by Brea Viragh
He shook his head. “I don’t need a coat. I have enough fur to keep me warm. You, on the other hand, will freeze wearing nothing but that dress. Where did you find such an outfit, anyway? Surely it was not part of your wardrobe.”
“I borrowed this from Marylynn with the promise to mend it with magic before it is returned.” I gestured down to the scratchy wool. I’d made the promise easily. My memories remained elusive despite how hard I worked to bring them back. Whatever burnout I’d brought on myself, it seemed to be a wall I could not crash through. Despite that setback, my magic was returning slowly.
Nothing major yet. It started coming in spits and spurts, like being able to light a candle in my room without a match, then shifted to larger things. I could make doors open and close with a simple thought. I could swipe the dust off the floor and furniture and banish it out the window without the help of a dustpan and broom.
But the magic came too slowly and wasn’t enough. I wanted to go bigger, move on to stronger and more complicated spells. Only then would I have the power to undo what I’d done. Yet as desperate as I was, I knew better than to push myself before I was ready.
That could lead to even more disastrous results—which I didn’t even want to think about.
“Fine, then. If you will not be dissuaded by me or the weather, grab your overcoat and boots.” His hand moved to the small of my back and guided us both toward the door, Merek moving with regal grace for a creature his size.
I glanced at him, saw the reflection of sunlight off the snow bringing out the rich tones of black and red in his fur. I studied his face, monstrous yet, but beneath it…handsome in a captivating sort of way. It was almost like a trick of the light, two images juxtaposed, one human, one beast. How attractive he must have been once, although I hadn’t managed to find any paintings or pictures from before. Nor could I remember, more’s the pity.
I grabbed the coat I’d found in the old armoire and met Merek at the front door. The set of his jaw didn’t give me much hope we would actually accomplish much. But I breezed past him regardless, determined to try. “Come along. Let’s hustle,” I said. “The sooner we get the ingredients, the sooner I can mix this potion.”
I heard him growl, but it sounded more whiny than angry. “You want us to freeze to death.”
“You have enough fur to keep you warm, or so you plainly told me,” I said with a grin. “I’m the one who is going to get frostbite.”
“Well, why don’t you spell yourself so you stay warm?” he replied testily.
I clamped my lips together tight to avoid saying something I’d regret. “You’re in a surprisingly good mood today,” I said instead as I wrapped a scarf around my neck.
Merek dropped his eyes to mine and a riot of emotions raced across his face. “Am I not allowed to try to make the best of a bad situation? Or would you rather I spend my time grooming myself?”
My mind conjured up the image of a cat with one leg in the air and its tongue poised for a lick. I half stifled a laugh, then gasped. “You’re teasing me.” I blinked at the realization.
He gazed down at me, impossibly long black lashes sweeping over his eyes. “I know I’m normally a grump.”
“Normally? I haven’t seen you any other way,” I found myself saying, and hated that I felt the need to voice the opinion. Even though it was the truth. Mostly.
Merek turned away from me and blazed a path through the snow and across the courtyard. “Let’s go find your blasted roots.” He inclined his head toward the garden ruins, buried now under the snow but with a few dry stalks poking up here and there. I followed in the trail he was leaving behind him, my feet already freezing inside my thin boots.
“Do you honestly think that I would show you my true self?” he said after a long moment. “No matter how you seem to have changed? I ask you not to be mean but as a true question.”
His words held an enormous amount of bitterness but also a sincere desire to know my answer. To see how much I truly had changed, I realized with a start, and because he wasn’t quite sure anymore of how I would react.
I nodded, my bones already stiffening because of the cold. “I’d like to hope these last few months have convinced you to place at least a little trust in me. And I’m determined to earn your complete trust,” I told him.
“Don’t get your hopes up on that, little one.”
My face warmed and I said, “I’ll change your mind, I know it. Now stop right here. Roots of a rose—that’s one of the components of the potion. I’m pretty sure I saw some rose bushes here when I first arrived.”
He lifted a brow and when he spoke his voice carried a note of steel. “You remember the rose bushes but not—”
“Yes.” I hurried to cut him off. “I remember the rose bushes because I saw them when I dragged you home that first evening. Now use those claws for a good purpose and help me dig. You will be my human shovel today, and make sure you don’t do any permanent damage to the plants. We’d like them to bloom in the spring.”
He shot me a look. “We?”
I flushed. “Ah…er…well, what I meant was…who wouldn’t enjoy seeing roses in bloom?” Dropping to my knees, I bent my head to hide my sudden shyness and began to push away the snow as Merek huffed out a low chuckle. I waited for some scathing retort.
But he just bent down next to me and began to dig. Close enough for my throat to tighten as he closed the distance between us. Close enough for me to watch the breeze rustling his dark fur and causing the strands to blow out to all sides like a lion’s mane.
I admonished myself for staring again. What was wrong with me? It was like I’d been the one to live alone all these years without proper companionship or interactions with polite society. In all honesty, despite his sometimes callous words and the way his temper flared at inopportune moments, Merek had fared much better than I had.
