Human Again Read online

  Contents

  End of Ever After Novels

  Ever After

  Birth of an Heir

  Not There Before

  The Merchant

  Kiara

  Human Again

  Cages

  Home is Where a Heart is

  Avalanche

  Thaw

  After Ever After

  HEART OF A HUNTER

  Acknowledgments

  Thank You For Reading

  About the Author

  Also by E. L. Tenenbaum

  HUMAN AGAIN

  Copyright © 2020 by E. L. Tenenbaum

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  ISBN: 978-1-68046-865-6

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  Fire & Ice Young Adult Books

  An Imprint of Melange Books, LLC

  White Bear Lake, MN 55110

  www.fireandiceya.com

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  Smashwords Edition

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  Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

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  Published in the United States of America.

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  Cover Design by Caroline Andrus

  End of Ever After Novels

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  End of Ever After

  Lies of Golden Straw

  Beautiful to Me

  Human Again

  Heart of a Hunter (2020)

  L”HU

  Ever After

  Once upon a time, I was a beast masquerading as a man, though I usually hid it well enough so no one would know. Then a faery’s curse unleashed it from under my control, and it nearly destroyed me. All these years later, I still suffer from what she did to me, still suffer from her ironically angry response to my own anger.

  I’ve heard many versions of the faery tale my life was said to have become, a story of a man who was turned into a beast only to be redeemed by love when it was almost too late to save him from losing his humanity forever. While much of what the storytellers, the minstrels, those gathered around late night fires claim is true, they are mostly, if not entirely, glossing over the finer details wherein the real story lies. They forget that I was never a beast, but a man, a man who daily battled a merciless rage, an icy anger, a deep ravenous void that refused to be filled. I never had fangs, or horns, or a head full of fur, sharp claws, or a body outwardly different than any other human noble. Spinning tales of a curse, waxing poetic of a cure, they forget to talk about the before. And they certainly never mention the long road of after. Because therein is the true terror of my tale, in looking back and knowing that all the while I was outwardly a man, a man ruled by a beast.

  Rather, they tell about the presumed happy ending, dwell on the supposed ways that Kiara saved me, and my soul, from being a lost echo in the crevices of my mind. Though Kiara pulled me back from the precipice, I still face the danger of tripping and tumbling headfirst into an abyss so dark that light is swallowed before it has a chance to shine. There are yet battles to be waged; the beast has been silenced, but it is not vanquished. It will never be gone.

  Because love is not enough and it takes more than a gentle touch and forgiving heart to make a man whole again, as much as any broken man can ever be. Because a man cannot go through what I did and come through unchanged, because everything, every thing, especially magic, leaves a mark.

  Some days are easier, some days my human side is so strong it seems impossible that it would ever again relinquish control to the wild animal within. Those days I smile freely and am every bit the man I’m supposed to be.

  But there are some days that it takes only one wrong step to send me hurtling back into the darkness, one misplaced word to reignite the all-consuming fire of rage and with it the power of the beast. On such days, I try to disappear before I hurt anyone, stubbornly waiting out the darkness as minutes tick by like years and I fight to reassert control.

  I’d be better off without those days. For they are all that stand between me and my supposed happily ever after.

  So let this account tell the truth of my so-called faery tale, let it be known how black a heart can be, how deep a beast can sink its claws, and the sort of scars it leaves behind. Let it tell of how many shadows can shroud a man’s soul and how even a sliver of light can give it a heretofore forfeited hope that it may yet be redeemed.

  Let it tell my story so others may yet know why it was I chose to fight at all.

  Birth of an Heir

  My father’s subjects considered him a good man, a fair and just king, but he showed me none of the patience and consideration so readily offered them. Still, I don’t blame him for what I became.

  I blame him for not preventing it.

  He was the one to raise me, and treat me as he did, with a level of discipline nothing short of intolerable. My father loved his children, very deeply, but he was irrationally taxing when it came to his heir. At least once I became him. My older brother Adlard was supposed to take the throne, and all my father’s hopes and dreams were poured onto his cherubic head from the moment he was born. As the second son, I was happily left to my “less important” military destiny, never expected to be more than a soldier and protector of my older, more blessed brother. My father even named me after Delphe’s legendary General Azahr, as if any would dare doubt the role I was intended for. Physically, I caught up to and then surpassed my older brother both in height and in strength by the time I was eight, so that sort of life always made sense to me.

  I was given extra tutelage in war and strategy, while Adlard was immersed in politicking, but even with the way Father’s academic expectations commanded most of our day, we still found plenty of time for mischief and play outside of the classes we shared.

  “General Azahr would never have positioned his army so foolishly,” Father’s gruff criticism once interrupted a few quiet hours we’d stolen to test some theories on my well-worn set of wooden soldiers. “Hasn’t Sir Garamond taught you a bloody thing?”

