The raven hopped down from the bridge, settling on a rock near my improvised camp. Its dark eyes watched me with an intelligence that felt ancient, knowing.
“How is the castle?” I asked it softly. “The animals? Are the beasts suffering without me? Do you feel them too?”
The claiming mark on my shoulder throbbed in response, a phantom pain that had become my constant companion. The bite marks. They were a tether, pulling me back to below the castle’s earth where three cursed men waited in bodies not their own, trapped in a hell dimension I barely understood.
I touched the stone in my pocket, the amber artifact the raven had brought me in my tower prison. Its warmth spread through my fingers, a comforting contrast to the chill air settling around us. Whatever magic it contained had helped me escape. Well, I believed it did from the timing of the raven’s return. Perhaps it would help me save them too.
The raven didn’t answer, knowing I’d have to discover much with its help. I pet the head of it, wishing I could know more about the little friend who had bonded to my beasts and myself.
“One day, I hope to know you too,” I whispered, a yawn finding my tired body.
Night fell completely, the darkness beneath the bridge becoming absolute save for a sliver of starlight reflected on the river’s surface. I curled onto my side, using the satchel as a pillow, a dagger Brigida supplied clutched loosely in one hand. The mare settled nearby, her large body blocking part of the opening, providing both warmth and an early warning system should anyone approach.
The raven remained on its perch, a sentinel whose eyes saw better in darkness than any human’s could. I felt safer with it watching over me, thoughsafewas a relative term now. Somewhere behind us, in a white castle I’d briefly called sanctuary, men were planning my capture. My execution.
Sleep tugged at my consciousness, my exhausted body demanding rest despite my racing mind. Tomorrow would bring me back to the Forbidden Forest, back to the castle where my beasts awaited. I needed strength for what lay ahead.
“Just until dawn,” I murmured to myself, letting my eyes close at last. “Then we find our way home.”
Home.The word tasted strange on my tongue. Not my father’s cottage in Thorndale. Not Gaspard’s mansion where I’d been prisoner. Not Alain’s castle with its gilded comforts.
Home was where three cursed princes once lived. Where I belonged, whether by choice or fate or magic’s decree. And I would return to them, no matter what stood in my way.
The amber stone pulsed once against my hip, as if in agreement, as I surrendered to exhaustion.
Sleep claimed me like a starving predator, dragging me down into depths I hadn’t expected. This wasn’t ordinary exhaustion-fueled unconsciousness but something deeper, more purposeful. The amber stone heated against my hip, its warmth spreading through my body in pulsing waves that seemed to pull my spirit from my flesh. I floated, untethered from my physical form beneath the bridge, drawn toward something, someone, calling to me from behind the veil between worlds. Though, it wasn’t English, but I understood the call to me personally.
The darkness behind my eyelids gave way to a strange half-light, neither day nor night but something in between. I stood in what appeared to be the great hall of the forest castle, yet not quite. The edges were blurred, the colors muted as if viewed through water. Before me stretched a transparent wall, shimmering like heat rising from summer stones, separating me from the other side of the hall.
And there they were. My beasts. My princes.
Marcel appeared first, his massive form emerging from shadows on the other side of the barrier. My breath caught at the sight of him. The largest of the three, his bear-like body covered in thick honey fur, amber eyes so like my own gleaming with recognition as he spotted me. Those eyes—human eyes in a beast’s face—had haunted my dreams since the day I’d left.
“Marcel,” I whispered, moving toward the barrier with my hand outstretched.
He approached from his side, each ponderous step deliberate, careful, as if afraid sudden movements might shatter our connection. When he reached the wall, he raised his enormous paw, pressing it against the barrier where my hand rested on my side. The size difference was almost comical. My small human hand was dwarfed by his massive clawed appendage. Yet I felt the connection between us pulse with each heartbeat, the claiming mark on my shoulder warming in response.
Movement to Marcel’s right caught my attention as Laurent emerged, his wolf-like form slinking forward with the predatory grace I remembered so well. Smaller than Marcel but no less powerful, his silver-brown fur rippled over lean muscle as he approached. Those intelligent eyes I’d learned each night found mine instantly, his muzzle lifting in what I’d learned to recognize as his version of a smile.
And then Bastien. My fierce, protective lion-beast, padded forward to join them. Darker fur gleamed despite the dream’s muted light, his mane fuller than I remembered. Had it grown in my absence? His tail lashed behind him, betraying the emotion his proud posture tried to disguise. He was always closer to his animal than his brothers.
“I’ve missed you,” I said, knowing they could hear me despite the barrier. “All of you.”
They stood side by side now, three monstrous forms that should have terrified me but instead filled my chest with something dangerously close to homecoming. These weren’t the men they’d once been. Princes cursed into bestial forms, but neither were they the mindless monsters Gaspard believed haunted the Forbidden Forest. They were something in between, trapped in bodies that didn’t match their souls, just as I’d been trapped in circumstances beyond my control for most of my life as a woman, a woman who liked learning in a world that told her not to.
I pressed both hands against the barrier now, tears blurring my vision as emotions I’d suppressed for weeks came flooding back. How long had it been since I’d truly felt safe? Not in Alain’s castle, certainly not. That had been another kind of cage, gilded but confining nonetheless. No, the last time I’d felt truly seen, truly accepted, had been with these three beings who knew exactly what it meant to be feared for what you were rather than loved for who you were.
“I will save you,” I mouthed, the words emerging as barely more than breath. “I swear it.”
All three beasts bowed their heads in perfect unison, a gesture of trust that made fresh tears spill down my cheeks. They believed me. After everything—after my failure to return sooner, after leaving them suffering in their cursed state in a hell I couldn’t reach—they still believed I would free them.
Though, something bled through the barrier. A rank smell of decay and horrors, spiking my own on behalf of them. Why would their place of torment smell of death and sorrow?
Bastien moved closer to the barrier, his massive feline head level with my face. With deliberate gentleness he never could carry in the castle, he extended his tongue and licked the barrier exactly where my cheek would be if the wall hadn’t existed between us. The gesture was so familiar, so reminiscent of the comfort he’d offered that a sob escaped me.
“I’m coming back,” I promised, pressing my forehead against the barrier where his muzzle rested. “I’ve learned things, about my power, about what I am. I’ll find a way to break the curse.”
Marcel rumbled low in his chest, the sound vibrating through the barrier despite its solidity. I’d come to recognize this as his way of offering reassurance. Laurent sat back on his haunches, his keen eyes never leaving my face, studying me as if memorizing every detail to sustain him through however many more days of separation awaited. Giving me his undividedattention in the way only he knew how, and I loved him more for it.
