“Isabeau!” His voice cut through the forest sounds, carrying that particular tone of command that royals were born with. The one that expected immediate compliance, that had never known what it meant to be refused.
I didn’t stop. Didn’t turn. Just kept the mare moving forward, though her pace had slowed to little more than a walk. My heart hammered against my ribs, panic rising like bile in my throat. I couldn’t go back. Couldn’t face what waited for me in that white castle. Couldn’t watch Gaspard’s perfect smile as he drove the first torch into the pyre beneath my feet.
The thunder of hooves intensified, and then he was there, his black stallion easily matching my mare’s exhausted pace. Alain rode beside me, close enough that I could see the lines of fatigue etched into his face, the shadows beneath his eyes suggesting he’d ridden through the night to find me.
“Stop,” he said, not a request but an order. “Isabeau, please. You’ll kill that poor beast if you push her any further.”
I hated that he was right. The mare’s sides heaved beneath me, foam flecking her neck. Another victim of my desperation. I pulled back gently on the reins, letting her slow to a stop near the river’s edge. Not for him. For her.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, not looking at him directly. If I looked, I might falter. Might remember the man who’d read to me through fever dreams, whose voice had anchored me when poison threatened to drag me under.
Alain guided his stallion in a half-circle, positioning himself directly in my path. A deliberate blockade. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m saving you. Again.”
A bitter laugh escaped me before I could stop it. “Saving me? From what, exactly? Freedom? The chance to fulfill my purpose? Or just from making my own choices for once?”
“From being hunted like an animal,” he snapped, his composure cracking. “From being burned alive as a witch. FromGaspard Coventry, who even now leads a hunting party bent on your execution.”
I finally looked at him then, taking in the rumpled state of his clothes, the dirt smudging his usually immaculate appearance. He looked nothing like the polished prince who had stood in tournament fields accepting accolades. This man was desperate, driven, his eyes wild with something that looked dangerously like fear.
“And yet here you are,” I said softly, “hunting me all the same.”
He flinched as if I’d struck him. “That’s not—I’m trying to protect you.”
“By locking me in a tower? By doubling the guards? By declaring me yours like I’m a prize to be claimed rather than a person with my own will?” The words poured out, scalding as they left my tongue. “Tell me, Prince Alain, how is that protection any different from Gaspard’s cage?”
“I never hurt you,” he protested, color rising in his cheeks.
“Not with your hands, perhaps.” I met his gaze steadily now, feeling stronger despite my physical exhaustion. “But there are other kinds of wounds.”
He dismounted in a fluid motion, tying his stallion to a nearby branch before approaching my mare. I tensed, preparing to kick her into motion, but his hand on her bridle stopped me. The mare, traitor that she was, seemed calmer with his touch, her breathing evening out as he stroked her neck.
“I made mistakes,” he admitted, looking up at me with those piercing blue eyes that had once seemed so different from Gaspard’s calculating stare. “I was wrong to try to keep you prisoner, even if I told myself it was for your protection. I see that now.”
I remained mounted, the slight elevation giving me the only advantage I had left. “Yet here you are, telling me I need to return with you.”
“Because they’re going to kill you if they find you!” His voice rose, echoing through the trees. “Do you understand that? My father believes you’re a witch. Gaspard has convinced him you used magic to bewitch me, to escape justice back in Thorndale.”
“And what do you believe?” I asked, the question hanging between us like a blade.
Alain ran a hand through his hair, disheveling it further. “I believe there are things in this world I don’t understand. Things you’ve tried to tell me that I was too stubborn to hear.” He took a step closer. “I believe you have power, yes. I saw you heal Thibaut. But I also believe that power doesn’t make you evil.”
The amber stone warmed against my hip, as if responding to the acknowledgment of my magic. But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
“If you truly believed that,” I said, “you wouldn’t be asking me to return to a kingdom that burns women like me. You’d be helping me reach the castle in the forest where I’m needed.”
“Needed by whom?” His voice softened, something almost like pleading entering his tone. “These beasts you speak of? The ones that marked you? Isabeau, help me understand. Why would you risk everything to return to creatures that imprisoned you in a dungeon?”
A surge of protective fury rose within me. “They didn’t imprison me. The Dark Lord’s sorceress did with Gaspard! The beasts—” I stopped, struggling to find words that could possibly make him understand. “They’re princes, Alain. Men cursed into bestial forms, trapped in a hell dimension that overlaps with our world but remains separate. They need me to break the curse that binds them.”
He stared at me with naked disbelief. “Princes turned into monsters? Hell dimensions? Do you hear yourself?”
“Yes!” I cried, frustration boiling over. “I hear myself speaking truth to a man too wrapped in his own reality to acceptthat the world is bigger, stranger, more magical than he can comprehend!”
I swung down from the mare, my legs nearly buckling as they hit the ground. Still, I forced myself to stand tall, to face him with the dignity my beasts deserved. “I’m going back to them with or without your understanding. They’re suffering, Alain. Every moment I delay, the darkness grows stronger, corrupting not just them but everything in the forest.”
“And what happens to you?” he demanded, stepping closer until I could smell the leather and sweat that clung to him after his long ride. “When the curse breaks, when these ‘princes’ are freed, what becomes of Isabeau Dubois? Have you thought about that?”
I hadn’t. Not really. In all my determination to save them, to fulfill the promise I’d made in that dream-space between worlds, I’d never fully considered what came after. Would I remain in the forest castle, living among beasts hopefully turned men? Return to a world that feared and hated women with power? Find some middle path that allowed me to be neither prisoner nor prey?
