Something is happening, something bad is coming, and the boy can feel fear in the air.
The atmosphere throughout the castle is heavy. Oppressive. The boy likes that word. He enjoys big words, likes the feel of them in his mouth. He likes to know things; he likes the way the king laughs in surprise when he shows off a new word. When the king claps him on the back and says "well done," he feels happy and proud, like he belongs to something. Almost like part of a family again, something he hasn't felt since his brother died.
He knows he is lucky; not many orphan boys are allowed to share a tutor with a princess, and Master Jiminy has much to teach despite being a cricket. He never makes the boy feel like he's different or less important than his royal classmate.
But even the teacher won't tell him what's going on now.
He is only 8 years old, trusted to keep pots and pans clean in the kitchens but not to hear the truth. ("Let the adults worry about it," he is told.) His small size, though, means he can slip among the adults in the castle and pick up bits and pieces on his own. The Evil Queen, Regina, plans to cast a curse on them all. She wants to take away their happiness. There is something about the little princess, too, but the details aren't clear.
The whispers make him afraid. He doesn't want anything to happen to the girl. She is his friend, and she never treats him as though she's better than he is, even though he knows she is. She is only 6, a pretty girl with long golden curls who would rather climb a tree than have a tea party. She likes to play sword fighting with him and go on pretend adventures in the castle and the gardens outside. Once, they climb the tallest tree in the gardens and pretend it is a beanstalk. After they have an epic battle with an imaginary giant, she tells him that when they are older, her father will teach them both real sword fighting and they can go on real adventures together.
They've been forbidden to go outside now, so they are in the princess's playroom, clashing wooden swords together, when the king and queen rush in. The queen is dressed as he's never seen her, in pants and a tunic with her long, dark hair tied back. She carries a bow and has a quiver of arrows on her back and a long knife at her waist.
"You take her to the wardrobe," the queen says. "I'll hold them off."
The king turns to them, studying the boy with serious eyes. "I'll take them both."
He turns back to his queen, and the boy has the peculiar idea that they are having a conversation without words. After a moment, the woman nods and touches her hand to the king's face. She kneels down and takes off the pendant she always wears — a flower of gold with an emerald at the center— and clasps it around her daughter's neck. She pulls the crying girl into a tight hug, whispering something the boy can't hear. Then she does the same with him, making him blush.
"Come back to us," she whispers to him. "Take care of each other."
She stands, and the king embraces her, kissing her hard enough to make the boy blush again. Then the queen is gone, and his hand finds the princess's as they are made to follow the king down the hall.
The boy hears loud noises that he now realizes are the sounds of fighting. Down each hall they pass, the kingdom's knights are battling black-clad soldiers — the Evil Queen's men.
The king easily takes out several of these soldiers; still, the boy's hand tightens on the wooden sword he still holds as he readies to attack if necessary.
The futility of such a fight doesn't even occur to him.
They reach a room at the end of the hall just as five enemy soldiers attack. The king pushes the children into the room, slicing his sword toward the soldiers in a deadly dance. The boy is amazed at how fast, how well the man fights, that even against such numbers he is easily winning.
The king doesn't see a sixth coming up behind him, and the boy and girl yell at the same time to warn him. The boy wrenches his hand from hers and jumps forward, striking the soldier hard on the arm with his wooden sword as the king turns. Unfortunately, the arm closest to him is not the man's sword arm, and though the soldier is unbalanced by the attack, his blade still sinks into the king's abdomen.
Everything seems to slow, then. The boy sees the blood (he's never seen so much blood; he thinks he might be sick) and doesn't notice right away that the king is bringing up his own sword, plunging it into the black-clad soldier's chest. As that man falls, his blade is pulled from the king, and there is even more blood. The princess is screaming and hugging her father, and her green dress is marred by splotches of red. The boy feels helpless; he has no idea what to do.
The king tries to speak, motioning him closer. The man points behind them at a wooden wardrobe in the center of the room, a small door set in the front.
