Queen Mab by Kate Danley

Author:Kate Danley [Danley, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juliet, retelling, Leonardo DiCaprio, Romeo and Juliet, Romeo, R&J, romance, love story, Fantasy, shakespeare, Mab, Mercutio, Franco Zeffirelli, movie, Queen Mab
Published: 2014-01-13T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

Mab gripped the railing of her balcony and looked out upon her sprawling land. At night, it teased of the warmth and green always beyond her touch. Inside her home, it was so cold and dark, such a strange contrast to the feelings which coursed through her tonight.

Her heart had fought a war over the century to stay as cold as the inner shadows of her retreat, but now with each moment that she breathed with this taste of kindness upon her tongue - one breath was the world, another began the world anew.

Her mind was awash in the nevers and forevers she had promised herself, which now knocked gently at her door. To love a mortal... to open her heart to one who had already aged from a child to a man and soon to a wrinkled creature of skin and bone who would fade into nothing but a memory until he was forgotten. One generation, perhaps two, and all who held him in their mind would be gone and she would be left alone night after night, remembering the way his pulse pounded in his veins whenever she drew close. Nothing more.

This was the fate of love. She had seen finer, stronger faeries than she fade to mere shadows due to the intoxicating power of a mortal's affection. Even Queen Titania, mourning the loss of her changling, fell so far on a midsummer's eve as to love an ass. Such was the price of vulnerability.

Mab looked at her domain and wondered if it was worth sacrificing everything for this, her Mercutio. Her traitorous heart told her yes.

"Oh, what a man is this," she whispered, "He who can turn my thoughts and turn my head, and in doing so, turn this world upside down. Such a strange creature, made of flesh and blood which will grow old with age, which will fade and decay like the sunset. Perhaps for a moment, we will have the brilliant swaths of orange and gold and red passion painted across the sky. But always the dark creeps over the horizon. How can I love knowing that one day the morning will never come again? Illusions of real and imaginary... Are the worlds I paint not just as fine as the world I look upon? Finer still, I say!"

"But no world as fine as the ones we shared in those dreams of own making," said a voice from far below.

Mab looked down from her balcony. In the moonlight was the raven-haired man with the eyes of ocean green her heart longed for.

"How long have you been standing there?" she asked.

"Long enough to hear, long enough to remember. Each exquisite word was like a drop of water upon a man's parched tongue, a balm upon a heart that was broken by a foolish woman's unkindness."

"I never meant to be unkind," Queen Mab whispered.

"Of all that was and ever will be in my life, I know," said Mercutio. "Indeed, you were the first taste of

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