Page 12 of Beyond the Cottage (After the Fairytale #1)

Chapter 12

A nsel’s feet carried him through the halls by muscle memory alone. He kept his unfocused eyes trained ahead, willing the prison’s shadows to devour him whole.

He'd found Gretta.

And she hated him.

She truly hated him, and he couldn’t undo it. More than that, he deserved it. His transgressions would be despicable in any context, but committing them against her, in the way she most feared…

He let out a roar and slammed his fist into a door. The skin on his knuckles broke, leaving a bloody smear on the wood, and he flexed his damaged hand. The physical pain didn’t register against the constricting in his chest.

He could hardly breathe for what he’d done to her. If there was some way to go back in time, he’d knock the teeth out of his head and let her cut out his heart with the dagger he’d stolen. But there was no going back.

Hell, he ought to embrace what he was feeling, treating it as penance, the only justice he could offer her.

And he would. Gretta detested him now, and he accepted it.

…But what about before? Had she meant it when she said she never cared about him? He wanted to believe she’d lied to hurt him, that this miserable, fucked up situation wasn’t a reflection of their past. Every cell in his body rebelled against the idea that their former bond had been one of mere utility for her.

Because to him, she’d been everything.

He nearly hadn’t survived the cottage before Gretta came. He’d spent two years alone with the Eater, wasting away, barely enduring the brief visits from the children she lured with her enchanted song. The details of what happened to the others were mostly blank places in his memory, but his skin still shriveled when he pictured their tear-stained faces.

As far as Ansel knew, he was the first one the old witch hadn’t consumed. After luring him, she kept him as a houseboy, delegating the tasks she no longer had strength for. As she aged further, Ansel’s physical and emotional burdens increased. He deteriorated, becoming little more than a twitching, emaciated wraith.

Then, three days before his fourteenth birthday, the Eater presented him with a gift—a waifish girl of twelve who had cropped hair and doe eyes.

She was to be Ansel’s helper and companion.

The girl had been terrified, trembling in a corner. After the witch beat her with a wooden spoon, it took Ansel hours of gentle coaxing to get her out from under the butcher block table.

Eventually, she came to trust him. And she did more than ease his physical burdens. She gave him purpose, a reason to bother surviving at all. He’d hated that she was trapped with him, but he let himself find comfort in loving her.

They spent eleven months together before they escaped, and when they found a farmhouse outside the woods, they were taken to a constable who notified their parents. Ansel and Gretta clung to each other, refusing to be separated while they waited. Then her parents came, and he just…never saw her again. And she didn’t say goodbye.

What if she had meant what she said? What if the trauma of the cottage had made him so desperate for connection, he misconstrued her survival instincts for affection?

He couldn’t be that delusional, though, could he? Surely he’d meant something to her?

When he lost her, he’d been… Devastated wasn’t a strong enough word. There wasn’t one. During the six weeks he spent in a crowded orphanage, waiting for his father to show up, he mourned Gretta’s loss like a sickness. He became frailer and rarely slept. It took years to fashion himself into something resembling a functional adult. Once he’d given up on finding her, the only thing that had kept him going was his research.

And she’d just moved on?

Ansel’s nails dug into his palms. Of course she’d moved on. She’d always been stronger than him. And he was glad of it. Better she got over the past quickly, rather than languish in grief and futility like Ansel. She’d clearly gone on to better things, a better life.

Until he came back into it.

Ansel reached the kitchen, unsure how he got there. He found Seven sitting on a counter with a damp cloth pressed to her cheek, while Jonas tied off catgut sutures on his arm.

“Are you seeing this?” Jonas asked, brandishing medical shears. “I needed goddamn stitches.”

“I see it.” Ansel mechanically retrieved buckets from the corner and pumped water. He peeled off his shirt and rinsed away the worst of the mud before filling another bucket.

“His nose needs resetting,” Seven said. “He won’t let me near it.”

“Fucking yeah it does,” Jonas said. “You didn’t need to clock me, dick, she asked for what she got.”

Ansel stopped pumping. He set the full bucket on the burning stove and approached Jonas until their chests nearly touched. “I suggest you reevaluate that sentiment.” He snapped the broken nose in place with two thumbs.

“Ow, fuck!” Blood dripped onto Jonas’s already gruesome shirt. “You could have warned me, asshole! And you know what, I bet you didn’t handle shit with the pixie. Tell that little cunt to keep her distance, or I’ll take care of her myself.”

Ansel didn’t blink. His hand slowly, almost tenderly, closed around Jonas’s throat, tightening until his cousin’s reddened cheeks swelled and his fingers clawed at Ansel’s wrist. Seven watched dispassionately.

