipper fit he asked me to marry him, despite the rags and dirt that I was covered in. My aunt nearly shoved me out the door, probably expecting a dowry to help her family when I got married. I went along with it, though when I had known he wasn't you, I just couldn't muster the same feelings for him as I had felt for you or him on that first night.

Somehow you had enchanted me more than even a prince could.

The day of the wedding had come far too quickly than I had been expecting, and I was in a dress that couldn't match the one you had made for me but I tried to think that it was better, just to try to get you out of my mind.

That day, when I had been all prepared and left to myself before the ceremony was going to begin, I let myself shed my last few tears for you, trying to shed the memories of your hair sliding along your skin, or the soft smile and those glinting eyes drawing me in with the raw power of your magic.

I tried replacing them with him, his more coa.r.s.e hands, his darker hair, darker skin and even darker eyes. But your face kept forcing a way through until the door opened to lead me away.

I wiped my eyes before being led down the aisle by someone I didn't know, since my father had been gone for years. I saw my aunt and cousins on one side of the seats as I went by, while everyone else around me were complete strangers that might as well have been blank faces. I didn't see you. I thought, at the very least, maybe you would see me off in to the married life, but you even abandoned me there.

My hands were shaking as I held the bouquet and looked ahead of me to see the man I would be marrying. He was a good person at least, and I probably wouldn't have to scrub another floor ever again. He smiled your smile at me and all I could see was your face in place of his. I had to look away before I'd feel tears down my cheek again.

The ceremony began and I inched closer to becoming Mrs Charming. But all I could think and hope was that you would walk in that door and stop this from happening. The ceremony kept going though and we said our vows. Mine had been written for me by him. I had thought about what I'd say if it had been you standing across from me that I was marrying, but I couldn't write it down as something to say to him no matter how much I tried.

It was in the middle of my vows that you did something I would forever have etched in my memory.

You blasted through the stain-gla.s.s window closest to me, your hood flying from your head so I could see your flash of red hair and blue gem eyes, even the freckles softly touched to your cheeks as you stood up from landing on one knee. My heart jumped and a s.h.i.+ver rolled across my body that filled me with so much excitement at seeing you. Had you read my mind finally?

Your hand shot up like you were going to yell stop, but instead the front doors of the church ripped open to where they nearly broke from their hinges. Two women flew in to the aisle of the church; a golden-haired G.o.ddess and an older woman around your age, maybe, with skin so white and hair so dark.

The priest shuffled away from you as you placed a hand on Charming and thrust him toward the aisle. You followed after him as the other two women came down the walkway from the other direction. You asked him why he planned to marry me when he already had two wives and before he could say anything your fist shot across his face and he spun to hit the ground. I could feel the rage emanating from you, my eyes never even drawing from looking at the back of your head as you pointed to the two women.

I didn't care about them; I didn't even care the man whom I was about to marry had two wives already. He hadn't been the one to betray me. He hadn't let me lean on him, and then rip it all away from me to leave me falling and crying.

You had.

Both of the women threw their rings on top of the charming prince as he lied on the floor looking up at you with fear toiled in his eyes. He stuttered to explain but I didn't care to pay attention to that. He had his reasons, whatever they may have been, and he probably thought they were fine in his mind.

Instead I lifted my dress as I lowered myself down the couple of steps in my way and pulled on your shoulder to turn you around before my fist shot against your cheek. I hadn't even realized what I did until after I felt the pain in my hand from striking you.

A red imprint of my knuckles were strung across your cheek when you turned your head to look back at me through the waterfall of red hair, which didn't match the mark I had made on your face.

Your eyes were filled with pain, but not from the physical strike I had made against you. I hated seeing them like that, they just made me want to cry and comfort you. I didn't even notice my jaw set as hard as it had until it softened when you reached a hand out to take my fingers and press them through your curtain of hair to the mark I had made. You didn't say sorry to me, for all the pain you had forced on me, instead you asked me if I wanted to hit you again.

My lips parted from how stunned I was by what you said. My fingers coiled against your cheek, to feel how soft and warm they felt but when I realized we were not the only ones in the room, my hand yanked from the delicate fingers you used to touch me and my face burned somewhere between embarra.s.sment, anger and pure admiration.

Would I ever be able to be like you? I would have been on the floor begging for you to accept my apology if I had done what you did to me. But you knew I didn't want a sorry; I don't even know how.

You knew they were just empty words to me, said so many times by my father that they were nothing. Instead you gave me the chance to unleash all that anger and hate for what you had done to me. But when you had, I couldn't muster myself to strike you again. Instead I asked why you even bothered coming back for me.

I saw just behind the frame of your body, the golden-haired woman kicking in to Charming's crotch as he begged after the two women. Should I have done that to you?

I was tempted to, but I wasn't sure it would have the same effect like it had with that man. My eyes drew back to you so easily with just the simple gesture of you pulling your hand through your hair to set it away from your face. You smiled that wonderful smile to me and all my heart told me was to jump in to your arms, rather than hurt you again. I couldn't hurt you again, no matter how much you might have hurt me.

You told me you had made a promise to come for me. You had promised me you would come for me when I needed it most, just as you had before. Then you actually asked me if I would have rather liked you to never have come back, and I couldn't hold myself back anymore. I flew forward in to your body, my arms wrapping around you. I could tell with how stiff you had gone, you weren't used to being hugged like that, but I didn't care.

The closeness of our faces allowed me to whisper that I'd want you to come for me no matter what, for the rest of my life. Even if I told you I never wanted to see you again.

You smiled up at me and stroked a hand through my hair as your body softened to accept me better. It made me wonder how many people didn't hug you. Or how much pain you must have gone through to know what a person really wanted when someone betrayed them like you had to me. I wanted to see you suffer. But I never thought seeing you suffer would make my heart hurt so much.

You pulled to my side and grabbed my hand to hold it out for me like you had the first time I had gotten in the carriage, letting me step up on Charming and then past him before you followed after me this time and out the church to take me away from this place, away from that man, and away from the miserable life I would have lived had you not come back for me.

I'm not sure you realized what you had become to me the moment you had let me lead you from that church. You were not my faerie G.o.dmother. You were something so much more than I could ever describe with any words.

I truly think I had fallen in love with you on that day. After you told me you were pulled away by the faeries not wanting you to interfere again like you already had the night I met the prince, and then that you sacrificed your faerie G.o.dmother status so that you could keep your promise to me.

You gave up your wings for me.

I knew then, what you had said to me at the carriage was supposed to mean what I had thought it was. You would come for me no matter what, whenever I needed it, for however long we were both around.

That day in my wedding dress was my wedding day.

And I walked out of that church with the real person I married.

I only wish I had the strength to tell you that, Gnidori.

- Ashe -.

Act II.

”The Better to curse you with, my dear.”

Seventeen.

The Blue Faerie.

”This is so-o-o-o not funny, Red!” Goldie drawled in between some curses.

I had to agree with her, but not on the part she was ticked about. I settled for snickering under my breath, which only made her face do an impression of an angry strawberry faster.