by Brea Viragh
He gathered me to his chest and I settled there, unwilling to protest. Over the man’s shoulder I made out the setting sun through a haze of clouds that seemed to be retreating with each passing second. The burnt-orange and red of sunset tinted the snow.
“What did you do to yourself this time, love?” Each word the man spoke into my hair sounded like it took a monumental effort to get out.
I lifted my chin to him then, pushing his long hair aside to see him fully. Wow, those eyes. I’d never seen eyes that color before. Or had I?
I didn’t know. Everything inside my head was a big blank. Yet those eyes captured me immediately and would not let me go.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my fingers trailing along the clenched line of his jaw. “Do I know you?”
He seemed sweet enough, I thought. Concerned about me and my safety. Maybe he had a right to be, because when I moved again, an ache in my lower extremities made itself known before spreading through the whole of me.
Ouch. Had I been thrown from a horse? Did I own a horse?
Slowly, very slowly, the man shook his head. His hold on me lightened and although he remained touching me, some of the warmth fled with him. “No, I’m the one who should be sorry,” he told me, his voice thick with emotion. It appeared to me as if he was choking back sobs. “You’ve had an accident and bumped your head. I shouldn’t be pushing you. It seems, however, you have bewitched me and I could not keep myself from touching you. Rest assured I will not make any untoward advances.”
The man edged away and I saw the tears turning his eyes to glass. His gaze tracked over me from head to toe, searching for wounds.
I ran an awkward hand through my hair, making sure to avoid the bruised area of my cranium and wincing when I came too close. For a moment, rage twisted the man’s features into something brutish, beast-like. He quickly pushed those dark emotions aside and when he next looked at me, I saw nothing but concern.
“I must have hit my head hard,” I told him. “I can’t recall what happened. Maybe you can tell me.”
He gave me a somewhat watery smile. “I’d be happy to sit and chat with you. Come on, let’s get you inside before you freeze to death.”
I allowed him to guide me to my feet. To keep his hand on me when dizziness had me wobbling and losing my balance.
Composed and calm, the man picked me up in his arms and I did not fight him. I had no reason to. I didn’t get a bad sense about him, and my intuition told me he was a person to trust.
Huh. I had intuition? I must also possess a good judge of character, then. That knock on the head must have rattled my brain. Maybe this man was a friend of mine that I simply couldn’t remember. There was something about him…something familiar, yet just out of reach.
Then I caught my first glimpse of the majestic towers of stone in front of me and gasped. The sight awed me. A castle, a freaking castle, with glass windows reflecting the sunset, gardens sleeping underneath the snow. Each step brought me closer to those imposing arches and turrets, the stone gargoyles and statues of angels turning quiet and watchful eyes on all who would approach.
“Is this…my home?” I asked him, awestruck and hoping the answer was yes.
The words did something to the man holding me and he clasped me closer. “It is if you want it to be,” he said gruffly, his fingers tightening around me. “You are welcome to stay here for as long as you like, and of course I will insist you remain here until you feel your best.”
I shifted to a more comfortable position, one arm around his neck and my hand pressed against his heart as he stepped over the open threshold into the hushed interior of the castle. Where had the doors gone?
The marble floor gleamed, polished to a shine that I knew would show me my reflection if I looked. But judging from the state of the back of my head and the stain of blood on my fingers, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what I looked like just yet.
He took a right into a cozy-looking room and settled me down on a comfortable wingback chair set next to a roaring fire. In a swift move he tore off the coat he wore and placed it around me. I nestled deeper into the fabric with a sigh.
Something in me rose in joy at the nearness of the man. At the sensation of his erratically pounding heart. “What’s wrong?” I asked him. The look he gave me was full of meaning I couldn’t decipher, but the tears still glistening in his eyes troubled me. “Something is bothering you. What is it?” I wagged a finger at him playfully. “You would tell me if something was wrong with you, wouldn’t you?” I couldn’t have said why I was so cockily familiar with this man, this stranger.
Was I flirting with him?
“Yes, Miss. I would tell you if there was something wrong with me.”
I nodded. “Then the problem must be with me.”
He shook his head. “What makes you think there is anything wrong with you?” he asked, half laughing, half choking back another sob.
I moved the hand I’d touched him with to my own heart. “I can feel it. Here. Like there’s a sudden ache in my chest where there was none before. I don’t know…it’s the oddest feeling, really. I can hardly focus on the pain in my head because of the ache. I’m not hungry, and I’m not thirsty. I’m just…here. Are you sure we don’t know each other?”
The man shook his head again until strands of long chestnut hair almost obscured his face. “I’m sorry to tell you, my dear, that we are strangers. Although the pleasure of your company means the world to me. Let me introduce myself.” He held out a hand. “I’m Merek Lyndon. It’s a great pleasure to meet you.”
