I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to watch but unable to block out his agonized screams. When I opened them again, Gaspard was still writhing on the ground, but my attention was drawn back to the pit where my beasts, my princes, fought their losing battle against the inexorable pull.
They were almost gone now, their massive bodies half-swallowed by the flaming void. Laurent—I was certain it was him, something in the set of his eyes, the desperate determination in his struggle—had managed to dig his claws into the edge of the pit. He was holding on by what looked like sheer will, his amber eyes fixed on mine with an emotion so raw it physically hurt to witness.
I reached for him, though I knew it was futile. The invisible force held me suspended just out of reach. All I could do was watch as his claws began to slip, as his brothers were dragged deeper into the flames behind him.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words lost in the wind. “I’m so sorry. I love you. All of you. I should have known sooner.”
I’d failed them. Failed all three princes who had protected me, cared for me, loved me in their own ways. Failed myself, with my blindness to the truth that had been in front of me all along. The darkness Enid had pulled from me left me hollow, my powerdrained to fuel the very curse that was destroying everything I loved.
That’s when I saw it. A streak of light falling from the winter sky like a shooting star. At first I thought my tear-filled eyes were playing tricks on me against the moonlight. But the light grew brighter as it approached, expanding into a glowing orb that positioned itself between me and the pit.
The orb pulsed once, twice, and then unfurled like a flower blooming in a time-lapsed heartbeat. Within it stood a woman, translucent and shimmering, her form made of light rather than flesh. Her hair floated around her face as if she stood underwater, and atop her head sat a wreath of flowers that glowed with their own inner fire.
She raised her hands, and words in a language I didn’t recognize but somehow understood began flowing from her lips. A counter-spell to Enid’s chanting, a barrier between me and the worst of the magic trying to bind me.
I knew her face. I had seen it every day of my life in the locket around my neck.
“Mama?” The word escaped me in a broken whisper, disbelief warring with desperate hope.
She turned, her face as beautiful and sad as I remembered. Tears that would never fall shimmered in her eyes as she looked at me—really looked at me—for the first time in four years.
“Isabeau,” she said, her voice carrying easily despite the chaos around us. “My daughter. My little bell.”
“How—” I couldn’t form more words. Couldn’t process what I was seeing.
“There isn’t time,” she said, her form flickering slightly as Enid’s chanting intensified. “I cannot stop this curse, but I can give you the knowledge to break it. You are stronger than they know, carrying more than just my power but my purpose.”
Before I could ask what she meant, Enid’s chanting faltered. The witch raised her clouded eyes to my mother’s glowing form, and something like recognition flashed across her ancient face.
“Arty?” The name emerged from Enid’s throat, rough with disuse of her normal voice. Though, that had never been my mother’s name. She was Celine Dubois.
My mother’s spirit didn’t answer. Couldn’t, perhaps, as the magic around us reached its crescendo. The pit below let out a final, hungry roar as Laurent’s claws lost their grip. All three princes disappeared into the flames, their howls of pain cutting straight through my heart.
“No!” I screamed, struggling uselessly against the force that held me. “No, bring them back!”
The pit closed with a sound like the world ending, the flaming void sealing itself as if it had never existed. Where it had been, only a circular scorch mark remained on the courtyard stones, steam rising from its blackened circumference as snowflakes landed on the still-hot surface.
My mother’s glowing form began to fade, drawn back to whatever realm she had emerged from. “Find me in the roses, just ask, and nature will provide, my little bell,” she whispered, the words barely reaching me before she was gone.
The Dark Lord stood below, his beautiful face arranged in an expression of pure satisfaction. With a casual gesture, the magic holding me aloft shifted. I was no longer suspended above the courtyard but being carried through the air, away from the castle’s front and around toward what I recognized as the dungeon entrance.
Stone walls rushed past me, torchlight flickering as I was pulled deeper into the castle’s bowels. Then a cell door opened of its own accord, and I was flung inside with enough force to send me sprawling onto the cold stone floor. The door slammed shutbehind me, the sound of its lock engaging like the final note in a funeral dirge.
I lay there, unable to move, barely able to breathe through the pain crushing my chest. They were gone. All three princes, dragged into hell while I watched helplessly. Gaspard wouldn’t come for me. He couldn’t, not without freeing them and damning himself. The witch had drained my power, leaving me hollow and weak when I needed strength the most.
I was trapped. Immortal. Destined to live forever in this cell while my power kept the princes alive for eternal torture.
The worst part wasn’t the cold stone against my cheek, or the knowledge that I would never die, or even the image of my beasts being swallowed by flames that refused to leave my mind. The worst part was realizing that I hadn’t loved one beast who changed with the hours of the day.
I had loved three princes, each in his own way. Marcel’s morning wildness. Bastien’s evening thoughtfulness. Laurent’s nighttime tenderness. And I hadn’t even known enough to call them by their proper names until it was too late.
Tears came then, hot and endless. Not just for what I had lost, but for what I had never fully understood until it was already gone. All three loved me too.
twenty-nine
Alain
Blood steamed on the pristine snow, a crimson stain spreading beneath the massive elk as its final breath clouded the frigid air then disappeared. I knelt beside my kill, ignoring the bite of cold through my hunting leathers, and placed a gloved hand on the creature’s flank in silent acknowledgment of its sacrifice.
