Arthur
I caught her one day as I always did, falling through the land we now both called home and into the Underrealm. This landing took its toll—sending me right through a tall mirror which had been propped up in Reshina’s rooms for the times when Piffle draped her in luxurious gowns.
The glass shattered beneath me, and I lifted Reshina, preventing her from kneeling on the shards. She pulled me over to find my shirt torn and the skin of my back flayed in glass.
“This fall might be the death of me,” I grunted.
“Nonsense. You’re already healing. Just a few more and—”
“Fuck.” I grimaced as another shard left my skin. “Kill me now and take me out of my misery.”
She snorted into my neck just the way I loved and kissed my shoulder. “There. Already healing over. No worse for wear.”
I flipped her on her back, exploring her mouth, nipping at her lip. “If you’ll not kill me, Goddess, then marry me.”
Her mouth opened and shut half a dozen times before I went on. “Marry me. Make me your husband. Give me your hand and give me your mornings, your nights. Give me all the time between to call you my wife.”
“You cannot possibly want—”
“Oh, but I do.” I threaded my hands behind her head. “You need not say you love me. I do not ask for the impossible. I ask you to accept me as yours.”
As if she was frozen, she stared, her eyes wide.
“Marry me,” I whispered again. “Say yes.”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes, pressing my forehead to hers. “The most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.”
We were married on a gray winter day over a year after she came to me. Piffle ordained the ceremony. We held it in the library. Reshina dressed in a layered gown of black, sparkling in the low candlelight.
I do not know what I wore.
I do not know what I said or if I even combed my hair that morning—the only thing I was sure I’d done was tell her I would be her husband and love her for all the time I had left in this world.
I presented her with a ring I’d crafted myself—something I’d never done before, but needed to get right the first time.
I’d spent months hiding the metalworking books I was reading from her—taking quick peeks at them when she was helping Piffle in the kitchen.
Reading chapters in the dead of night while she slept soundly in our bed, her wings taking up so much of the space, I had little but a thin edge.
Crafting the actual ring was even more difficult.
There were times she believed me to be on the surface as the Beast when in reality, I was in the pantry, carving away at the band.
I worked to create the illusion of feathers into the gold, setting small diamonds into them to represent the silver tips of her wings—placing the perfect precious stone of black onyx at the center.
Piffle brought it by my request from Riche in a cut called marquise. It was regal. It was bold. It was her.
As I’d placed it on her finger, Reshina had struggled through the wording of the ceremony, adjusting what she was supposed to say. I didn’t even think twice about it, just steadied myself not to upheave the contents of my stomach on her perfectly polished pointed heeled shoes.
I made love to her so softly that night, she cried.
And no matter my consoling, she would not stop, pouring all of her tears into wails of anguish.
Of all the men who’d loved her over the centuries, I was the only one who’d promised not to leave her.
And I meant it. She couldn’t love me, but she could be with me and that was all I had to hope for in the world.
We spent months redecorating the corridors, cooking together, reading, dancing, writing our story in a draft I couldn’t even look over without tears brimming in my eyes.
Becoming her husband had softened my edges, redirected my purpose, and given me the simplest and honest truth—everything had been worth it to wake up each morning next to her.
Over a year after the curse had dragged her into the Underrealm, Reshina was mine. The Beast settled so calmly, so quietly, rarely roaming the surface, rarely speaking up as long as she was near, as if her presence was a comfort to us both.
She wrote dozens of letters to her children, tossing them into the fire, crumpling them, tearing them to pieces. She said she couldn’t find a way to come back into their lives that would benefit them.
I held her when she cried then, too.
I lived each day loving her with the intrinsic fear that one day, our world would shatter. We did not have all the time we wanted. It was a finite thing to love a Goddess trapped in the Underrealm. Loved and happy, but trapped all the same.
When the shattering did come, it came through a mouse.
With golden fur and a long golden tail, Piffle climbed up my chair next to the fire in the library, so small, I didn’t see him until he whispered in my ear.
“Master!” he squeaked, and I startled, snapping my book shut. “Do not alert the Mistress!”
My gaze darted to Reshina. She was bent over the latest book we’d been passing back and forth, writing notes and ideas about the story as we read the chapters together.
“Follow me!” Piffle-Mouse said, scurrying back down the side of the chair.
I rose and stretched, walking casually to her, placing a kiss on her head and murmuring something about tea and chocolate. She gave me a quick smile and nodded, returning to the book immediately.
