“Ending the rumors isn’t the goal of my contract,” I reminded gently.
Felix leapt from my lap and stalked back and forth, his tail lashing. “The rumors are a critical component of Marc’s plan. Stopping them will stymie him.” He stopped and closed his eyes. His voice softened. “If you are in Leort, you can learn how Cecily plans to become my duchess. It would be hard for her to arrange a wedding if I am a cat, so transforming me back into a man must be part of the plan. I’ll focus on that tonight, and hopefully by morning I’ll have the node convinced.”
???
I tried tolift my foot, but it was as if my limbs had turned to lead. I shook my head at Felix and turned away from the horse. Instantly, I could move with ease once more.
Felix’s eyes narrowed. “Isa, I need you to go to Leort and discover how to break the curse from Cecily.”
I didn’t feel the node power around me tighten at all, but I still spun around and tried to mount. Tried, and failed.
“I don’t think the node believed you,” I told him. “Or maybe I really can’t leave, and the fact that I can cross the boundary at the bottom of the hill means nothing, because the boundary has nothing to do with my contract.”
“I’m going to figure this out.” Felix insisted.
I sighed. “Then I’ll listen in on Marc with the mirror for a while.”
Without Felix’s magic augmenting my own, I couldn’t see anything in the mirror, but seeing Marc wasn’t as important as hearing what he had to say. Though based on the previous day, he wouldn’t do or say anything of note until evening.
It was going to be a long day.
Thirty-Four
Felix
???
I wasn’t surprisedthat the node still wouldn’t let Isa go. Upset, but not surprised. As much as I tried, my thoughts were all about protecting Isa’s reputation, not breaking the curse. It didn’t matter that she seemed genuinely unconcerned with what her neighbors said about her. And though Marc had clearly been fostering rumors that claimed I was taking advantage of Isa, it was the whispers that she was trying to sleep her way into a better life that angered me the most.
Until my thoughts centered on the curse and how Isa could break it, the node would ignore everything I tried.
After supper I declined to spy on Marc more, telling Isa I needed a little more time to think. If I couldn’t send her on her way by tomorrow morning, we needed a new plan.
Pushing away thoughts of what lies Marc was spreading now, I focused on the curse. Thoughts of Isa intruded, but instead of letting myself get distracted or trying to banish them, I let my mind wander paths where Isa and the curse crossed.
If it hadn’t been for the curse, I never would have signed the contract forcing Isa to come to Rose Castle. Perhaps instead, I would have bumped into her in Leort one day and our first interactions wouldn’t have been tainted with a loss of free will. How wouldthings have been different without that error in judgment hanging over us? How might things have progressed if she had gotten to know me as a man rather than a cat?
I frowned, realizing that was the wrong question to ask. With Isa, I knew my physical form wasn’t a concern. It was a frustration—for me, at least—but it didn’t change how she saw me. She looked deeper than that. And it was my fault that what she saw below the surface wasn’t the type of man she’d fall in love with.
But she wasn’t angry with me anymore. She might even like me. And the shift from liking to loving wasn’t as great as the shift from hating to liking, was it? But it was a shift that would never happen while she was a prisoner, no matter how comfortable she had become with her cage.
My node-tie shivered.
Perhaps I had gone about dealing with the curse wrong from the very beginning. I didn’t have to break it, not when I could complete it. After all, Cecily had left me a path back to my human form in her curse. I simply had to convince someone to love me.
Sending Isa home didn’t guarantee she’d fall for me, but freeing her was a step in the right direction.
My thoughts coalesced into a plan. Isa’s love might break the curse. She wouldn’t love me while the node controlled her. Therefore, the best way for her to fulfill the terms of her contract was not to be bound to fulfill the terms.
???
The next morning, I watched Isa ride away from Rose Castle with a heavy heart. I didn’t like seeing her go, but she had to leave if she was ever to come back of her own free will. The possibility of one day watching her return was worth the pain.
Thirty-Five
Isabel
???