I’d been living in books, in a fantasy world where the shadow of reality lurked, and although I wanted the full view, I’d never brought myself to face it head on. I’d waited for an answer to my own riddle while the rest of my life passed me by, without ever knowing why.
At least he knew why. At least he had his memories.
Detachment no longer worked for me, though I had used it rigorously my first few months with him, tried to consider myself as only an outsider looking in. I could no longer deny the truth even if it was a matter of survival.
“Thank you,” I whispered, my voice little more than a quaver. “I don’t remember if I said it before, but thank you.”
He gave a low grunt. “This is your attempt to atone for what you did to me. How can I not do all I can to ensure it’s successful?” His lips quirked and I knew that despite the humor he tried to summon, he felt none of it.
“I know I’ve let you down,” I said slowly. “I know you think all this time I’ve spent with you nothing but a waste.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t have any expectations from you to begin with. It was all I could do not to throttle you where you stood, but too fascinated to see what your next move would be,” he admitted.
Okay, maybe I deserved that. But maybe… “Maybe you enjoy seeing me struggling to find the answers to questions I cannot even begin to fathom. Maybe you resent me for what I did to you and want to make me squirm.”
“Both of those things are true.”
I puffed out a breath, creating a small cloud of steam. “Good thing I don’t seek out your approval.”
Merek chuckled and knelt closer until I could feel the heat of his body. It was much-needed warmth. “It’s good to see you have a fiery spirit underneath those layers of cruel ice, Re—”
He didn’t get to finish because I launched a snowball at his face, hardly thinking about the repercussions.
His brow furrowed after the ball hit him squarely between the eyes. He leaned back on his haunches, his claws slowly curling as he took me in, though he couldn’t quite stifle his smile. “Do you want to try that again?” he asked.
A wave of heat coursed through my blood. Like a wave of me finally returning after a long vacation. I held out my palm and the snow formed itself into a perfectly round ball in my hand. A small hint of my former magic but one I did not take for granted now.
“Yes, I do want to try it again.”
The snowball struck him in the shoulder this time. Merek’s claws loosened for only a moment before he scooped up his own snowball and sent it flying at my face.
I reacted on instinct, diving away to avoid a direct hit. “Watch out! You could have caused serious damage, sir,” I squawked.
“Oh no, you asked for this. Now you must take what you have so readily doled out for me.”
The next snowball jettisoned toward me and I didn’t have time to move before it hit squarely between my breasts with enough force to knock the air out of my lungs. I fell back, my hand pressed to the area as Merek stood over me, his broad form blocking out the sunlight. Flakes of snow cascaded down from his head.
“Come on, Reila, let me see what you’ve got. You think you can take me? You think you can win this fight?” he teased, beckoning me to get up.
A swish of my hand had a small wall of snow surging toward him and soon Merek was splayed on his back with the groan of an old man. He unceremoniously rolled over, coating himself with snow as he sent another snowball toward me.
His final shot hit me somewhere near my collarbone, causing the snowball to explode and shower my face. I lay flat on my back, spitting snow from my mouth, and he crawled closer to me until we both wound up lying on our backs with our faces turned to the overcast sky, both covered in snow. His gaze flicked over me and suddenly he laughed.
“I didn’t think you had it in you,” he said and let out a deep chuckle. When I turned to look at him, an amused glint was sparkling in his eyes. I relaxed at the sight. Softened toward him, warmed toward him no matter how the rest of me froze.
“You’re laughing at me, aren’t you? You’d better stop it or there’s another snowball headed your way,” I joked. “A big one with your name on it.”
“I’m laughing at you, yes, because for a moment I forgot where we were. I forgot who you were. After everything that happened—” Merek still refused to mention the specifics of that night. “Well, I think we can agree that a little bit of fun was in order. You owed me that at least.”
I winced, wanting to say I owed him nothing. And everything. But neither was true and we both knew that. “Shall I repay you in laughter, then?”
He grinned. “I just…never expected to feel like this again,” he admitted frankly.
The two of us shared a shy glance and my heart somersaulted. “Well, now that’s just sad,” I teased.
He shook his head. “Since the curse made me into this creature, I felt like my joy had been ripped away. I no longer enjoyed being alive. But finally, finally, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”
He gave a shrug, and as he did so his fingers brushed mine and I saw a flash of images from his past and heard sounds of guttural cries wrenching him awake in pitch blackness. Ice-cold limbs, breath misted in front of him, tears that seemed to draw the blood from his body. Screams of agony from the heart—and I was overwhelmed to the point where my skin crawled as I tore myself out of the memories. His memories.
A sob threatened to break free of the clog in my throat.
His eyes darkened. “Maybe you aren’t my enemy.”
I swallowed hard, fighting back the emotions. “I never wanted to be your enemy.” I struggled to rise, to keep me from doing what I wanted to do. To keep me from being pulled to him. I fought to stay focused on the current reality instead of the disjointed memories I’d received from Merek.
His warm paw shot out to grasp my arm. “Reila?”
“No matter what you might think about me,” I asserted, near to tears, “I am not your enemy.”
He leaned up on his elbow, his face grave. “I want to believe that,” he said softly, looking me right in the eyes.
