Page 17 of Rose's Untamed Bear

But that meant I couldn’t keep coming back every night. Couldn’t keep laying offerings at their door like some cowardly suitor. Couldn’t curl myself on the stoop to listen to Rose’s breathing through the wood.

The thought hollowed me out.

And yet… it was the only way.

Because I wanted her. Gods, I wanted her. More than the air in my lungs, more than the sun on my skin, more than the safety of the forest itself.

A normal life. With Rose.

The words burned through me, seared. No curse. No claws. Just her hand in mine. Just the warmth of her body pressed to mine without fear. Just her laughter spilling across a table we both shared, her eyes soft with love and not shadowed with worry.

I wanted it more than vengeance. More than pride. More than my own breath.

So I stood there at the edge of the trees and made myself a promise: I would go deeper. I would hunt Grimbalt into whatever pit or cavern he slunk back to and wrench the crystal from him to reverse the curse.

Because Rose deserved a man, not a beast skulking at her door.

And for her—for us—I would find a way.

The fire burrowed low in the stones, hissing as it sucked marrow from the half-dry logs. It was almost April, yet the cold clung to our valley cottage with the obstinacy of a ghost, and I hunched tight beneath the moth-eaten shawl that must have been Mother’s in her own girlhood. Across from me, Snow hunched too, her head bent in concentration, hands a blur of white over the blue kerchief she was embroidering. In a different mood, she would have drawn the lamp closer to light her stitches; tonight, she seemed content to sew by the flux of flame alone, as if candlelight might reveal something she preferred to keep blurred.

Mother’s back was to us at the hearth, but I could tell from the way she moved the spoon in the pot, she was not minding the stew at all. It had been hours since she last spoke, and even then, it was only to sigh at the woodpile or scold the wind for smokingdown the chimney. I tried not to think of how, just weeks before, there would have been a fourth voice in the room, Magnus. His grunts or snoring and low rumbles would have added to the night.

The cottage felt emptier now, the space around the hearth both too large and too small.

I was losing the battle with my nerves. Each time a log shifted, cinders leaped and died, and my mind would leap with them, tracing the pattern of sparks in the air and wondering if he was out there, somewhere, seeing the same constellations of light in the darkness of the trees.

Mother’s spoon struck wood with a hollow, almost ceremonial clack. For a long moment, she held it suspended, then set it with a careful click to the stones beside the pot. She turned, smoothing the front of her patched brown dress, and I recognized the shape of her decision before she spoke.

“Girls.” Her voice was rough and quiet, as if she’d spent the whole day arguing with herself before surrendering. “It’s time you heard a story.”

Snow’s needle froze in midair. I let my knees uncoil. Curiosity bloomed inside me, but the way Mother said it—slow and deliberate, as though each word might crumble—made the hairs rise along my arms. We had grown up on her stories: saints with silver bones, devils in the shape of toads, hunters, and witches, and all manner of unlucky princesses. She told them while baking, while braiding our hair, while scrubbing the kitchen, and sometimes, if she were in a mood, she would draw the shutters and whisper them in the dark. But this was different. This was not the beginning of a story I was sure I wanted to hear.

Mother lowered herself into the old chair, the one with the arm hollowed to a groove by decades of nervous picking. In the flicker of firelight, I saw her features shift, lines cut by age and worry, but still containing a beauty that shone through the crags, like the sun behind storm clouds.

She folded her hands over her lap and began. “Once upon a time, there was a girl,” she said, and though she tried for the old musical cadence, her voice trembled into the hush. “A girl with a beauty that made the world ache. They said the snow grew brighter when she walked upon it, and the birds in the woods grew bolder, flocking just to look her in the face. Even the king—who had all the world at his feet—left his palace to see her with his own eyes.”

Snow, who was never one to let a tale slide by without a comment, barely breathed. I could feel her watching me, waiting for me to smirk or roll my eyes at the cliché, but I was transfixed. I saw the girl in the story, saw her as I saw my sister, with hair so white-blonde it was nearly silver, high cheekbones, and full lips. I saw her as myself, too: red where the other was pale, freckled and rounder, but still prone to the kind of longing that made a person want to be the cause of a king’s journey.

I waited for Mother to smile, to let the tension out with a joke, but she only looked at us with eyes as deep and gray as the pond in February. “Men came from everywhere,” she continued. “They offered her jewels and horses, gold and honey, and velvet gloves. But she would have none of them. She was waiting for love's true call.”

A noise thudded against the window behind me, harder than a pinecone, softer than a fist. I jumped, then tried to cover it with a cough. Snow’s hands flew to her mouth. Mother barely blinked.

“A bat,” she said, as if she’d predicted the interruption, but I could see from the tightness in her jaw that she was only half-certain. A flutter of wings dissolved into the night, and we gave a nervous giggle.

Mother’s voice grew softer, lower, and the firelight deepened the shadows across her face.

“She refused the king,” she said, “because he was too old. Because she was a proud, silly girl who thought herself too fine for wisdom, too bold for safety. She wanted youth, handsomeness, laughter in her bed instead of silver hair and steady hands. She turned away from the man who would have cherished her, who would have laid kingdoms at her feet, and instead…” Mother’s mouth tightened, “…instead she chose a different man.”

Snow leaned forward, her eyes wide.

“He was young, yes. Handsome. Charming. And for a time, she thought she had won a better fate. But he was not what he seemed. He was a Bluebeard, a monster who kept his wives locked away, who murdered the ones who displeased him. The girl escaped—barely—pregnant with his child. And in her desperation, she went back to the king she had spurned.”

The shutters rattled with the sudden beat of a gust of wind, sending me jumping in my chair. Snow gasped. Mother didn’t flinch.

“The king forgave her,” she went on, her voice steady over the fire’s crackle. “He promised her safety. Promised her a crown. Promised to marry her, even though she carried another man’s child. But before he could, the wizard came.”

I swallowed hard as the hairs began to rise on my arms. Trepidation filled me, as if I had heard the story before.