No, his heartbeathadbeen thudding through his apron.
Hadn’t it?
But I remember a pulse on the other side of the pelt. It was just like this. It was…
My memories unravel, taking a new shape they haven’t before. Where once I recalled the feeling of my father’s secure arms picking me up from the shore and wrapping me in fur, I feel the fur first. Fur with a soft, pulsing heartbeat, two rounded ears, and four gentle paws. It held an earthy-yet-pleasant aroma so like the one I smell now. I remember its sudden departure, the thud of paws retreating back into the woods. I heard footsteps after that. Human ones. Then Father’s strong arms lifted me from the ground and pressed me to his chest. Against his paint-splattered apron.
I never considered my beloved first memory of my father had been tangled. It was strange enough that I recalled anything from when I was a baby. There was no reason to try and look deeper. All I knew was that my first experience of comfort involved fur and my father’s arms.
But all along, those had been two distinct memories.
The fur had never been a pelt. It was an animal. A bear cub.
A baby bear who lived in Dewberry the same year I was born.
The indecipherable look on Torben’s face after I told him about where I was born is starting to make sense, as is the wry grin on his lips when I said it was strange we’d never met.
Strange indeed.
Now the truth snaps into place.
My first memory of comfort isn’t of my father.
It’s of Torben.
24
TORBEN
I’ve been at Davenport Estate for three days, but only now as I stand amongst overgrown berry fields does it truly smell like home. Closing my eyes, I tilt my head back, letting the morning sun warm my face. Scents of fresh strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries, as well as several rare fae fruit varieties, fill my nostrils. I could almost pretend I’m a young boy again, standing next to my father as he takes me on a tour of our farmlands and checking in with our workers. Before Crimson Malus made him distant. Before death took him away from me.
With a heavy sigh, I open my eyes and let my momentary fantasy fall away. Grim reality takes its place. What lies around me is not the farmland of my childhood, but an unkempt expanse of brambles and thorns. Many of the berry crops may have survived being abandoned, but they’re hardly what I’d call cared for.
Despite the property’s neglect, I’m surprised to find every inch of the estate’s land intact. When Queen Tris tempted me into our bargain, promising to return Davenport Estate into my possession in exchange for my Chariot, she’d insisted that she’d neither sold nor altered the land in any way. It sounded too good to be true. Ever since, I’ve thought of ways she could have evaded the truth. I was half expecting to come here and find I’d been tricked. And yet, I’ve surveyed the land, the fields, the cottages that once housed estate staff and farmers, and have found everything just as I left it. Aside from being overrun by weeds and ivy. And being empty of people.
Guilt snags my heart when I think about everyone who found themselves suddenly unemployed after I lost the estate. If only Queen Tris had taken proper ownership of the land and kept the estate running, then at least I could release the guilt over having upended so many lives along with my own. Even if the queen had no desire to directly run the estate, she could have sold it and allowed it to continue thriving under someone else’s management. I can’t fathom why she didn’t. Then again, her decision to allow it to fall into abandoned disrepair could have been a calculated move from the start. She may have planned all along to use the estate to eventually lure me into some kind of bargain.
If that’s the case, her plan has worked. She trapped me in a bargain, tempting me with my fondness for risky bets. When I agreed to do what she asked, I thought I was only wagering my own life, my own failure, for I was so certain my target was guilty. I thought she was just a wretched girl who’d taken a father’s love for granted and murdered him in cold blood.
But I was wrong. So, so wrong.
I gambled on both of our lives. And if I lose…
I shudder, my mind filling with thoughts of Astrid. She’s been in and out of feverish sleep ever since her emotional breakdown three days ago. I’ve done my best to keep her comfortable, cooled her temperature with cold compresses, forced her to sip water during her few lucid moments. I went to town and bought her clean blankets. Aired out the room. Swept. Dusted. Did all I could to ensure she was recovering in as clean of an environment as I could provide. It’s broken my heart to see her in such a state—almost as much as witnessing my abandoned farmland has. And there lies my dilemma. Which hurts me more? Astrid or my estate?
An uncomfortable truth has plagued me the last few days, a truth I hardly dare consider too long. But no matter how I try to ignore it, the fact remains: there’s only one way I get my estate back. Only one way to earn an end to my hundred-year sentence as Huntsman and reclaim my freedom as a regular citizen.
I have to bring Astrid’s heart to her stepmother.
A flash of heat surges through me, a mixture of rage and repulsion. Shaking the prospect from my head, I turn away from the field and march back toward the manor.
I can’t turn Astrid over to her stepmother. It was easier when I was convinced Tris was innocent. Back then, I thought all I needed to do was prove Astrid was innocent too. All I’d have to do was bring evidence to the queen pointing to the true killer and present Astrid to her stepmother hale and whole. I’d fulfill our bargain—using Tris’ own wording against her by bringing Astrid, heart intact—and save Astrid’s life.
But if Tris is guilty, if she’s truly as sinister and calculated as I’m starting to believe she is, then I can’t rely on that plan. I can’t present Astrid to a queen who wants her dead. My only option is to gather enough evidence to present to the other royals on the Alpha Council. Prove Tris tried to murder her own stepdaughter and accidentally killed her husband instead. Prove she used illegal magic to compel a human girl to do her dirty work. Prove that she sent me to find her stepdaughter, all so she could murder the girl herself before anyone discovered Tris’ hidden guilt. Then I’ll clear Astrid’s name and save her life. I may save my own too. If the Alpha Council manages to condemn Tris for her crimes before my broken bargain claims my life, they could force her to revoke our pact.
But ending our bargain ends my chance at freedom too. My chance to reclaim Davenport Estate.
I clench my jaw. As desperate as I am to get my estate back, nothing is worth more than an innocent person’s life. Not just any person’s life either. Astrid’s.
