17. June 13, 1505 Lancaut, England
It is still dark when Beatrix wakes. Or maybe it is another dark, another night. The pain and exhaustion in her body have vanished. Maybe she has slept for days.
The cottage is shrouded in a heavy silence. She doesn’t hear William or her sisters. Her heart skips. She doesn’t hear her baby.
Beatrix sits up. The bed has been cleaned and made up with fresh linens. And she’s wearing a new dress. Or rather, an old one. A borrowed one. Her best one. A knot forms in the pit of her stomach.
She swings her feet over the side of the bed, expects weak and shaking legs, but they bear her weight with no issue.
She runs a trembling hand along the sapphire skirts of her wedding dress.
They slip through her fingers, as smooth and cool as they were on her wedding day.
She reaches for her hair and finds a crown of flowers.
Her pulse quickens. Something isn’t right.
Then she hears it, that impossible sound that makes her heart soar and shatter at the same time: her daughter, crying from the next room.
Beatrix pushes open the bedroom door. William rises from his chair next to the cold hearth to go to the baby, fussing in a cradle in the corner.
He scoops up the tiny bundle and rocks her in his arms. Beatrix’s heart swells at the sight of her precious daughter, at the way William gazes down at her.
As if he is carrying his entire world in his hands.
She steps into the room. “I hope she has your eyes.”
William looks up sharply. The color drains from his face, and Beatrix can’t take another step. There is no relief in his gaze. No brightness. No love. “What’s wrong?”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “You’re not real. You can’t be.”
Beatrix’s heart hammers against her ribs. “What? What are you talking about?”
He shakes his head. “You can’t be.”
“You’re scaring me, William.”
“Says the spirit. Or maybe this is all a nightmare. Maybe I’ve fallen asleep where I sit.” He kicks the chair, and it tips backward onto the wooden floor with a clatter. The baby startles in his arms. He rocks her gently.
“I’m real.” Beatrix tries to sound calm. “This is real. Are you ill? You’re not thinking straight—”
He laughs, and it’s almost manic. It turns to sobs. He sinks to his knees, cradling the baby. “This is madness,” he whispers. He squeezes his eyes shut. “I’ve gone mad.”
When he opens his eyes, the look he gives her steals her breath. Like he has never seen her before in his life. He rises from the floor and takes her in. Her flower crown and wild hair. Her wide, mismatched eyes. Even the gold band resting on the finger where he placed it. “You look just like her.”
Beatrix swallows the lump in her throat. “I am her. Why is that so hard to believe?”
His voice trembles. “Because she’s dead.”
“No. I didn’t—that’s wrong. That’s—”
The faerie.
Her knees buckle, and she catches herself on the edge of their long wooden table. The clearing, the moor, that other Lancaut in the river—it was all a fever dream. It had to be.
Beatrix swallows the panic swelling inside her. If anyone will understand, it’s William. She has to make him understand.
“A faerie came to me in my dream.” It sounds terrifying and wondrous to hear spoken aloud. “I was dying, and I think…”
He shakes his head. He doesn’t want to hear it, but she needs to tell him.
“I was dying, and she saved me.”
“No,” William says. He’s crying again.
“She saved me, William. She’s real. The faeries are real.” She steps toward him.
He backs away, his eyes wide. He clutches their daughter to his chest. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? A faerie, come to take the baby.”
“No… no, I’m me. You must have made a mistake.”
“There was no mistake,” he says, anger and grief contorting his features. “The midwife said there was nothing to be done. And Alice—” He chokes on the words. “Alice ran for the priest. Isabella took the baby so I could be with you.”
His eyes shine in the flickering candlelight.
“I held you. You were so pale. So still. And small. Like you were fading away before my eyes. The priest barely made it in time. I prayed for you. I begged whoever would listen to take me instead. But they didn’t.
No one saved you. Not God. Not a faerie. Not me.”
Beatrix shakes her head, her voice lost. He’s wrong.
“I couldn’t save you. All I could do was hold you. Feel your heart stop. Watch you take your last breath.”
Silent tears spill down her cheeks.
“You died in my arms,” William says, his voice strained to breaking. “So don’t tell me there was a mistake.”
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.
The faerie steps closer. “Not that it’s a concern of yours anymore.” She leans over Beatrix and snatches her wrist. “Look.”
Her guts twist with fear. She can’t.
“Look.” A dangerous glint flares in the faerie’s eyes. Her grip tightens to the edge of pain.
Beatrix lowers her gaze to her wounded hand. Her heart lurches in her chest. The bleeding has stopped. The gash across her palm is gone, the only evidence it ever existed the sticky blood left behind, already drying. “But… how?”
“ ‘And then you will keep on living,’ ” the faerie says.
Beatrix wrenches her hand away. Her eyes well with tears she doesn’t want but can’t keep at bay. “Why are you doing this to me?”
The faerie shrugs. “I gave you a choice. This is what you chose.”
“You took everything from me!” Beatrix cries, all rage and desperation.
The faerie gives her a quizzical look. “Did I?”
The question is a slap in the face. William kept her daughter from her. William didn’t believe her. William threw her out.
He is just like the rest of Lancaut.
“I gave you what you asked for, Beatrix.” She sighs, heavy and dramatic. “But if you find you’ve changed your mind…”
Beatrix looks up sharply, her breath caught in her throat, hope caught in her heart. She could undo it, make it like it never happened.
The faerie flashes her a wicked grin. “Give me your soul, and I will let you die.”
All it would take is a single word. Her word. The only power Beatrix has over the faerie. A power she refuses to give up. She pulls herself to her feet and looks the faerie in the eye. “Never.”
“Haven’t you heard the saying, dear?” the faerie asks. “ ‘Never say never.’ ”
An urge deeper—darker—than mere stubbornness grips her. She hasn’t lost everything only to let the faerie win.
Maybe there is no winning. Maybe she is too headstrong for her own good, just like her mother said. But this is the only move Beatrix has in the faerie’s game. “I will never let you take anything else from me. I will never change my mind,” Beatrix says. “And you will never win.”
The faerie’s gaze hardens. “I suppose we’ll find out.”
She’s gone. Beatrix slumps to the ground, her courage vanished with the faerie, her heart thumping wildly in her chest, mocking her with its racing rhythm. Not the same as it was. Something else. Something different.
Beatrix doesn’t know how long she lies on the forest floor. The damp of fallen leaves seeps through her dress, and the cold of the night creeps into her limbs. She stares up at the star-scattered sky and vaguely wonders if she should pray to sleep or pray to wake. She doesn’t pray at all.
The words the faerie uttered to her, before she woke in her funeral clothes, in her funeral bed, whisper through her mind. You will live to regret this moment.
Beatrix thinks she understands. Thinks the heavy ache in her chest—to hold her daughter, to cradle her precious squirming form in her arms, to smell her sweet scent with every soft kiss she lays on her head—is regret.
Thinks the longing in her bones—to undo the faerie’s promise, to choose her words more carefully, to make William understand—is regret.
Thinks the urge to remake every decision in her life that has brought her to this moment is regret.
But it is only the beginning.
And then you will keep on living.