Chapter 21
A Dream Come True
T abitha held Bandit and stared down at the castle as she prepared herself to brave its walls. Black and silver guards were everywhere, but there was no avoiding it. The princess and her ogre-slayer would not have returned to Carabus after the wedding last night, and she could not wait another moment before seeing them.
She had put this off long enough.
But when she looked down at her feet again, daring herself to move, she saw that a silver-tipped cat had joined her. “Fayette?”
The cat raised her chin and gave a dismissive sniff. “I told you that wasn’t my name . . . but I suppose that you must call me something if I am to stay here.”
“Stay here?” Why would the cat want to stay here?
“It is the Fae Queen’s orders. I am banished to this realm for however long you and your prince decide to live.”
Tabitha winced. “The Queen is angry at you then?” She couldn’t feel guilty for saving Tom, but she didn’t mean for the cat to carry the burden of her actions.
“Yes, but that isn’t really the reason she sent me. I am to be your protection from fae princes or any other faerie creatures who might seek to do you harm, though she did not say that I should have to work for free.”
Another bargain then. It was only fair, and Tabitha had noticed Fayette had come without any of her former clothing. “What do you want? Another dress? Though, I suppose you’ve realized that cats don’t often wear clothing here.”
“Yes, but they do get head scratches.”
Tabitha blinked in surprise. “You want me to scratch your head?”
“Behind both ears, if you please,” Fayette said patiently, waiting until Tabitha freed one of her hands to comply. “You will also provide for my food and waste removal as per the normal contract.”
“Contract?”
“The one that makes you my human. You signed one for him, didn’t you?” Fayette looked back at Bandit. “Or were you compelled to join his service by his looks alone?”
Tabitha didn’t know how to answer that. She certainly couldn’t argue against the logical absurdity, and somehow that made her feel a bit braver than she had been before.
Like she was in another dream with endless magic at her fingertips.
She squared her shoulders and looked at the castle again. “I think I’m ready to go in.”
Fayette nodded. “And we shall be right behind you.”
Tabitha thought she was navigating the castle and its steady maze of guards, servants, and footmen in their silver and black livery well enough until the last guard had her wait in one of the princess’s receiving parlors. That’s when she noticed the guard at the door had a faded scar, three thin white lines standing out from against his bearded face. Her heart wanted to race in reflex, but it had been racing this whole time. She had seen scars like that enough to know where they came from.
She wanted to say something, but her throat stayed dry as the desert, and it remained firmly closed until the guard turned away to hold the door open again. A flood of ruffled fabric bustled in, enhancing every movement made by the energetic princess. “Tabitha? Is everything all right? Where is Leo? Or should we all call him Tom now? I always liked it.” She glanced around the room again like she thought her brother might be hiding somewhere.
Perhaps she didn’t believe Tabitha would come on her own.
Tabitha could scarcely believe it either, but she tried to explain.
“Tom is . . . He’s at home. He doesn’t know I came.” Tabitha put down Bandit to reach for her ring instead. “But you know I married him? Part of the reason he resigned his title was so we could be together. Does it make you angry?”
The princess tilted her head like such a thought had never occurred to her. “How could I be angry? I might still miss that ridiculous popinjay occasionally, but I searched for my brother for seven years because I wanted to see him happy again, not so I could trap him here as a prince without his heart and soul. He wants to be with you.”
Still, Tabitha felt compelled to confess something more. “I know I could have come here to be with him instead, that you would have accepted me from the first, but I could never be a princess or live in a castle. I want to sew. I want to travel. I think I could keep learning to be braver than I ever used to be, but all of this . . .” She glanced about the room that couldn’t be the largest the castle had to offer. “This could never be the life for me. But you have all been so very kind that I wanted to explain, even if it’s hard for me.”
“Oh, Tabitha.” The princess reached for Tabitha before holding herself back, taking ahold of her skirts instead. “You don’t have to explain. Please—take my brother and travel the kingdoms. Just promise me that you’ll both be as happy as two people can be.”
“Tabitha?” another voice called, and Tabitha winced. She thought she had left Tom with enough to do about the shop not to notice her absence, but here he was.
