Beatrix reaches for him with a trembling hand. “It’s still me.” She’s not sure which of them she is trying to convince.
He turns away from her touch, shielding the baby. He might as well have stabbed her in the heart.
“You don’t think I’d hurt her, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think.” He shakes his head, as if it is all a nightmare he can wake from.
“Amor vincit omnia,” she says. His words. His promise.
William glares at her. “Love conquers all?”
“Even death,” Beatrix says. “The faerie brought me back to you.”
He stills as her words sink in.
She stretches out her hand, as if one touch can change his mind. Prove to him that she is real. That she is alive. That she is still his. If he can feel her warmth—her life—he will forget the last shuddering breath leaving her body. Forget the limp girl dying in his arms.
She takes a step toward him. “I love you, William.”
He raises his bloodshot eyes to hers, and Beatrix swears she can see his heart break. “You are a silver-tongued serpent, aren’t you?”
“No. I’m Beatrix. Beatrix Woodward. My favorite color is yellow. I love to wear flowers in my hair.” She chokes on his words. “My boots are always caked in river mud, even on a Sunday.”
He shakes his head, but she presses on.
“And I was afraid of being left behind and forgotten, until the kindest, most loving man I have ever met changed my life with a single dance. Whispered my fears to me and told me they were his fears, too. Showed me we are not so different, and loved me with his whole heart.” Beatrix swallows, trying to push away the lump in her throat. “Now the only thing I fear is losing him.”
William chokes back an anguished sob. Beatrix longs to go to him, to wrap her arms around him and end his pain. She doesn’t move.
“Get out.”
There is no fury in William’s voice, only grief and exhaustion, and how can such a good man gut her with only two whispered words?
“William, please, don’t do this,” she begs through her tears.
“You are a faerie or a demon, or maybe the Devil himself, come for my tortured soul, but you are not her. I won’t listen to any more of your lies.”
“It’s still me.” She wants to scream it. It’s barely a whisper.
Beatrix has nowhere to run, but she runs anyway. Tears blur her vision, and the damp night air burns in her lungs. She careens deeper into the forest than she’s ever been. Branches scratch at her arms and pull at her hair. The underbrush snags at her dress, and gnarled roots catch at her bare feet, as if the world knows she no longer belongs in it.
What has she done?
She only wanted to live. Wished for what was already hers. And the faerie had granted it. Brought her back to William. Brought her back to their daughter.
She never got to hold her.
She doesn’t even know her name.
Somehow, out of everything, this—not the discovery that faeries exist, not the idea that one of them saved her life, not even the look in William’s eyes when he banished her from their home—this is the thought that makes it all too much.
Beatrix crumples to the ground. Her hand slips beneath the carpet of half-rotted leaves and something sharp bites deep into her palm. She hisses against the sudden sting of pain and snatches her hand away.
A ragged gash wells with ruby blood, vibrant and warm and hers. It’s the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. It is proof she is alive, proof she is flesh and blood and bone, and real. This is what she needs to fix it, to show William he is wrong. She didn’t die in his arms. She couldn’t have. She is alive, and she bleeds, just like him.
“For such fragile creatures, you really are careless, aren’t you?” The faerie steps from the darkness beyond the trees.
Beatrix scrambles away, her heels catching on the hem of her dress.
