Three: Clark Endless
1762 Words
Chapter Three
Clark Endless
For most men, being surrounded by an army of women would have been a dream. But there were just two problems with my current predicament. 1) I was in a committed relationship with my boyfriend, Ben Taylor. 2) The women surrounding me were the Queens army. The Queens army who had somehow found the hideout we’d been staying in for the past five years. The leader of the Queens army was a brown skinned woman with dark hair named Lady Rosa. “You’ve got to come back,” she demanded.
“No,” I replied.
They’d caught up with me in The Badlands. The land that surrounded faerie. The Winter and Summer Courts had usurped my throne, so Ben and I had made a run for it. And Ben was a human. I wouldn’t let him get caught up in my mess.
“Look, we received word from The Gatekeeper this morning.”
I paused. “Louisa?”
She nodded. “I know she promised she wouldn’t contact you unless it was a dire emergency. Well, it is a dire emergency. Your brother is back.”
“They found Bradley?”
Rosa nodded again. “Well, your niece did. Smart girl, Tatiana. She found him in New York. He’s back at the manor now. She wants you to come home to see him. Thinks that between the three of you, you can come up with a plan to get faerie back.”
“You know that won’t work. We fought for three years trying to restore the throne. They kidnapped my child, took him to another world, and now they’re using him to rule. They’ve turned him into a mad dictator. It’s helpless…. especially since…. well…with Emma….”
“There’s been a development there, too,” Rosa told me.
“What kind of development?” I asked. “Has she woken up from the curse Aphrodite placed on her?”
Rosa shook her head. “No. We keep watch on her crystal coffin every day, and night, just in case something changes. But it’s about Hook.”
My gaze narrowed. “What about the bastard?”
“His ship was spotted off of the coast. He’s back.”
“He deserted her. He let Emma try to make a bargain with Aphrodite on her own to try to save our son the evil inside him, and he left. He was her true love, and he abandoned her. He can rot in hell, for all I care.”
“He’s the only shot we’ve got at waking her up!” Rosa insisted. “Emma’s the goddess of rage. Aphrodite was her mother, and she’s the only one strong enough to take on your son. Part faerie. Part demi-god. You know she’s the solution to ending all of this.”
“She doesn’t care about him,” I reminded her. “She was so desperate to not have a child of faerie origin that she made a deal with demons! She’s the reason he’s corrupt in the first place.”
“If she didn’t care about him, she wouldn’t have sacrificed herself to Aphrodite to keep the demons from getting him. Only true loves kiss can wake her up. Hook is her true love. He’s back. We need him. Then, we can destroy the Winter and Summer courts to take back faerie so that you can be it’s rightful King.”
“I don’t want to be it’s rightful King. I was terrible at it, as you’ll recall.”
“True,” said Rosa, “but when Nia left to be with your sister, she told me to help you become a great King in whatever way I could. Nia is my best friend and my General. So, I’m keeping that promise. Even if it means I have to drag you kicking and screaming to do it.”
“Clark!” I heard Ben’s voice calling me.
On hunting days, I begged him to stay in the cabin. Since faerie had been taken over by the Winter and Summer courts, it existed in a permanent state of frost. Everything was frozen over, and cold. And when I wasn’t there, he was vulnerable. With me, I could keep him safe. “Taylor!” I called. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Its Tatiana. She called on the magic mirror.” He walked towards the forest clearing with me, holding a silver mirror in his hand. Charming, brunette Ben Taylor with his dimpled smile was the last person on earth I expected to be with. Yet somehow, the world had decided that he was my mate.
Once I’d felt that, there was no going back. However, it was on days like this that I wished I hadn’t succumbed so easily to Ben Taylor’s charms. I glanced around at the army of women warriors surrounding us on horseback all armed with knives, swords, and who knew what else.
“Er,” said Ben, “honey, why didn’t you tell us we had company? I would have made tea or something.”
“Cute,” I replied. “Didn’t know they were coming. They want to try to save faerie again and restore me as King.”
Ben chuckled. “Don’t they know we’ve already given up? Why else would we be living as hermits in the middle of nowhere together? That’s the very definition of giving up.”
“Things have changed,” said Rosa. “Hook came back.”
Ben coughed. “Hook? Like my ex-fiancé’s true love, Hook?”
There was nothing simple about my existence. I’d been adopted by a family named Endless, raised right alongside their children as a brother. I’d fallen in love with Emma, the youngest daughter who was engaged to a tyrannical faerie King who used to turn people to stone for fun. He also locked her in a tower against her will. After Emma killed him, we discovered I was actually the heir to faerie because my Mother was the faerie Queen.
Emma had at one time been engaged to Ben Taylor. That was what had started the trouble with the faerie King in the first place. Because he hadn’t been happy about Emma trying to marry another man. The engagement ended because of the faerie King, but then they tried to get back together.
However, I was the new faerie King and Emma was pregnant with my child. Ben wanted to save Emma who I had managed to get trapped in Hell by demons because I was trying to keep her safe. I fell in love with Ben, and he fell in love with me.
Meanwhile, we discovered that Emma had been the daughter of a goddess her father had had an affair with to trick the faerie King into taking Emma as his bride. Instead of her sister Louisa, who was supposed to marry him because of a deal that their grandfather had made on the girls behalf in exchange for a fortune. We also discovered that Emma’s brother Bradley had altered her timeline to keep her safe from the faerie King, Oberon, erasing a whole epic love story with a pirate by the name of Hook.
The two reunited, discovered they were each other’s true love, and set sail to determine if my son that Emma carried was evil or not. Needless to say, the Winter and Summer court got their hands on my child and he became corrupted by them so it didn’t work. Emma had made a deal with her Mother, Aphrodite, to keep the child from becoming a demon which had lead to her being cursed in a glass coffin.
The only way to wake her was by a kiss from her true love. After the loss of Emma, Hook had gone mad and vanished off the face of the earth. Meaning Emma had been cursed for five years. My brother Bradley along with her. And faerie had been a mess since then.
“Yes, exactly like that,” said Rosa. “With Emma, that would change everything.”
“But Emma gave up her powers to save her son from being corrupted by demons. Aphrodite took her powers as p*****t which is why she is now in that glass coffin,” Ben reminded her, “she wouldn’t be rage goddess Emma. She’d just be Emma.”
“Still, she might be able to get through to---”
“Don’t say his name,” I hissed. “The young man that rules faerie now isn’t my son. My son died with his mother.”
“But this is what Endless is about. Getting happy endings,” said Ben. “Wouldn’t it be worth it to at least try?”
“No.” I glowered at my boyfriend. “We’re not fighting about this. We gave up fighting the day Hecate died. She was our strongest alley, and my son killed her. I won’t risk anymore lives. Especially not Emma’s. Is that clear?”
Rosa sighed. “Fine. But you should still talk to your niece and go home to visit your brother.”
“That, I can do,” I said. “I’ll tell Nia you said hello.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Safe travels,” I told her. “And Rosa?”
“Yes?”
“If you see Hook, kill the bastard for all I f*****g care. Come on, Ben. I’ll talk with Titania at home.” I marched away from the Queens army, and looped Ben’s arm through mine.
Ben gave me a pointed look. The kind of look that said that I was being stubborn. But he didn’t understand. I’d been through Hell already. I wouldn’t go through it again. Ever.
- Writer