"Killian," he says faintly. "Take Emma. Wardrobe. You'll be in … a new world. She can break the curse. Keep … safe."
The boy freezes for a moment, then he sees a group of enemy soldiers coming their way, a wall of black, and pulls on the princess's arm.
"We have to go," he says.
She ignores him, and he yanks harder, pulling her away from her father, who's now still on the floor.
"Move!" he orders, and she obeys, tears streaming down her face.
He throws open the door to the wardrobe and pushes her in, folding himself into the tight space with her.
"Papa!" she yells, reaching for the door before he shuts it with a snap and they're swallowed by darkness.
Killian Jones awoke with a gasp, sitting straight up in bed. His heart pounded as he tried to catch his breath, clutching at his chest.
That damned dream.
He fell back, wincing at the sweat-soaked sheets under him, and turned to the clock. Only a few minutes to five. He knew from long experience that he'd not get back to sleep anyway, so he pushed out of bed and stripped off his sleep pants and underwear on his way to the shower.
He stayed a long time under the hot spray, letting the water wash away the remnants of the dream. Each time he had it, he remembered more of it and it seemed to linger longer in his mind.
He'd had it off-and-on for five years now, since the first time he'd taken a special job from an outfit labeling itself the Home Office.
He'd only met two of their people, a woman named Tamara and her partner, Greg, and they seemed to know next to nothing about him. They knew him only as Sam Bellamy, and mostly they communicated with him through the Internet. That was the way he liked it.
He'd early on started taking the names of pirates as his aliases; the police never caught on, but a reporter following his case had spotted the pattern years ago. She'd nicknamed him Hook, after one of the most famous fictional pirates — and one of the pirate names he'd never actually used. Still, the mystery surrounding him was amusing — and useful. His reputation depended on nobody knowing who Killian Jones was — not the clients, not the marks, not the women that he often used as a cover for his covert activities.
Killian was never one to believe in magic, or anything he couldn't see, touch or take for himself, but he couldn't deny the jolt he'd felt upon touching the first item the Home Office asked him to acquire.
It was just a rock, at least on the surface; it fit nicely in his palm and almost seemed to hum as it changed color, like a mood ring. He knew going in that it was more than it appeared for the simple reason that the client was willing to pay half a million dollars for him to retrieve it from a safe at a private home in Venice. He'd charmed his way into an exclusive party by way of a lovely young widow and had been in and out of the safe before midnight, leaving no evidence behind him.
But there was something about the rock.
Magic, Tamara had told him. He was still skeptical, though he couldn't forget the way the rock had felt, almost alive in his palm. And though a part of him wanted to refuse any more work from this Home Office, they paid very well. Though he had more money than he could spend now, the part of him that remembered being broke and hungry still had a hard time turning away from a huge payday.
Almost as much of a draw was the thrill of the job. Many of the "artifacts" they wanted him to steal were nearly impossible to get to, which is why they needed him. And Killian Jones did love a challenge.
Unfortunately, it was like the special artifacts sparked something within him. At first the dream happened sporadically. Once every few months became once a month. Then it was once a week. Lately, it had progressed to several times a week. It almost seemed like a countdown, a warning that something was drawing near, and he very much did not want to know what it was.
He wondered sometimes if the dream was a bit of memory, twisted somehow by years of reading too much fantasy literature. He was an orphan, and an accident at 8 years old had robbed him of his past. Apparently there wasn't much of interest to remember, anyway. Nobody had ever claimed him, and he'd learned to fend for himself, running away from the foster care system at 15. He was handy at thievery, and despite a rough time the first few years on his own, he'd become quite adept at using his less legal skills to make an excellent living.
