Page 44 of How To Survive This Fairytale

“Felt like going home to find I didn’t quite belong anymore,” he says.“And yet… The happiness of being in the water was exactly the same kind of happiness.Not a lesser kind at all.Not… sullied, or shadowed.I felt likemyselfagain.A few times I even forgot I was a man.Then I remembered, and my heart broke.Splash your fist against the water, and that was my heart, all those little fragmentary droplets.But then I wasgladto be a man because I could shove you under the water and hang on your shoulders and make myself an utter nuisance to you.”

You laugh.He laughs.

He glances at you.He looks away.

Silence.

Until:

“I wished for you, Hans.”His throat bobs as he swallows, still looking at the lake.“I could have wished for anything, and I wished for you.”

“What?”

“After Gertrude made me human.After I told her what happened that day in the woods.After she wrote to the Fair Queen.I found a Mothering Tree… and I wished for you.Not with words.I couldn’t articulate a single thing.But I remember thinking,Don’t let me be too late.And then I was too late.And then I wasn’t.And now you’re here, and the only reason I haven’t kissed you yet is because you deserve to be someone’s True Love.”

Everything in your body goes still.Almost numb.

Not even the beat of your heart reaches your ears.

“I made a wish too,” you say.“A long time ago.I wished someone in the world would care about me.”

“That’s a heartbreaking wish.”

“I was heartbroken when I made it.”

When he meets your eyes again, he hesitates to speak.“Icare about you,” he says.

The soft earth squelches underfoot as you close the distance.You crouch next to his boulder, a little lower than his eye level.The sun plays in his hair, along his shoulder.It haloes his feathers.

“I don’t have to be your True Love,” you say.“I could share you with the lake, with the sky, with the fish and the stars and…”

Cyrus shakes his head as you speak.He cups your chin with his fingers and makes youlook at himshaking his head.

“Let me have a say in this,” you plead.

“I’d only give you scraps.”

“How different would it be from what we already are?”you ask.“What you’ve given me is more than scraps.”

You reach for his jaw and swipe your thumb over a patch of flaxen stubble.His jaw clenches under your hand.Words take shape before he even begins to speak.

“I love the world.I love my sister.I love you.But it’s also not enough.It’s all there is, and it’s not enough.I liked life better when I was cursed.When Gertrude broke the curse, she broke me, too.Shebroke me.My heart, my spirit, the ineffable forces that move me… I spent years before you came back trying to fix it.But I think I just… can’t.Ican’t.Can’t fix it, can’t make myself right again,can’t.I wished for you, and I can’t give you what I’d hoped I could.”

“I will take whatever you can give,” you say.

With those words, you have pledged your troth.You both know it.The weight of that admission—that promise—prevents Cyrus from rejecting you for a blessed half a minute.

“Eventually you’d feel it.That I was settling for you.‘Since I can’t betrulyhappy, I might as well pass the time with Hans.’”

“How else should we pass the time, if not together?Why must we beperfectlyhappy in order to be happy together?”

He places his thumb on your lips, silencing you.

You stare into his eyes.He stares into yours.

And for the first time, it strikes you:

You’re kneeling before a prince.A prince who doesn’t want to be a prince, but a prince nonetheless.A prince who doesn’t want to be human, but is human nonetheless.So much of his life isn’t what he wants.