“Call her a cunt again.”

Jonas choked, grappling with Ansel’s arm. His eyes watered, and his foot shuffled in something approximating a kick.

Jonas was big, but he’d never been much of a fighter.

“Let…g—uh—me.”

Ansel eased up just enough. “I said call her a cunt again. I want you to, so you’ll see what happens. It’s a pale shadow of what I’ll do to you if you ever touch her again.”

“Algh— alright ! She’s not a cunt!” When Ansel let go, Jonas slumped against the counter, violently rubbing his neck. “What in the ever loving fuck is wrong with you?”

Ansel collected another bucket.

“I mean it, what’s going on? You’ve been a complete lunatic ever since you tapped her.”

Ansel placed the filled bucket on the stove. He gripped the counter, bracing himself on straightened arms. “The pixie,” he said, lifting his head. “She’s Gretta. I didn’t realize it until this morning.”

Jonas and Seven gave him blank stares. After a pause, Jonas’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. Gretta Gretta?”

“Yes.”

Another pause, then Jonas smiled and burst out laughing. Ansel stared at a cabinet handle.

“Who’s Gretta?” Seven asked.

“She was…” What? His missing half? His fucking soul? The only person he’d ever loved in his miserable goddamn life? “My friend. From childhood.”

“Friend, right,” Jonas sniggered. “Ansel was obsessed with her. Some old lady forced them to do her chores for a while, and he wasted years hunting the girl down after she ran away.”

Ansel didn’t correct the insipid description of what he and Gretta had gone through. He’d never told Jonas the details and didn’t regret it.

“So you never saw her again?” Seven asked. “Until now?”

“I didn’t. I believed she was human, so I looked in the wrong places.”

And why had she hidden her species from him in the cottage? She’d been too young for her volatus to develop, but why hadn’t she told him? He might have found her years ago, before he became a withered husk of a person. He might have recognized her when Jonas brought her to him.

Jonas stopped laughing, but his grin remained. “I can’t tell if I did you a favor or not. Guess you’d be screwed either way.”

“You’re the one to blame for this,” Seven snapped.

Not true. Jonas erred in abducting her, but Ansel had fucked everything else up well enough on his own.

He pushed off the counter and retrieved another bucket.

“So…” Seven went on. “How did Miss Hacker react when she discovered who you are?”

“She despises me more than ever.”

Jonas hooted. Ansel pumped more aggressively and dropped the bucket beside the stove.

Seven chewed her ragged pinkie nail before brightly saying, “She must have missed you, too. Perhaps she’ll come around. If you apologize…”

“There’s nothing I can say that will resolve this.”

Seven opened her mouth to speak and closed it with a sigh.

“What do you plan to do with her?” Jonas asked. “I take it fucking is off the table.”

Ansel grimaced. The memory of kneeling on his bedroom floor, masturbating to thoughts of her, came swift and sharp. He’d found the act perverse before, but now it seemed akin to sacrilege.

Neck burning, he pulled a plate and tray off a shelf. “When the storm passes, I’ll escort her to Antrelle. After, I’ll wait for the pixies to replenish their dust and send them home.” Ansel turned to Seven. “I expect Gretta will go to the police, so you need to leave after the storm. Go far, and lay low for a while.”

“What will you do?” she asked.

“I…don’t know.”

“What about Isobel?”

Ansel would need to pay her a visit. He hadn’t yet had the chance to tell her their business relationship was coming to an end. “I’ll speak with her. I’m certain she’ll be fine.” The old bat always landed on her feet.

“This is goddamn ridiculous,” Jonas said. “I should have left the pixie in that dump I took her from.”

Ansel had no concern for Jonas’s opinion. Family or not, he was finished with his cousin.

Seven, on the other hand, deserved a chance. Once Ansel paid off the pixies, there wouldn’t be much money left, but it should be enough to get her started someplace else.

While the water heated, Ansel rooted around the cupboards. He put a fresh loaf of bread and some cheese on the plate.

Seven collected an apple from a bushel and added it to the tray. “What if she only needs time to forgive you? Time for the dust to settle, as it were?”

Ansel never wanted to hear the word dust again.

He filled a canteen and draped it over his shoulder before collecting the tray. “Would you please get clean clothing for Gretta?”

Seven nodded.

On Ansel’s way out, he paused in front of Jonas. “If you go anywhere near her again, I’ll make sure you evacuate the farm via an alligator’s asshole.”

He walked away before his cousin could respond.