I glanced away. If I got lost in those eyes, I’d never find my way back. “Merek, I’m going to find a way to fix this.”
“You keep telling me so. You’re doing a damn good job of making me believe it, too.”
“Liar,” I purred, trying to lighten the suddenly heavy mood. “You’re only saying that so I don’t hit you in the face with another snowball.”
“True. Keep it up, Miss Barnes, and at the end of this…”
At the end of this…what? We’d be friends? I highly doubted finding a way to break the spell would forge any sort of relationship between us. No matter what my past self once felt about him, and no matter what my current self had begun to feel, I feared the damage had already been done.
“Why did you never leave the castle?” I wanted to know. “To find a way to break the curse, I mean. Didn’t you even try?”
He turned his face away from me. “You told me then that only a kiss of true love would fix my fate. Do you really expect me to find a woman to love me…looking like this?” He waved a hand to indicate his gruesome outer appearance.
The admittance hit home and I struggled to process it. “I don’t remember saying that, so…I don’t know. Perhaps. You still have the heart of a man.”
“But not a good one,” he said plainly.
“You didn’t even try?” I pushed.
“This is my home. This castle has been the seat of power for my family for generations. Where would I go?” He sighed in resignation. “Besides, it is not easy to relearn a lifetime of having things handed to you on a silver spoon. Of having women throw themselves at you because of your wealth and status, only to find that nothing you do is good enough if you do not have a handsome face as well.”
“Merek, you know that is not true.” I wanted to whisper words of comfort to him, to ease the knots of tension visible in his arms and shoulders.
“Isn’t it? It has taken me a long time to realize it, as well. Now.” He knocked against me with his elbow. “Enough of that. It’s good to know you don’t expect me to coddle you anymore.”
“I’m not delicate and in need of protection,” I argued with a shiver. The snow was making me very cold again. “I simply need to find a way to get my memories back.”
“So where do we start?”
“We start with getting the rose root and then move on to the next ingredient on the list. Before you decide to hate me again.”
Something predatory crept over his expression. But Merek went back to digging and soon unearthed a clump of frozen roots in frozen dirt. And I couldn’t shake the explosive unbidden memories of his first few cursed months from my head. How he’d tucked himself into his bed, shaking, jerking like a beast, fighting the unknown demons he’d suddenly come face to face with. His entire life changed in seconds.
I trembled as the ghosts of the past crept closer and his frantic sobs echoed in my ears, taking their own sweet time to fade away at last.
When we were done gathering the ingredients I needed for the potion, we moved back into the castle. The book I’d found in the library with the resurrection potion recipe waited for me in the old atrium. I’d set up my necessary supplies there because of the abundance of natural light but also because no one used it anymore. No one dared come near “the witch.”
Resurrection? Right. As if I believed the words on the page would help resurrect what was lost. Whether my memories—and with them a way to break the curse that didn’t involve true love’s kiss—or the man Merek used to be before being turned into a beast. Either would be a win, I reckoned.
The book had been a lucky find, packed among similar dusty tomes in a neglected section of the library. Whatever his mother had done with the books I didn’t know, but I’d recognized the power in them. Power I would hopefully be able to harness if I did each step correctly.
By the time Merek joined me, my mind felt like I’d run it over with a bulldozer and I flinched as he approached, my jangled nerves failing to alert me to
his presence until he stood over me.
“How is it going?” Hot breath tickled my ear.
“Slowly. I’m…not sure I’m doing things right.” I gestured to the basket of ingredients we’d gathered. Most of them had already been combined. “I think it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like this. I don’t remember anything about being a witch.”
“Your instincts have to be there somewhere,” he said.
“You would think so.” I paused, staring down at the copper pot I’d borrowed from the kitchen and the brown mess inside. “None of this feels natural. It feels like I’m forcing something out of me, something I do not want to give. Besides the giant blank spot, everything about my magic has been wiped from my memory, too. I can recall the color and shape of the dress I wore to a ball my father threw when I turned ten but nothing about being a witch.”
“Do not try to test me. If you are purposely keeping things from me—”
“You think I am?” I scowled at him and linked my fingers together in an attempt to overcome the urge to slap him. Whatever semblance of peace we’d shared moments ago faded away and now I found my temples throbbing with the threat of a migraine. “I’m doing my best.”
“Then make it work. Make it work, or else.”
“I am not the type of person who keeps things to herself for sport,” I argued.
He stalked slowly away as though he didn’t want to startle me with big, booming steps. “Unfortunately, Miss Barnes, that is where you are wrong.”
Chapter 15
I was too drained to argue with him. Thankfully he didn’t press it and left me in peace.
Formulating the potion properly, to the best of my abilities, took the last of the strength the snowball fight hadn’t sapped. I had to make this work. The light was waning now. No time left. Finally I gauged the potion to be ready, and I poured the concoction into a small vial I’d found in my scavenging. Then I took vial and book back to the library, lighting a few candles to chase the increasing gloom.
By the end of the evening, after the sun tucked itself behind the mountains for the day, I heard the heavy footsteps of the prince as he dragged himself out of his tower room to check on my progress.