And the princess looked positively gleeful at the development. “Oh, would you look at that? You made the poor boy sick with worry. Come on in, Tom. I promise we haven’t hurt her.”
“Perhaps not,” Tom said, walking the rest of the way to stand by her side. “But, Tabs, you know you don’t have to do this. We already decided I wasn’t going to be a prince.” He actually seemed cross about it, and Tabitha would have deserved it too—if she had truly tried to make him a prince again without his consent.
That wasn’t what she was here for, but perhaps she still should have told him. It had just taken so much to build up her courage that she had been worried she might lose it if she stopped and explained. Being married and successfully blending her life with someone else might still take some getting used to.
“Yes,” Tabitha agreed. “We decided you wouldn’t be a prince. And I am no princess. Still, you should be able to have your family, and I thought . . .” Tabitha hesitated, but she had spent more than enough time dreaming. She needed to speak her wish if she ever hoped to have it come true. She turned to face the princess dead-on. “Well, I don’t have much of a family of my own, and I thought I might very much want a sister.”
Tom blinked his surprise, but Ainsley danced in her spot, still holding onto her skirts like that was all that was keeping her grounded. “You want me? Really?”
“Really.”
And then the princess’s hands burst free. “Oh, I am going to hug you now. There really is no stopping it.” Her arms engulfed Tabitha, but only briefly before she was gesturing for Tom and Archie—who had been standing outside the door—to join them. “Everyone, come in here. And you will visit us at least once a year and write to me about your travels, and I shall be the best sister you could ever wish for.”
“I can’t write. I never learned how,” Tabitha said, though it seemed rather silly now. Her mother hadn’t much time for any sort of literacy, but Granny Tailor would have taught her if she had been brave enough to admit the fault before the elderly woman’s eyesight had started to fail.
How many dreams had been denied to her simply because of her own fear? Dreams that she could have used to continue to bless everyone around her? It certainly seemed clear that denying her own wish for a family and holding Ainsley at a distance had hurt them both needlessly.
Her new sister broke off their hug to shrug the concern away. “Then Tom will write. He really will be quite useless otherwise.”
“True enough,” Tom agreed without a hint of shame. “Or at least, the trade I spent my former life preparing for is useless to me now. But you have a fine trade that I never would want you to give up. So if I’m to be your kept man for a while, the least I can do is write. I can teach you as time goes on, and you can teach me to help more around the shop, dividing things however we please.” He said it all as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and perhaps it was.
That was how things always were in their dreams.
“It might not be the most traditional arrangement, but I never want you to doubt that you are the perfect match for me.”
More than perfect, it was everything Tabitha could have possibly wished for.
Except for maybe one thing. That guard was still standing at the door, and by his leering expression, Tabitha was certain she hadn’t mistaken who he was.
She looked to Tom. “All right. But before we leave, there is one last thing I need to tell you.”
“That you got another cat?” He looked down at Fayette with a wry smile as if he expected there would be many new cats in their future.
“No. That cat adopted me—per the usual contract. What I wanted to tell you . . .” Tabitha pointed with all the bravery she could muster—allowing herself to be a princess of the castle at least for one moment. “That man over there isn’t a good person, and I don’t want him anywhere near my new sister. Make him leave at once.”
Tabitha Brewer’s real life was far brighter than a mystical faerie land, now that she had learned to honor and fulfill her own dreams. After Tom and Archie had eagerly thrown Tabitha’s former attacker into a cell, she quickly gathered enough courage to visit the home where Granny Tailor was staying and tell her of their plans.
“Well, of course you have to sell the shop!” the elder woman said with a bit of a cackle. “You can’t just stuff the Prince of Umbrae up in that loft with you and all those cats forever.” Then she winked back at Tom, and added, “Though Sam and I somehow managed to have our first up there before we built the larger house together. The start of all our adventures. And that’s all I wanted for you—a proper adventure and a chance to make a few of your dreams come true. The shop is only four walls, but your talent and heart will go with you wherever you go.”
Granny Tailor’s speech had become more unguarded with age and left her eldest daughter blushing fiercely at the references to her own conception, but the whole family seemed supportive and determined to show their love for Tabitha in a proper send off—more than Tabitha might have been able to accept or even recognize before.