He'd had the feeling lately that his luck was about to run out. Maybe it was the dream. Maybe he needed a vacation. Or maybe he was just losing it. But he felt that it might be time to move on from Manhattan, to start somewhere fresh, perhaps back to Europe for a few years. And it was definitely time to cut his ties with the Home Office. He'd made quite a lot of money off them, true, but something about their organization seemed off to him. The twin lures of a big paycheck and bigger challenge were enough to drown out his doubts for a while, but his instincts were all but screaming at him now to stay away.
So naturally, when he'd dried off, pulled on a worn pair of jeans and settled in front of his computer, the first message he saw was from Tamara.
The Home Office had another job for him, and she wanted to meet.
He rubbed his hand over his face, considering. He couldn't help the rush he got at the thought of another next-to-impossible job, but his gut was telling him that this Home Office was shady as hell and couldn't be trusted.
Finally he typed up a quick response, letting her know he was too busy for another job right now.
She must have been waiting, because he hadn't even had time to open another email before she responded.
The subject line said "$5 MILLION."
He hovered his cursor over the email, staring at the "$5 million." The most any of their jobs had paid was $2 million, and he never even saw what that artifact was, as the owner had kept it in a locked wooden box. He could easily have picked the lock, of course, but some instinct had kept him from doing so. What, he wondered, would tempt them to offer so much?
Cursing under his breath, he opened the email. There were no words, only a photo. It showed a stunning blonde, wearing a low-cut white dress. As gorgeous as she was, his attention was immediately drawn to the gold and emerald flower pendant around her neck.
It was the necklace from his dream.
Every Starbucks was the same, no matter the city. Tucked into a table in the corner, Killian felt like he could be anywhere. He should, he knew, be anywhere but here. He should delete Tamara's email and close that account, should pack up the few belongings that meant anything to him and take off, find a new place.
But since he'd seen the necklace, there was no chance he wouldn't take the job. He had questions, and he wanted answers. Who was the blonde, and why was he dreaming of her necklace? Was there some connection between the two of them?
He sipped his cafe mocha and waited for Tamara to show. The shop was crowded with people on their way to work; except for a few glances from women, nobody even noticed him sitting there. He was just another guy in worn jeans and a black T-shirt, eyes glued to his smartphone, seemingly ignoring the world around him.
He finally looked up from his phone when Tamara slid into the seat across from him, smiling brightly. "Sam! It's great to see you," she said.
He smirked. Tamara was a beautiful woman, and she'd made it clear in the past that she wouldn't be opposed to mixing business with pleasure, but his instincts told him from the start that that would be a mistake. "I'm sure it is, love. Unfortunately, I'm in a bit of a rush."
Her smile dimmed, and she was clearly biting back an annoyed response. Killian mentally added that to his list of reasons to be suspicious. He never trusted a person who was afraid to speak his or her mind.
On the other hand, he rarely trusted anyone, so perhaps he was being a little hard on the woman.
With an annoyed sigh, she pulled an envelope out of her bag, sliding it across the table, slipping a flash drive underneath it at the same time.
He palmed the flash drive, stuffing it in his pocket before opening the envelope. It was an invitation to a gala to raise money for a children's hospital in Boston.
"A fund-raiser?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "I am, of course, a model of philanthropy, but a party is hardly my highest priority right now."
"The blonde, Emma Swan, will be there," she said in a low voice. "And most likely, she'll be wearing a very lovely necklace that my employers are interested in."
He nodded, tapping his fingers lightly on the invitation. Her employers weren't the only ones interested in that necklace. Or the blonde. He slid the invitation back into the envelope and took a last sip of his coffee. Saluting her with the cup, he stood. "A pleasure as always, Tamara. I'll be in touch."
Back home, he made a beeline for his secure laptop, impatiently sliding the flash drive home.
It was time to find out everything he could on one Emma Swan.
Skimming the file, he hit the highlights. Single, 27, Boston native. Mother of one boy. Works as a security expert at her father's company.
Killian laughed shortly, feeling the blood rush set in. They wanted him to steal a necklace, worn by a security expert in a crowded ballroom full of VIPs.
Sounded exactly like his kind of job.