  Sir Garamond was the most esteemed, the most prodigious of all of Father’s knights. He trained me in martial arts, physical combat, and swordsmanship, keeping me on track for the type of life I was meant to have led. And though he never thrashed me into defeat, he never let me win easily either.

  “Hello, Father,” Adlard greeted him easily.

  I didn’t. I was too ashamed.

  Father gestured with his foot, never mind whatever might be under it. “He’d have lost both Delphe and Yadrehena with his army so scattered.” He glared at me. “And what could he have said to his brother the king then, failing him as he would as the kingdom’s sword and protector?”

  “I pressed Azahr to show me this formation,” Adlard answered for me, my burning cheeks keeping my tongue in place, “and he only obliged to prove how poorly planned the position is.”

  Father glared at Adlard, then abruptly nodded once and turned away.

  “Adlard,” he commanded after him.

  Adlard jumped to follow Father but not before imparting an impish wink. “You wouldn’t have to explain anything to me,” he reassured.

  The moment he was out of sight, I knocked the soldiers over and only ever set them up in ways I knew had proven victorious, just in case Father ever happened upon me again.

  Another time, Fat
her caught us arguing over a piece of music when we were supposed to be practicing a duet at the piano. We were never spared much time for music—it was something Mother wanted and Father only allowed to appease her one request, and because he thought it might behoove us to have some ear for music, considering its place at court—but I loved those brief respites, possibly because their scarcity made them all the more precious. Or because they had nothing to do with Father’s plans for our individual futures. Though I will admit that, not having been blessed with Adlard’s easy way with words, I always felt that music spoke better for me. Be it the music of a sword whistling through air or the melodic notes coaxed from an instrument.

  For whatever reason, the sheet music was missing a corner, leaving the last notes of the line incomplete. Remembering the incident with the toy soldiers, I was adamant that we couldn’t play what we didn’t know. Adlard insisted we make it up, it was more fun that way.

  “Your arguing is worse than your playing,” Father thundered at us, instantly cutting off our squabbling, “and that only because when you play you at least aspire to mimic someone greater. Azahr, do you intend to fight Adlard’s every decision as king or will you support him as you should?”

  “I started it, Father,” Adlard was quick to tell him.

  “A general can never be caught arguing with his king,” Father replied with a pointed look in my direction. “It sows doubt and fear in the kingdom.”

  “The fault is mine,” Adlard spoke for me again. “Azahr has a much better ear for music than me, and I sometimes provoke him just to rile him.”

  “Yes, well, remember what I said,” Father cautioned, accepting Adlard’s excuse because it was his. “You must each remember your place.”

  “Of course,” Adlard agreed quickly.

  “Of course,” I added in an almost whisper, even knowing I would later torture myself with all the things I should have said instead.

  Father pressed his lips into a tight, thin line.

  “You’ll come with me,” he said next to Adlard, right before he spun on his heel and strode away.

  “I’m still right,” Adlard whispered past a cheeky grin before bounding after Father.

  I stayed at the piano another hour, at least, urging the notes of music to gather up my thoughts, my growing shame and carry it all away.

  I never did learn the ending to that particular piece.

  Even as Adlard so often shielded me from Father’s more intense attentions, I spared little thought for the future outside of the dictated image of who I was meant to be, never once suspecting those early childhood years would end up being the most peaceful of my life.

  Then, when I was ten, Adlard died after three days of a sudden illness at the age of twelve, and I became Delphe’s Heir Apparent.

  Father, however, had no more hopes or dreams to pour into me. All that remained was frigid, rigid, uncaring expectation. As a now only son and newly minted crown prince, my treatment differed greatly from my sister’s, the flawless Princess Amellia. My mother did as best she could to encourage me, but I was a child who irrationally wanted to make things right through his father’s approval, and I sought it in vain.

  My father expected nothing less than perfection from me, wouldn’t acknowledge anything but, and in so doing, he sowed the seeds that nurtured the fledging beast. I was meant to live a life unnoticed outside of the eventual military conquests expected from all second sons, and I should have, too. Perhaps I would have been known as Adlard’s closet confident, a voice of reason in the eventual king’s ear and staunchest supporter of his reign. Instead, I was pushed onto center stage, and not only did I not want the part, but in every look, in every gesture, in every glance, in every mirror on the wall and in the mirror of my father’s eyes, I was reminded that the role was never supposed to be mine.

  There was nothing I could do without being criticized, there was no thought I could voice without being corrected. My father didn’t hate me, I truly believe he acted without malice, his heart had simply been broken and he could find no comfort in preparing the replacement for his precious heir. Adlard took a part of our father with him when he died, and in turn, Father destroyed a part of me. The absence would become so deep and dark and pervasive, I would never find its end. Not even after the curse took effect.