Han’sel and Gret’sel—now called merely Hans and Gerta—showed up the next week, while Tabitha and Tom were still cleaning and packing up the shop to sell.
Tabitha had worried, but Tom never minded any of the cats and seemed to take the new human additions to their family in stride. He only muttered about saving one of the nicer dresses from the shop for Gerta to wear and teaching Hans to use a bow “better than the useless miller boy,” in a way that made Tabitha certain that Tom would love them better than he would ever admit to.
He didn’t even mind when Fayette started to speak without warning and without apology. “What? You married him, but I was never supposed to talk to him? And let me tell you, I have a lot to say.”
Their strange family built in tragedy was only growing larger and more beautiful.
It also made Tabitha, almost in spite of herself, reflect on what Granny Tailor had said again. There might not be much room in their cot, but that only made the question more pointed.
What about the possibility of consummating their marriage and growing their family the more traditional way?
In the end, she had to ask Tom straight out and found that most of his initial hesitation had been on her behalf—not because of anything he had remembered from the Fae Realm. “I am not some pansy with womanly virtue to protect,” he had said as if the very question about his welfare had tweaked his stubborn pride. “The relationships I had there weren’t what I would have chosen, but I’d like to think that I found ways to use my position to my benefit.”
“Not just your benefit.” Tabitha wasn’t trying to argue with him; he would always be her stubborn cat and her noble prince in one. “You helped our children, and you helped me.”
Tom’s eyes turned more thoughtful at that. “I think I remember that. Those might have been some of my higher moments. There might have been some lower ones: moments where I truly felt I loved the Queen, and that she felt the same for me—in her own way at least. It was hard to sort out my own feelings in that place; there was a lot I didn’t understand, but I also believe there were many things that she did not understand. As such, I still cannot think of her in the same way that I think of that man who attacked you. She did right in the end, and I wish her well, even if I am glad to be free of her.” He paused, turning back to Tabitha. “Is that hard for you to hear?”
“No. I feel the same.” It was what she had thought herself in her only meeting with the Fae Queen. It was terrible to think that the Queen’s love had been manipulated by someone in her own family court, and Tabitha still found herself hoping that the woman would find something better. “I only wanted to be certain that our relationship not be built in the same way. I asked you to stay with me. I want you to stay with me, but if you felt rushed or obligated—”
“I do not feel obligated,” Tom said as if disgusted by the very idea. “I feel . . . I do not know how to describe it. Perhaps luckier than I have any right to be? I asked you to marry me because I wanted to. There is no hesitation from me, but I would happily wait months, years, even forever for you to feel the same.”
Feel the same? Tabitha had laughed, watching the adorable confusion cross Tom’s face.
But in that moment, it all seemed so clear. Tom loved her, and she loved him. They would rather face a hundred deaths each than cause the other more pain or fear. As such, neither had been willing to reach out and take the greater happiness that was available to them, even if it was something they both wanted.
They could continue in this pattern forever if nothing was done.
Tabitha had once promised herself that she would not kiss Tom until she knew he was hers to keep. And that night, she reached for another one of her dreams, kissing his confusion away and welcoming her husband closer. Letting him know with her actions that she was ready to be his wife in truth, in all the things that words could never say.
Afterward, Tom asked her to cut his hair back to what it had been before and found a bow to wear on his back. Now that he was no longer a prince, he had started using the name Tom Forester, becoming a hunter again and effortlessly picking up all the parts of his old life that still seemed meaningful to him.
So much happened in a steady stream that Tabitha didn’t have much time to think about what she would be leaving behind. It hit her all at once as she stood, ready to close the door of the old shop for the final time. This was the first place she had truly felt at home, where she could sew and let her imagination go wild. This was where she and Tom had shared their first few weeks of marriage, eventually putting away enough of their old scars to come together as one.
But as pleasant as those memories were, the shop was not the dream it once was, and anything she might truly miss, they carried with them.
She turned to the cart where Tom, the two children, and the cats were all waiting. This was her family now. And perhaps one day there would also be a child in the spring that would match the one spoken of in the matron’s prophecy—and that would be another dream come true.