I inched closer to the bear. Bylur. My husband. “Will you? It… would make me happy.” I bit my lip. Was that pushing him too far? Only moments after he promised to do everything he could to make me safe and happy? A prickle of guilt flickered in my chest. Abigail had called the fae manipulative, but I was willing to say anything to help my bird.
A spiralled horn materialized on top of Bylur’s head. He stepped back and touched the tip of his horn to Rat’s still body, clutched between my arm and my chest. Light and shadows shimmered around the bird, visible spirals of magic wrapping him in layers of blues and blacks.
After a few seconds, the magic faded and Rat stretched a wing. I blinked back tears as he wobbled into an upright perch on my arm and stretched hisother wing. He was alive and awake. He clambered up my arm and squawked in my ear. A laugh burst out of me, and I covered my mouth with a hand. He was going to be fine.
I sniffed up the rest of my emotions. “Thank you, Bylur. Should I get on your back again?”
The bear nodded, and I clambered up much faster with both my hands free. Once I situated myself, he called up as softly as he was capable. “Hold on.”
* * *
Bylur lumbered to the back of the park and stepped under a tree with leaves as big as my face. All the light was snuffed out in an instant. I gasped, clutching my hands to my heart. I couldn’t breathe in the dark, couldn’t think—
And then it was over. The blackness faded away to a dim twilight. We stood on a mountain trail with a steep drop off on my left and dark paths in front of us. I leaned forward, pressing my body closer to Bylur’s back and hoping he didn’t intend to flinch and throw me off the cliff.
I shivered at the thought of a dark fall. Bylur wouldn’t do that. He’d promised to keep me safe.
His deep, slow voice broke through the night air. “Are you… concerned about something?”
“No, I… I’m fine.” No fear. “I’d just like to keep moving.”
A low growl vibrated through his back, but he started walking forward. After a few seconds, he spoke again. “You do not have to lie to me. I will keep my vows.”
The trail narrowed and the edge of the cliff loomed closer. I flattened myself to his back and closed my eyes. His fur smelled like the forest with a hint of ink. I was sure I smelled ink this time. I shook my head, throwing off the distracting scent and focusing on his words again. I’d promised to break his curse, not tell him my deepest fears. That required trust, and I didn’t trust people. Or bears.
He didn’t say anything about the way I clutched his fur and pressed my body against him. Maybe he guessed that I was nervous. Or maybe he was starting to regret the hasty decision we’d made.
“Can you hear me if I speak while your head is buried in my fur?”
Well, cancel that. He did comment on my change in position. Sort of. “Yes,” I answered.
He kept walking. “I need to tell you the rest of the details about the curse.”
Right. I needed to hear that. But his voice was loud enough that I’d hear him even if I covered my ears with my palms. And maybe it would distract me from the mountain we were walking along. “That sounds good,” I said.
“The Queen of Kerebos wanted to marry me,” he explained. “We are in the winter kingdom of Kalshana, and Kerebos is the winter kingdom nearest us. I tried tosend her home, but she refused to leave. In a hasty decision, I tried to force her to leave with magic. She managed to harness the magic and throw it back at me, with her own conditions.”
I already had questions. “Are her conditions the curse? And how did you try to force her to leave with magic? How did she throw it back? Is—”
He cut me off with a growl. “Too many questions we do not have time for. Yes, the conditions are the curse. A curse is simply a magic attack that can only be thwarted with specific conditions.”
I got the distinct impression that if I had grown up with the fae I would not have nearly so many questions. But I hadn’t. “Will you… explain more when we have more time?” I could tell him it would make me happy, but I didn’t want to wear out that line. This was not necessarily the most urgent request.
“Yes,” he said. We turned a corner and the sharp drop off faded away, replaced with stony ground and lots of trees and boulders around us. “What is important tonight are the first deadlines that she thought I could not meet.”
“Oh?”
He sighed. “When she flung my magic back on me, she added her own to it, forcing me into the form of a dyrakongur, a very rare magical bear native to our kingdom’s mountains.”
I knew we were in mountains!
He kept talking. “The conditions to break the curse were meant to make me feel spurned the way she feltspurned by me. At night, when I am in my fae form, I must share my bed with a woman, but she can not look at me. If she sees my face, the magic will take me to the Queen of Kerebos and tie me to her as a slave.”
“What?!” That was as bad as the elves.
He turned another corner and spoke as if I hadn’t interrupted him. “We must continue in that arrangement, sharing a bed, but never looking at each other, for a year. Then the magic will dissipate, and I will be free of it. I had one month to begin the year, and that month ends today.”
This queen sounded horrible. I sat up straighter, my fears about falling off a mountain fading away as the cliff disappeared behind us and large stony boulders lined the path. “Let me make sure I understand this. You had one month to find someone to marry. If you didn’t find someone, then you’d remain a bear forever. If you did find someone, you couldn’t look at her for a year. If you do, then you belong to the queen? But if you do find someone, and you last a whole year without looking at each other, then her magic falls off you and everything is nuts and seeds?”
