Chapter Two Arthur

I watch as Mabel struggles. She wants to return to him. To Reeve. That terrible, terrible wizard. The one who fucked everything up. I want to tear him apart. I want to watch him go up in flames, to become like I am, the mere shadow of a man.

Zeklan is there, drawing her back, curbing her will even though she struggles against the pull. It is one that is unnatural, not like the binds she has to the monsters that are now bonded to her.

Just like me .

Because of me .

All of this is entirely because of me. If I hadn't loved her so hard, if I hadn't fallen for Reeve's slick lies, there would have been a chance she could have had some happiness. Just because she is a monster hunter, it doesn't mean that she couldn't also find someone to love either. Her kind are not void of that emotion. She could have been happy–even if there was no chance at all for me.

I was always cursed.

There was never going to be a happy ending in my future. Not even before she was changed. Something would have happened. I was born cursed and cursed is all I ever had to look forward to. It was foretold when I was born.

"He follows a fate that has no conclusion," the seer had said when she wrapped me after birth. "His misery and his destiny are intertwined. Never will they unravel until he can join what is split."

My mother had scoffed at the prophecy but there was no fighting it. I had ignored it my entire life, hiding behind the fact that nothing had happened yet to prove it could be a true telling and not just the campfire stories of the local seer. The very woman who was also partial to ale and magical herbs.

No one believed much of anything she said but there were enough times her utterances became actual truths that it kept my birth words always at the back of my mind.

Then, when Mabel's father killed Jashor, not only a nobleman but a nephew of the king, I could taste the bitter truth like ashes in my mouth. My world crumbled there and then on that day. All along I had thought that by loving Mabel, we could find happiness, that loving her would be the way to break the curse of the spoken words, that no magic would be woven into the fiber of my existence to see my terrible fate unfold.

No, when Jashor died, my world crashed and burned around me. I went up in smoke well before I actually, physically, did in real life.

But I had to push it further, I had to try and fix things. I thought I could counter my destiny with magic.

And that's where Reeve stepped in and made certain my fate stuck to me.

"Can you see her?" Fenn asks.

The satyr has easily accepted me into the fold. He does so with everything going on here like it is the most natural thing in the world. But really, it isn't. We are all a part of my epic fuck up and none of us should exist like this except for the fact that I couldn't give up Mabel. Sure, she was the love of my life. But her path went well beyond what would make her mine. Sometimes, it seems, love just isn't enough.

"She's there," I respond, my form rising high above the water while remaining by Fenn's side. "She's fighting hard, though."

"Zeklan will bring her back. She can't wheedle out of his tentacles as easily as she thinks she can."

Fenn is so confident that I catch a smile only a moment before it forms on my smoky lips. Not that the satyr can see my face from up here. I would like to have his enthusiasm, his blind belief that everything will be just fine.

"He's only just been saved from an ordeal that made him weak. He needs water for the strength you seem to think he has now," I remind the satyr, trying to bring him back down to the dismal reality of my normal existence.

"Perhaps," Fenn returns, tipping his head to look up at me. "But I have faith in him. I saw how weak he was when we saved him. I saw the pain being submerged caused him. But that is nothing compared to the thought Mabel might have been stolen from us. You should know that."

I stare at the imp below. It is so strange to be back, alongside my other selves. They may not have remembered me, but they feel our bond. For the imp, this is more than enough to trust me. He shouldn't though. I am the reason they are all like that. They should hate me instead.

"She may not be able to fight her destiny, Fenn. And Zeklan is not as strong right now as you hope for. That's the reality of what we are facing now."

"You really suck at motivational speeches, you know that?" Fenn states. "And this is coming from me, the person who has had to put up with Brugo's bullshit."

"I'm just being a realist," I reply. Glancing back at Mabel, I see Zeklan struggling as our woman fights against him. Her arms and legs fling out in different directions, in an attempt to break Zeklan's hold on her. I can feel Reeve's call as it washes over her. She struggles so valiantly, I am proud of her as she fights against all the odds, trying to free herself from the very creature who might be able to give her some semblance of happiness. Yet, I can feel the conflict inside. I watch intently, hoping she can finally draw herself back from this madness. That she might be able to overcome him, and that this will be all that it takes to break the curse.

If only it were that simple. If only all it took was for her to make up her mind and turn away from him, from the man that ruined her life in more ways than even she understands right now. But she has never actually been able to do it. I know, I have felt her internal struggles even as I distanced myself from her. The curse has wrapped itself around us both and given me the ability to know her pain, her loneliness, her desperate struggle each and every time she has had to fight her inner torment.

Mabel manages to break free as I lament our existence and I can't hold back any longer. I can't give her the time to try and break the curse herself. For, as much as I want her to be free from this terrible affliction we all have, I can't have Reeve get his clutches back into her. While she believes she has been running from the line of kings from the start of her conversion, it is Reeve who is the one she needs to be worried about. He is the one who made this curse, and he is the one who wants to control her. And someone like Mabel should never be under the command of another.

Still, I steer the situation by diving in to make sure Reeve can't do the same to Mabel.

Drawing up every part of my ability to manipulate the weather, I drag the clouds down from the sky and swirl them within my clutches, reaching out to contact the sand whisps and using my own power to control them. The fact I am doing the same thing Reeve does to Mabel with these simple air elements is not lost on me. I am completely like Reeve, but I convince myself it's alright because I want what's best for Mabel.

The weather swirls around me, whipping the sand up viciously, making the chaotic vortex I need to scour Reeve with sand again. While it won't kill him, this blast of sand will scrub away his skin in patches and I watch intently as Reeve howls at the sky, knowing I'm here and what I'm doing.

He fights against it, roaring and gritting his teeth against the onslaught of grit trying to permeate his body. But he is no match for my anger. I've had centuries to dwell in this stew of a curse and channel my energies into this very moment.

I may have kept away, hidden from her so she never even knew I existed. I couldn't do that to Mabel, couldn't let her know that she had hope. Because the reality was this is all my fault and every single second of suffering, she has gone through is because of me and the choice I made after I thought I could fix things. But, at the end of the day, I was always there, cloaked from sight and feeling, so that I could watch over her and protect her as best I could.

Now, I must do it physically in front of her. It is time to push away the shadows and let her see me for all the rawness that I have sheltered from her. She needs to see the real me, all the ugly pointy bits, The reason for the curse and for why I have stayed away. The real reason why she has suffered all these long years.

But I can't do any of that if Reeve has his hold on her.

The rush of the vortex comes crashing down on him, the sand whisps pushing forward, carving the air and making it slice at Reeve, cleaving welts across his face so that he has to clutch at his cheeks. It isn't much, but I can see Mabel falter. Confusion crosses her face as she whips her head back towards Zeklan. His tentacles are binding her tightly to him and he uses the brief reprieve from her battling ways to draw her back to the boat.

"Here she comes," Fenn says, and I frown at his constant enthusiasm. "I knew Zeklan would do it."

"You're welcome," I hiss at the satyr as I draw back my magic and the air instantly settles as soon as I retreat. Fuck the satyr and the fact he won't acknowledge this turn of events was entirely because of my magic and not Zeklan's power.

"Of course, you know what I mean," Fenn says. At least he has the decency to look contrite, I guess.