Chapter 62
sixty-two
Isabeau
The bog stretched before us like an open wound in the earth, festering under a sky that couldn’t decide between dawn and dusk. Even from the edge of the trees where Alain and I had reined in our mounts, I could taste the corruption. Metallic and sour, like blood mixed with spoiled milk.
Enid had chosen this place deliberately, letting the curse that had twisted the Forbidden Forest seep out to infect her dwelling. The plants here didn’t just die. They surrendered, bending into unnatural shapes as if bowing to the darkness that ruled them.
“This is it,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. The claiming mark on my shoulder pulsed with warmth, as if my beasts were trying to reach me across the barrier between worlds. “She’s here.”
Alain slid from his mare’s back, his hand automatically going to the sword at his hip.
His face was set in grim determination, jaw clenched tight enough to crack walnuts.
I’d seen that look before, when he’d followed me into the forest despite the dangers, when he’d protected me from the hunters.
A prince becoming something more than what his court had molded him to be.
“I don’t like this,” he murmured, helping me down from the unicorn’s back. His hands lingered at my waist a moment longer than necessary, his eyes searching mine. “The air feels... wrong.”
He wasn’t wrong. The air hung heavy with magic, but not the kind that flowed through my veins. This was twisted, corrupted—power that had been bent against its nature for too long. My own magic recoiled from it, curling protectively around my heart.
The unicorn snorted, pawing at the ground with one silver hoof. Its horn glowed faintly, cutting through the unnatural gloom. Above us, the raven circled once, then settled on a dead tree at the bog’s edge, its eyes reflecting light that wasn’t there.
“Stay close to me,” Alain said, his free hand finding mine.
The mark on his shoulder—my mark—pulsed in sync with mine.
I didn’t bite him, but once he bit me, a reflection of light glimmered in the shape of the one he left on me.
The connection between us was still new, raw, but it grounded me in ways I hadn’t expected.
We moved forward together, picking our way carefully across ground that squelched and bubbled with each step. Plants withered as we passed, not from our presence but from the poison seeping up from beneath the soil. Nothing healthy could survive here long.
Ahead, nestled in the center of the bog, sat Enid’s hut.
It wasn’t what I’d expected from a witch powerful enough to curse an entire realm.
No gingerbread walls or chicken legs, just a simple structure of wood and mud that listed slightly to one side, as if the very earth beneath it was trying to retreat.
Smoke poured from a crooked chimney, unnaturally black and thick.
“She’ll know we’re coming,” I said, feeling the witch’s awareness prickling against my skin like nettles. “She’s probably watching us now.”
“Good,” Alain replied, his voice hard. “Let her know her time has come.”
I squeezed his hand, drawing strength from his certainty. “Remember, once we’re inside, I need to be the one to confront her. Her magic and mine are connected somehow. I can feel it.”
He nodded, though reluctance darkened his eyes. “I’ll be right beside you.”
“Until Gaspard shows up,” I amended. The claiming mark flared at the hunter’s name, a spike of possessive anger that wasn’t entirely mine.
My beasts, feeling my emotions through our connection.
And now Alain too, his jaw tightening at the mention of the man who’d hurt me.
“He’s close. I can sense him too. A warning from my magic. ”
We were fifty paces from the hut when the door creaked open. No dramatic burst of power, no theatrical entrance. Just a door, swinging inward on rusted hinges to reveal darkness beyond.
“Isabeau,” a voice called from within, reedy and thin as if coming from lungs that hadn’t drawn proper breath in decades. “I’ve been expecting you, daughter of Artemis.”
The name hit me all at once. Artemis. My mother’s name that I didn’t know her by. Not a nickname as I’d thought, but her actual name. A goddess name, from the old stories.
“Stay back,” I warned Alain as I took a step forward. “If anything happens to me—”
“Nothing’s happening to you,” he cut me off, his grip on his sword tightening. “Not while I draw breath.”
A figure appeared in the doorway, and I barely contained my gasp.
Enid looked... fractured. As if someone had taken two different women and imperfectly stitched them together.
One half of her face was that of an old crone, wrinkled and spotted with age, the eye cloudy and unfocused.
The other half was younger, almost beautiful, with skin like polished marble and an eye that glowed with unnatural amber light.
