Maybe, during our time apart, I started to believe it wasn’t true. Maybe I thought it would hurt less if I gave up on a silly childhood dream. Maybe it would be better for both of us, in the long run, if we weren’t meant to be. Afterall, the trauma we went through scarred us both.
I’ve never been so wrong before.
Because now, with his breathing deep and even as he drifts off, I know he was meant for me.
Every time he touched me, it was like discovering something I’d always craved but could never name. I wouldn’t have known how to ask anyone else for the things Hansel gave me tonight, and I didn’t have to ask for any of it.
He already knew what I needed.
He already knew me.
The fire burns a little lower, and I watch the light from the other room while I stare at a resting Hansel remembering what he said.
You’re mine. Nobody else’s. I’m going to make you mine.
It makes my heart race to think of those words, but what if he feels differently when he wakes up? What if he sees the cottage around us and remembers the fate I led him to?
Can one night together make up for how he was tortured?
A voice in the back of my mind whispers that it can’t. That a hundred nights together couldn’t make up for what Hansel went through. That one day, he’ll look at me the way he has for years—with resentment in his eyes.
That day isn’t here yet, I remind myself. Tomorrow isn’t even here yet. For now, he’s asleep, and I’m?—
I shift under the blanket, letting what happened tonight seep back into me.
I’ve never come so hard. There have been times, alone in my bed, that I touched myself. None of those times compare at all to what I felt tonight. It’s almost impossible to believe that the world could be so bleak outside when Hansel made me feel so good.
I curl my toes, remembering, then relax them again.
This is the kind of feeling people wait their whole lives for. People dream about this. They hope someone will want them enough to overwhelm them with pleasure until it’s more than they’ve ever experienced, and then give them more on top of it.
Gods, that was good.
So good. Sleep threatens to take me but I resist. I don’t want to sleep and leave this moment. I find myself drifting, being dragged back in time and I protest.
The firelight is warm just to watch. There wasn’t any witch in the cottage, or any ash in the oven.
Maybe…
Maybe the fire in the hearth isn’t a bad thing. The village has been so long without any good magic that I started to think it had disappeared from the world. But a fire in a cold cottage, warming us up?
How could that be bad?
Another memory from that night with the witch comes back to me. What was it she said?
Come in and rest, children. Have something to eat. You must be so hungry.
She’d had something in her hands. Biscuits? Cookies, maybe? Something sweet. I got a whiff of it when we were still on her doorstep, and my mouth watered. I’m sure Hansel’s did, too. He always had such a sweet tooth, and sugar has always been expensive, and?—
We’d been out on an adventure for two days, and we hadn’t packed enough food.
But if any witch was going to seduce us into staying overnight in the cottage, why would she have let us linger so long? Why wouldn’t she have taken revenge the moment we stepped through the door?
I freeze, going still. Fear paralyzes my lungs and I can’t breathe.
The witch let us linger… is she doing that now?
Is she outside the door right now? Was she only waiting until we were unarmed and distracted?
