Enchanted by Alethea Kontis

declaration had been emotionless as well.
    And there it was. Enchanted into some vile beast, missing for months, unexpectedly reappearing long before his anticipated return, and Rumbold was still not worthy enough for an unscheduled audience with his esteemed father. It was almost reassuring that so little had changed.
    Rumbold waited until Rollins had slipped into the other room before lifting the heavy spoon with clumsy fingers. Sunlight winked at him from a jewel in the spoon’s gilt handle, and the prince wondered at the uselessness of decorating a utensil. His focus shifted to the room, its walls draped in sumptuous linens and spotted with solemn-faced portraits in thick frames. Somehow, he had to find a way to reembrace this fanciful life of waste and excess. He must remember that he was a prince. A prince covered in cinders. A prince her family would have nothing to do with.
    Love and rage burned inside his chest, crawled under his skin. They begged for his voice, his tears, his fury. He quickly gulped down the contents of the spoon. The liquid scalded the back of his raw throat. His stomach rebelled. Spices filled his nostrils and made his eyes water, but he refused to choke.
    Boiled in oil and tossed on ice.
    Swallow.
    Breathe.
    Open mouth. Air in. Air out.
    Everything else doesn’t matter.
    ...
and she loved him with all her heart.
    He would not cry. Strong men did not cry. He would exact what meager power he had and force his body to obey him. He would rule himself if nothing else. He remembered Jack: stalwart, brave, stubborn. Rumbold could do this. When the pain dissipated, he swallowed one more excruciating mouthful of soup.
    Coming back was part of the price.
    ***
    Rumbold realized, as he lingered in the tepid bathwater, that many of his memories were missing. He could remember how to walk and talk, but he could not remember what he had done with the days of his Life Before. He could see himself as a child but not a man. The year immediately before his transformation was an empty page to him. The more he sought the memories, the more quickly they slipped away. He did not chase them. He trusted that in time, they would all come back to him. He hated time.
    Odd flashes hinted at a wealth of idle lassitude but nothing more, nothing that explained the monster rumbling within him. He should have been resting his weary body, taking this time to refresh and renew before he presented himself to the world, and to Sunday. But the crazed energy inside him would not accept that. It needed action. Now.
    Since he could not remember his own life, Rumbold remembered Jack’s instead. Young, healthy, and fit, even Jack had taken more than a few days to recover. Yes, Jack had endured his enchantment for much longer, but he had also been magicked into an animal of sound and speed and stamina. For a year he had been lead dog in the Royal Hunt; no fox had remained hidden long during Jack’s reign of the pack.
    Alternatively, for nine months Rumbold had lived the docile, minimalist life of a frog, never venturing beyond the small clearing surrounding the well. Now that he could walk (barely) and jump (possibly) and run (hardly) and talk (mostly) and sing (not that he had much before), he wanted to do all those things, at once, this instant, vigor be damned. He had the rest of his life to live, and he had no intention of wasting one precious moment.
    That determination carried him all the way to the Royal Guards’ training ground, Jack’s home away from home. If Rumbold had no footsteps of his own to follow, he would tread in those he knew.
    Rumbold found that he had an easier time walking if he did not concentrate on it. When he tried to bring to mind the mechanics of the action, he faltered. So he left the task to his subconscious, trusting his body not to pitch him headlong to the ground.
    And such ground he covered, so quickly on his long human legs with their impossibly large bones. He passed stones that the week before