Page 29 of Return of the Nutcracker Prince

“Godfather!”His left eye, the one he always covered with a patch, was bare.And it was violet, just as the Sugar Plum Fairy had told her!Her mouth hung open as she gawked.

Ludwig Drosselmeyer slid into his seat, his quirky mouth in a lopsided smile.“Surprised?”

“I’m stunned.Why didn’t you ever say anything about this place?”

He lifted a glass of water and hummed.“If I’d known you’d inherit her powers, I would have.But as much as you deserved to know your heritage, I was afraid of you telling your family about it.She made me promise not to tell her husband or her son; she worried others might persecute them.”

“Who?”

“Your grandmother.”

Clara’s brow wrinkled.“But she’s been gone a long time.”She’d never even met her father’s mother; she’d died when he was still a child.

“Yes, so sad.Without access to our Healers, she couldn’t survive consumption.And she refused to go home.”

“Home?”

Klaus was leaning around her, listening intently to Godfather Drosselmeyer.“Uncle, what are you saying?”

Ludwig sighed and nodded to the servant who lay down their first course.“Children, let me tell you a story.”

Chapter 9

Drosselmeyer’sstory

Blue skies and birdsong greeted Ludwig on the other side of the portal.Spring had come to the Realm of Waking.In the woods surrounding their usual destination, he held the portal open until Marie stepped through.

“Thank you, Ludwig.”She smiled at him, his heart beating fast.

“Of course, dear friend.”

His pocket watch tucked safely away, Ludwig gallantly held an arm out for her, but Marie ignored it.Friends.That was all she’d ever let them be.He’d be smart to remember that.Her blonde hair seemed to glisten brighter in the strange yellow sun than it ever did back home.

Marie carried a basket of fruit on her arm, dressed in a gown that he’d tinkered to mimic the current fashions of the Realm of Waking.Together, they walked to the market in the square.Bringing her here went against the previous Sugar Plum Fairy’s orders of leaving the veil closed.But his niece-in-law had just ascended to the throne, and there was no explicit law against portal travel.Only revealing themselves and the Realm of Dreams would get him into actual trouble.

Every week Marie shed her identity as the preeminent Caster, set to take over as head mage, to don the identity of a mysterious fruit seller.She’d arrive in the Realm of Waking with rare delicacies she’d only barter.Which had led to her infatuation with a certain human.

Gunther Stahlbaum.

A member of the Realm of Waking’s minor nobility, Stahlbaum had made a name for himself as a merchant which led to his title granted by the leader of this region.Ludwig believed the man’s name to be Kaiser, but he couldn’t be certain.He didn’t pay attention to this realm like Marie did.

Speaking of the devil….

“Good morning, sweet Marie.”

“Gunther!”

Every week Ludwig wondered to himself why he continued enabling her.And every week, he remembered why when she saw Gunther.Somehow, the man made her glow like a star.

“Ludwig, how are you?”

“I’m well, and yourself?”Her story painting them as siblings had wrenched a knife in his heart.The man in front of him did not know they were in fact competing for Marie’s love.

Ludwig knew who the winner was.He just hadn’t accepted it yet.

She had explained away his eyepatch as the result of a bandit attack that had killed their parents.Which, as her “only surviving relative,” forced him to chaperone the two lovebirds on their weekly date.He’d watched the other man court the woman he loved for far too long.

And today it came to a head.

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