“The prince comes with the goddess-born,” Enid said, her voice alternating between creaky age and sultry youth with each syllable. “How... unexpected, but I only see the present.”
Her gaze fixed on my shoulder, where the claiming mark pulsed beneath my dress. A smile twisted half her mouth.
“The fourth mate,” she said, her younger half speaking now. “The curse breaks further. My Lord won’t be pleased.”
“I didn’t come to please your lord,” I said, drawing on every scrap of courage I possessed. “I came to end this. To free the forest and my beasts.”
Enid laughed, a sound like glass shattering.
“So bold. So like your mother.” Her expression shifted, the younger half of her face taking control.
“I didn’t know she was with child. I swear I didn’t know.
” Then, as quickly, the older half reasserted itself.
“It wouldn’t have mattered. The Dark Lord demands what he demands. ”
She was fighting herself. I could see it now. Two versions of the same witch battling for control. One corrupted by darkness, one clinging to whatever scraps of humanity remained. But she wasn’t like this last time I saw her. Last time my mother’s spirit surprised her by protecting me.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, taking another step forward despite Alain’s warning hand on my arm. “What does my mother have to do with this?”
Before Enid could answer, a horn blasted from the forest’s edge. Not the melodic call of a hunting party, but the harsh, militaristic blast that announced the king’s men. I turned to see riders emerging from the trees, their armor catching what little light penetrated the bog’s gloom.
“They found us,” Alain muttered, positioning himself slightly in front of me. “Sooner than I expected.”
But it wasn’t the king’s men who held my attention. It was the figure leading them, his black hair pulled back in a severe tail, his face alight with a predatory satisfaction that turned my stomach to ice.
Gaspard.
He’d found us. Of course he had. He’d always find me, until one of us was dead.
“Run,” Alain urged, giving me a gentle push toward the hut. “Deal with the witch. I’ll handle him.”
My hand reached for him, uncaring who saw my worries written cleanly on my face. “Alain—”
“Go!” He turned to face me fully, his eyes blazing with determination and something deeper, something I wasn’t ready to name. “Trust me, Isabeau. I can do this.”
Oh, how I hated having to trust him. His life was on the line because of me. Because he cared for me as much as I did him.
“You cannot battle a whole army,” I pleaded.
“The faster you kill the witch, the longer I’ll live.
” I hated his logic, and I had a feeling his father wouldn’t kill him.
If anything, the king would blame me and my magic for his son helping me defy him.
He’d think killing me would be how he needed to save his son, so I had to kill the witch first.
I nodded, throat too tight for words. The claiming mark pulsed once, hard, as if my beasts were lending Alain their strength through our shared connection.
As I turned back toward the hut, a new sound rose above the approaching hunters’ calls.
A rumbling, like distant thunder, but continuous and growing louder by the second.
From the corner of my eye, I caught movement at the forest’s edge.
Not more hunters, but something else entirely. My breath caught.
Animals poured from the trees. Not just ordinary forest creatures, but the denizens of the sacred acre.
The last pure place in the Forbidden Forest had emptied itself, sending its inhabitants to our aid.
Foxes with seven tails, birds trailing sparks from their wings, deer whose antlers glowed like moonlight.
Phoenixes and gryphons were in the air too.
At their forefront, a magnificent stag with antlers that branched into impossible fractal patterns, each tine tipped with blue fire.
The unicorn I’d ridden whinnied in greeting, rearing up on its hind legs before charging to meet its kin. The raven cawed once, twice, then launched itself into the air to circle above the coming battle.
“Impossible,” Enid whispered, her voice momentarily unified in shock.
“The guardians have not left the acre in a century.
Arty protected their acre long before the curse to shield the creatures from those opposed to magic hunting them.
That's how she protected their acre with the roses, feeding them the life force of the most precious sacrifice to protect them.”
I felt it then. The pull between myself and the creatures. Not a conscious summoning. I hadn’t known I could call them. But something in my blood sang to something in theirs.
The goddess blood the Dark Lord had mentioned, perhaps.
If I was the demigod child of Artemis, her powers ruled over wildlife and the moon. She was the goddess of the hunt, often depicted with a bow.