I returned the gesture, relishing the feeling of sparks that flew across my skin whenever we touched. Tilting my head to the side, I took him in. “I can’t recall you, but you feel so familiar to me. I hesitate to say this but perhaps we met in a dream, a long time ago. Perhaps we met there and were friends. I get the feeling you know my name.”
He smiled. “I could pluck a name from thin air and you would have no choice but to accept it. Do you remember anything?”
I thought for a moment, searching the empty swirling mass inside of myself. The answers were there. I felt it, like I could reach out and touch them except they flew out of my grasp.
“I remember waking up in the snow.” I offered him a hesitant smile, wishing he would come sit with me instead of prowling in front of the fireplace. “I remember you coming to rescue me.”
“Yes, it seems we have a long-standing tradition of me coming to your rescue. Though to be fair, you have also come to mine on many occasions. Your sacrifice was much greater than my own.” He shook out a foot. “I merely braved frostbite.”
“Ah!” I leaped on his mistake. “There you have it.”
“Have what?”
I clucked my tongue at him and used levity to lighten the situation that felt at once too heavy. “You said that we are strangers and yet you clearly reference a past in which we’ve crossed paths.”
The man continued to stare at me without speaking and I shrank down into his coat.
“I’m sorry. Am I not usually in a joking mood? I can’t remember.”
“It’s not that, Miss. It’s just that to see you smile after everything…it’s a rare gift.”
Without thinking, I reached out to grab his hand, bringing it closer for my inspection, and in the process bringing him closer too. I traced the lines there and smoothed my fingers over his calluses. They were good hands, I thought to myself. Strong and capable.
“I have the oddest impression I know these hands,” I murmured. “As though they have touched me before. Not like this, no. More intimately. Please correct me if I’m wrong, and I—oh no! What did I say?”
The man had tears in his eyes again, though they did nothing to hinder his inherent masculinity or the rigid, elegant way he carried himself. He squatted down beside the chair, balanced on his haunches. “Go on,” he said thickly. “Tell me more.”
I stalled for a moment, unsure what to say, then tentatively returned my atten
tion to his hand, to the lines there as if I were reading his palm. “Okay. Um, well, I feel like you have lived a good life. Not without its trials and tribulations, of course, because everyone has those—don’t they? I can’t remember—also there have been tears and b-bloodshed.” I grimaced slightly, then peered again at the lines on his hand. “There has also been great…love.” My voice caught and I paused at the word. “You have a caring heart.”
“I gave my heart away. It has not belonged to me for a long time,” the man said on a shaky exhale.
I couldn’t help my instant disappointment. Though what did I expect? I knew nothing of him, except that our paths had evidently crossed before. “Oh. I’m—I’m very happy for you.”
“I’m not sure if you should be happy for me or not. You see, the woman I love made a great sacrifice and I’m afraid I’ve lost her for good.”
I leaned closer at the ache I heard in his voice. The longing there for his love. “Oh no! What happened to her?”
“Well, part of me fears she has disappeared entirely. Though I hope, I pray, there is enough of her for me to hold on to. I refuse to let her go again.” The man watched me. His eyes darted across my face to gauge my reaction.
I pursed my lips. “You are absolutely positive we don’t know each other?”
And suddenly he completely broke down before me. “Oh God, Reila. I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t understand what happened. One moment I was focused on the tear trailing down his cheek and getting lost in his stubble. The next his lips were on mine and my world exploded in a shower of fireworks. I saw flashing lights behind my closed lids though my focus remained on those soft, supple lips.
Then I kissed him back.
I threw the whole of me forward—and found myself in the embrace. True love transformed me back into myself. And I remembered.
I pushed away from Merek with a gasp, staring at him through the rush of my return. Then smacked him on the shoulder.
“Ouch!” He pretended outrage. “What the hell! You would hit a stranger?”
“No, but I would hit a prince who waited too damn long to kiss me.” I reached out and hooked a finger under his chin, forcing him to look at me. “Merek Lyndon, if you do not know by now that true love’s kiss can break a curse, any curse, I am going to have to spend the rest of my days reminding you.”
He laughed then, incredulous. “Reila, is that really you?”
No more questions, and no more hesitations. With an equally loud laugh I launched myself at him. “It’s me,” I said and proved it.
Epilogue
Prince Merek Lyndon once thought that dreams did not come true. In fact, he’d believed it with every fiber of his being. The realization was cemented with each passing day he’d spent trapped in his beast form, feeling useless and hopeless and all kinds of less.
Until one day he found himself in the middle of a new dream. One in which he was no longer a man in beast form but just a man, living in a castle with an endless garden of roses and blooms spreading out all around, and his bride walking towards him.
