Chapter 15
Fifteen
As you climb into bed, the mattress as uncooperative as a dead body beneath your spine, you keep thinking about his embrace.
The sheer joy of it. The way joy lit his face every time he turned his head and saw you, still standing there, still solid and real and beside him.
Because he doesn’t know what you are, a hissing voice inside you scolds, Do you think that joy would survive him knowing?
No. No, you don’t think it would.
I can’t assume he wants me to stay.
So what if Gertrude asked the Fair Queen about me?
What did she even say?
It didn’t change anything.
It didn’t save me.
Cyrus was right to say it didn’t matter.
You found him, he’s human, he’s happy.
Gertrude broke the curse. Gertrude’s a queen.
Everyone is happy now, and they were happy without you.
Move on before you ruin them.
Move on move on move on, you tell yourself. Even so, you fall asleep thinking of his feathers. How pristine they were. How pretty, how well-cared for. How they caught the light. And how soft they looked.
You dream of them stained by the blood on your hands.
You wake with a new crack in your already broken heart. All right, you say to yourself, surrendering to the part of you that can discern illusions from dreams, I’ll go.