My heart thundered in my chest. It wasn’t like Piffle to shy away from announcing himself to her. He loved her too in his way, their friendship one I admired.
I closed the library doors behind me to find the little Changlingfae ready to burst into tears. “It’s all my fault!” he cried. “I should never have sent the letter! I should not have done it!”
I sat on the bench along the wall, careful in my next words. “What letter did you send?”
He began to pace back and forth across our new red carpeting.
“One the Mistress meant for the fire. She’d been so wrought with it, you see, and tossed it carelessly.
But it missed the flames and I couldn’t help but pick it up and by then I was reading her words and, OH!
” He buried his face in his hands, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Piff,” I soothed, “if you sent one of Reshina’s letters to whom I think you did, why are you telling me now?”
“Because she’s here!” he squealed, eyeing the library doors when he realized how loud he’d been. “She’s right outside the gates to Heartstone! She’s begging to see the Mistress! It’s all wrong! All gone wrong!”
I stood on solid feet, taking his shoulders into my hands. “Listen to me. Who is at the gates, Piff?”
He stuttered on his next breath with guilt across his brows. “It is Seraphine DuPont, sire. The mistress’s daughter-in-law and Prince Korven’s wife!”
HUNT. KILL.
“No. None of that.”
BLOOD. HUNGER.
“You don’t need those things anymore.”
ALWAYS NEED. brINGER?
“She is below. Safe. But this is important, Beast. You must try to let me speak through you again.”
I peered through the eyes of the Beast, finding the spot of red at the black gates. Seraphine’s blood raced through her veins despite the bitter cold.
“Where is she!” her voice called, echoing across our lands as the Beast approached.
The unfamiliarity struck somewhere deep inside.
I’d hardly heard her voice when we’d met over a decade before.
“I need to speak with the Ravenfae Goddess Reshina! Or Arthur! Get Arthur! Please! He’ll know who I am, please, if you have any sense of what I’m saying… to…you…”
Her words trailed as the Beast stood fully before her.
She took a step back, far enough from the fence that he wouldn’t be able to reach her through the bars.
Even through the Beast’s muted color in his vision, I could see that she was just as beautiful as the day I’d intended to save her all those years ago.
Her now pointed ears told me she’d somehow become fae.
Another story for another time, perhaps.
I urged my voice through the Beast. “SPEAK.”
Her chest rose and fell rapidly in her cloak, the hem soiled in inches of mud. “I must speak with Reshina. It is imperative that I do so. Now.”
“WHY.” I’d meant it as a question, but the tone did not deliver.
Seraphine wrapped her arms around her chest, her face crestfallen. “She must know the condition of her daughter, Morella. We,”—her eyes darted across the snow behind me, flickering over the walls of the gray stone castle—“need her help.”
She bolted to the gate, wrapping her fingers around the frozen posts. “Please! Her life is in danger! We’ve tried everything! We’ve been searching for Reshina for weeks. Her daughter needs her, please, please let her go!”
“CANNOT.”
Seraphine’s face flared in rage as she rattled the bars.
“Then bring her to me! Or allow me passage to that castle and I will speak to her!” In an uncharacteristic fit, she banged on the bars of the gate, kicking at the metal until it clanged.
“If you do not allow me through, I will find a way through myself!”
In a flash of skirts, she turned, running along the edge of the fence. “Reshina!” she screamed. “Reshina!”
“Let her through,” I urged.
BLOOD. SWEET. NEW.
“If you let her through, I will speak to Reshina about letting you bite her again.”
BITE brINGER.
“Yes, now open the gate!”
I knew he warred with the idea, thinking correctly that it was a lie. But he did as I asked, allowing me to call out to Seraphine. “ENTER.”
She skidded to a stop, splattering more mud along her skirts and cloak. The Beast reached the gate and lifted it off its hinges, swinging it open with ease. With admirable caution, she stepped through, keeping her distance.
“BELOW,” I explained.
“Can you show me the way?”
“YES.”
The Beast trudged forward, the snow hitting his knees where it came up to Seraphine’s hips. She followed behind his wake, her teeth chattering loudly.
When we reached the entrance to the Underrealm, I made the Beast speak once more. “STAY.”
The Beast descended the stairs and in the transformation, she gasped. When I turned, her hands were over her mouth, realization, panic, and tears in her eyes. “Arthur?”
I held my hand out to her at the last step. “Come, Seraphine. I will take you to my wife.”