The joy of his life. In fact, her laughter had reached him before he caught sight of her, carried on a rose-scented breeze bringing with it a hint of earth, a hint of magic.
Though the wedding planner assured them it was unorthodox, they’d chosen dawn for their wedding ceremony, as streams of orange and gold sunlight burst over the tops of the trees. To be honest, everything about their courtship was unorthodox. Why should the marriage ceremony be any different?
Reila, his chosen bride, expressly wanted to take his name at their home, although no one in the village would ever call the castle a “house.” Still, it lightened Merek’s heart that she’d chosen this spot, not even knowing what it meant to him, for their nuptials. His own parents had been married in this garden, beneath the large baroque archway topped with the royal seal.
He stood beneath the arch now, staring at the ancient stones of his childhood home, and felt something stirring inside of him. Love, he thought with a sense of wonder, love for his people, for his property, for the woman striding toward him on her mother’s arm, with her little brother proudly following them as ring bearer.
Free.
They were free. And here, in this moment, the sins of the past were nothing but a distant memory. True, there were still politics to worry over and infrastructure to fix. Meetings to call. Plans to make. A realm to rule. But fate had a cruel sense of humor.
He’d never thought he’d see her again until he followed the call of the monsters into the woods and saw her, the beauty he’d loved from the moment their eyes met in the village square. The beauty that had awakened him as much as the ringing of a bell. He’d endured for so long in seclusion, drowning in the emptiness of his failure…until she came back to him.
He remembered her that night in the woods, fighting off the frightening creatures, her lips plump and full, the color of a blush. Red hair flew in every direction like a halo around her pale face. Terrified. He’d wondered then why she didn’t use her magic on them. Expecting her to do so, he’d held off on stepping in, merely watching…and nearly lost her again.
He would never hesitate again. It had taken him too long to realize what he wanted, who he wanted. And how to get it all for himself.
His parents were long dead, having succumbed to the debilitating shock of seeing their beloved heir to the throne turned into a hideous beast and hiding himself away from the world. Merek had very nearly thrown himself into the grave with them, and in his overwhelming sorrow he lost his kingdom, his dignity, his humanity.
Yet somehow found them all again with the help of a witch. Ironically, the same witch who had earlier cursed him to his wretched fate.
They were not as different as he’d first wanted to believe. Now, he could not imagine a day going by without her at his side.
And now that he’d taken his rightful place as sovereign, King Merek looked forward to a happy life with his chosen queen. They would grow together after this. They would do the best they could with what they were given and lead the people with honor and integrity.
His breath caught, his heartbeat reverberating in his ears as he got his first glimpse of the bride through his mother’s rose bushes. Reila surely stepped straight from the pages of her favorite fairy tale. The one he knew she re-read repeatedly and kept on their nightstand.
She surpassed the beauty of the flowers, from the lush, shining waves of her hair to the spots of blushing pink on her cheeks. The courtyard, once encased in ice and snow, blossomed with the spring and Reila had made sure to leave no stone unaffected in her quest to restore the castle to its former glory. She’d insisted they have the wedding here, where there was plenty of room for the villagers and whatever dignitaries may attend.
She’d also insisted against wearing white although tradition called for it. Instead she’d chosen something in his favorite color, gold. To bring out the tints of it in her hair and to honor him.
Finally, Reila stepped up to him, handing off her bouquet of wildflowers to her mother.
“My love,” Merek greeted her.
“My King.”
Merek held out his hand for her to take. “Are you ready?”
His heart nearly burst, contracting painfully at the sight of her guilty smile. “I have been waiting a long time for this.”
He tucked a curl behind her ear before they both turned to the officiant. Her brother Thomas suddenly nudged between them with a hint of youthful mischief.
“I’m sorry, Reila! I lost the ring,” he said remorsefully. A gasp went up from the assembled guests. “But I found it again!” He held the signet ring high in triumph.
The villagers who had gathered to witness their joy let out an amused chuckle en masse. And Merek could no longer contain his happiness. He let his head tip back, his laughter full and loud. Though he cherished their moments alone when the quiet overtook the castle halls, he knew he would not trade this moment for the world.
> They made it through the ceremony and the crowd erupted in a joyous cheer. And when their lips came together in a sensual touch to seal their union, Merek heard music.
The End.
For author updates, sign up for Brea’s newsletter:
www.breaviragh.com/newsletter
About the Author
BREA VIRAGH is a USA Today Bestselling contemporary and paranormal romance writer based in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is a proud Gryffindor, a graduate of Brakebills, and a member of Fairy Tail. Klaus Hargreeves is her bestie. When she isn’t writing and daydreaming about her newest project, her hobbies include binge-watching HGTV, scouring thrift shops for goodies, and maintaining her alpha status among her puppy and three cats.
Read More from Brea Viragh
www.breaviragh.com
