Through our strange connection, I sensed their suffering more clearly than ever before. The curse that trapped them in these forms was only part of it. They existed in a kind of half-world, neither fully in the physical realm nor completely separate from it like death would have done. The death I smelled now rolling through with the decay. A hell dimension, a human purgatory, as I’d come to understand Gaspard’s curse as. A prison crafted by the Dark Lord’s mage specifically to torment them in a suffering land.
And yet, seeing them alive—seeing them recognize me, respond to me—filled me with a fierce joy that warred with my sadness. They lived. They endured. And soon, I would return them to our world.
“Just a little longer,” I said, wiping tears from my face. “Hold on just a little longer for me.”
Bastien’s sorrowful eyes held mine with an intensity that transcended words. In that gaze, I read everything he couldn’t say. Faith, longing, determination, and something else that made my heart beat faster, something I wasn’t ready to name even in the safety of this dream.
The barrier between us rippled suddenly, the edges of my vision beginning to blur. Our connection was weakening, the dream fading. Panic surged through me. I wasn’t ready to leave them, not yet, not when I’d only just found them again.
“No,” I gasped, pressing harder against the barrier as if I could force my way through by sheer will. “Please, just a little longer.”
Marcel placed both massive paws against the barrier, his rumble turning urgent. Laurent threw back his head in what I knew would be a howl, though no sound reached me through the fading connection. Bastien paced anxiously, his tail lashing more violently now, his eyes never leaving mine.
“I’ll find you,” I promised as the dream dissolved around me, their forms growing fainter with each heartbeat. “Wait for me. I’m heading home, then I’m coming to find you.”
The last thing I saw before the dream shattered completely was all three of them pressing against the barrier, their bodies forming a living wall of fur and muscle and desperate longing that mirrored the ache in my own chest. They were like dogs begging to be inside, desperately trying to escape the cold. Then darkness swallowed everything, and I was falling, falling back into my body beneath the bridge.
I gasped awake with the feeling of falling, my body jerking violently against the hard ground beneath the bridge. Dawn light filtered through the arch, painting the underside of the stone with pale golden streaks. For a moment, I couldn’t reconcile the cold reality around me with the vivid connection I’d just experienced.
“The stone,” I whispered, fumbling at my pocket. My fingers closed around the amber artifact, its surface unnaturally warm despite the morning chill. It pulsed once against my palm, a heartbeat echo of the connection I’d felt in my dream.
Not a dream. A visitation. A bridging of realities.
I sat up, wincing as my muscles protested the movement. The hard ground had done my already-sore body no favors, and the dampness had seeped into my bones overnight. The mare stood nearby, grazing on tufts of grass that sprouted between the stones. She lifted her head as I stirred, regarding me with calmeyes that revealed nothing of the urgency thrumming through my veins.
The raven still perched on its rock, preening its glossy feathers in the early light. It paused its grooming to fix me with an intelligent stare, as if asking what had taken me so long to wake.
“They’re alive,” I told it, needing to speak the truth aloud to someone, even if only a bird. “I saw them. Spoke to them. Well, kind of. But they’re trapped behind some kind of barrier I cannot penetrate completely.”
I staggered to my feet, my mind racing with implications. The claiming mark on my shoulder tingled, more pronounced than it had been since the day Bastien’s teeth broke my skin. The connection between us wasn’t just magical symbolism or ritual binding. It was a literal tether between worlds. And the stone had somehow amplified it, allowing me to see across the veil that separated us.
But that barrier had been solid, impenetrable. My princes weren’t just cursed into beast forms. They were now imprisoned in some parallel dimension that overlapped with our own but remained separate. The Dark Lord’s magic was more complex than I’d realized, the curse layered with protections I barely understood.
“A different reality,” I murmured, rolling the stone between my fingers. “They’re there, but not there. I could feel death near them, but they were not dead. Is that a clue?”
The mare wandered closer, nudging my shoulder with her soft muzzle. I absently stroked her neck while my thoughts tumbled over one another. I needed to reach the forest castle. Not just for the emotional reunion I craved, but because somewhere in that ancient library might lie the key to reaching across dimensions, to freeing my beasts from their prison.
A sudden chill that had nothing to do with the morning air skittered down my spine. I turned sharply, scanning thelandscape beyond the bridge. Nothing moved except tall grasses bending in the light breeze. Yet the sensation persisted. A prickling awareness of pursuit, of danger drawing closer.
“Gaspard,” I whispered, the name like poison on my tongue.
I didn’t need to see him to know he was coming. Perhaps it was another manifestation of my emerging magic, this intuitive knowledge. Or perhaps it was simply the intimate understanding of a predator that came from having been his prey. Either way, I knew with bone-deep certainty that he had already begun hunting me, probably setting out at first light.
“We need to go,” I told the mare, quickly gathering my meager belongings. The raven took flight, circling once overhead before settling on a branch of a nearby tree, watching as I worked.
I saddled the mare with hands that moved more surely than they had the night before. The brief rest, despite its discomfort, had restored some of my strength. Or perhaps it was the connection with my beasts that had renewed me, reminding me exactly what and who I was fighting for.
As I tightened the girth strap, I mentally calculated my route. The forest castle lay deep within the Forbidden Woods, past the clearing where I’d first encountered the darkness molting the greenery, beyond the tree ruins where I’d sliced my feet during my initial escape from Thorndale. I knew the path better than most living souls, having traversed it twice now. But knowledge wasn’t protection against the forest’s many dangers, and I was entering from a new location.
Still, I had advantages Gaspard lacked. The raven guide. The stone’s power. My own magic, growing stronger each day despite my attempts to hide it from the world. And most importantly, I had allies waiting for me, the animals on the sacred acre.
“I need to find a book on the Dark Lord’s minions,” I muttered, more to organize my thoughts than to inform my animal companions. “There must be records in the castle library,information about how the curse works, how the dimensions connect.”
I’d spent a couple weeks in that library during my previous stay, but I’d focused then on understanding my own emerging powers, on learning about the forest’s history. I hadn’t thought to search for information about the Dark Lord’s servants. I now had the sorceress Enid’s name, who’d cursed my princes in the first place.
I mounted the mare, adjusting my cloak to better cover my distinctive auburn hair. The raven took flight again, sweeping low over the path ahead before circling back, clearly impatient for me to follow.
“Coming, friend,” I told it, gathering the reins. “Lead on.”