  “Father, I merited a perfect score on the test today about the history of the monarchy,” I once proudly told him.

  He frowned at me. “Did you not receive any extra points?”

  “None were offered,” I replied, my enthusiasm instantly waning.

  “You should have asked,” he replied. “A monarch always looks for extra ways to benefit his people. Adlard knew this.”

  “Yes, Father,” I said dutifully, turning away to hide my confusion between his lesson and the results of mine.

  That was mere weeks after Adlard’s death.

  “Father,” I reported another time, “I almost bested Sir Garamond in a horse race this afternoon.”

  “Almost,” Father echoed, wholly unimpressed, making me regret I had even mentioned it.

  “Almost,” I confirmed with notably less excitement.

  Father said nothing else, as if that one word confirmed all he needed to know about me, about all the ways his second son would never measure up to his first. Instead he turned a bright gaze upon Amellia, who’d just come in to announce that she’d successfully memorized the orders of nobility. I knew them flawlessly at the age of five; she was seven and my father heartily congratulated her, never mind that she stumbled twice.

  That was barely six months after Adlard died, and already my life was under scrutiny beyond any I had been meant to endure. With one word, Father could make me feel foolish and unworthy, with one look, he could burn pride and accomplishment to ash.

  And so a rage began building inside me—held in check if only because I couldn’t yet imagine being strong or equal enough to lash out against him—from the injustice of a brother taken too young and another, less qualified one unwillingly made to take his place. It, this rage born of frustration, hurt, and all things I couldn’t bring myself to feel or say, mercilessly battered my mind and relentlessly screamed to be set free. Even worse, my father’s expectations of his surrogate heir made me terrified of failure, terrified to fall short of the perfect future I was supposed to represent. I had to be more if I was to ever come close to standing in for my brother. Especially as I no longer had a brother to stand beside me.

  At far too young an age, my father thrust the entire weight of the kingdom upon me, and even though my shoulders were growing broad enough to carry the load, it was an inconceivable burden for so young a mind to bear.

  “Delphe is the hub in the wheel of the realms,” he would tell me, “the other kingdoms are mere spokes. If we do not hold the center together, then all of us fall.”

  I thought every swordfight won, each correctly labeled map, every sharp pant crease, each properly used spoon was the key to the kingdom’s prosperity and stability. Were I to fall short of anything, anything at all, I was sure my parents’ hearts would be irreparably broken once more. I truly believed, with an intensity beyond what my young mind could safely hold, that any mistake on my part would chip and bruise the kingdom, and doom the others to spin out of control along with it.

  I became just as critical of myself as Father was, though I was but a child simply following the lead of those older and, mistakenly assumed, wiser than I. If I was too hard on myself, it’s only because that’s what I was taught to be. Despite my progress, even as I grew taller than Father, I felt small and worthless. Despite my strength, even on the day I finally bested Sir Garamond, I felt useless and weak. Despite my intellect, my skills, I felt I had little to offer. No matter what I did, how great or wise, I would never, could never, be Adlard. And this, more than anything, haunted me. I ducked and skittered, howled and raged against the darkness it created within me, even as I struggled to identify it for what it was becoming.

  And
Mother, well, Mother never interfered with Father’s treatment of me. Maybe she feared being the object of his anger if she did. Maybe they agreed he was entirely responsible for training his future heir. Maybe she didn’t think I was worth standing up for, which made me think the same of myself.

  What Father least understood was that each time he demanded more instead of allowing that I was enough, that I could be a good ruler in my own way, I battled between becoming a docile, battered son who only ever said yes—a poor trait for a future king—and someone angry enough to roar back. During the years I still held myself in check, each withheld praise, each lack of encouragement dangerously rattled the bars of a slumbering beast’s cage.

  I dreaded speaking with Father, dreaded every tutor and every test. I felt unreasonable levels of shame and embarrassment each time I was wrong.

  “Why must you be so difficult?” Sir Garamond growled at me one day, the only one to ever confront me on the nature of my behavior.

  “I don’t intend to be difficult!” I snapped back.

  “Well, you weren’t always,” he retorted. “Just go back to being how you were.”

  I glared at him. “Nobody wants who I was,” I said through clenched teeth. “They want Adlard.”

  “Now—” Sir Garamond tried to protest.

  “This conversation is over.”

  I realize now how I was suffocated by desperation, by expectations, by standards that couldn’t be reached, so much so that I sometimes struggled to breathe. Eventually, my obedience chipped away and I started pushing back, lashing out in a vain attempt to shatter the walls pressing in closer and closer each day.