Astrid

“What do you think they’re talking about?” I murmur, resting my cheek against my arm on the railing of the staircase.

Imogen, Eli and Bayorn huddling beside me provides a warmth in the cool winter air that seeps in through the cracks in the windows and doors. And perhaps, they provide a warmth to combat the twinge in my stomach as well.

“Gross romantic things,” Eli says unhelpfully, pulling his fur coat tighter around himself.

Imogen shoots him an admonishing look she thinks I cannot see. “Would you not feel warmer in our chambers?”

“I want to be with you all,” he sniffs importantly.

We all fall silent once more and try to listen for the echoes of their voices. Isabelle’s giggle sounds once, and the part of me that wants the curse broken hopes she will retain her humor once she sees Kieran dance.

Then the giggles turn into a sharp scream.

The four of us look between each other. For a brief moment, we remain unsure whether or not we all heard the same sound.

The scream pierces the air again.

We run. Imogen tries to grab Eli’s hand to pull him to safety, but the boy slips out of her reach quickly. She hisses in panic and nearly tumbles down the stairs past me.

Isabelle trips over her yellow dress and rams directly into me. Bayorn catches us both to steady us, but there is no time to regain proper stability.

The beast is bounding towards us. All of us.

We have trained for this. Our feet move in unison down the hallways. Every corner we turn reminds me of the day I first arrived here, frantically following the sound of my father’s screams. Bayorn lags behind us every now and then to throw the knives strapped to his person with expert accuracy. The beast’s responding roars amplify in this enclosed space.

Lead it into the dungeons and grab your weapons there. You may be trapped inside with it, but everything you need will be in there. Lock yourselves in the prisons.

Isabelle suddenly halts dead in her tracks.

Even Bayorn surpasses her. Before any of us can yell at her to continue, she spins on her heels.

The monster bounds directly towards her.

“Stop!”

Her voice rings out with clear authority. If the beast does not obey, the rest of us do.

I turn.

As if thrown off-balance by some unseen force, the beast crashes against the walls. The framed portraits fall onto the floor and glass spills.

“Kieran, you will stop right now and you will listen to my voice.” She does not waver. Does not shake.

It shakes its head in frustration. Agitation. Confusion.

Then it screeches in that chilling, inhuman voice. Isabelle opens her mouth to issue another command, but I can already see its eyes narrow into slits.

Kieran is lost.

My fingers claw into the skin of her arms. Just before the beast’s jaws clamp over her neck, I pull her out of reach and we tumble onto the floor.

It claws at the ground mercilessly. We scramble backwards on our hands and feet like frightened spiders. Specks of slobber fly against my face and neck.

Something whizzes past us, barely missing the side of my head. A knife embeds itself into the creature’s neck. It buys us enough time to leap to our feet, but not enough time to put enough distance between ourselves and the beast. My hands fumble against the walls for a torch. When I grip it, I whirl and prepare myself for the charging nightmare.

Just before I can declare fire, a small body squeezes between Isabelle and me.

“Eli!”

Imogen completely loses sense. She darts towards the monster. We all run towards the monster. But Eli is small, and he is quicker than I anticipated.

He stops directly in front of the beast and holds both arms in front of him.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” he cries, louder than all our panicked screams.

The beast stops, panting heavily. It rises to its massive height and raises its talons, the thirst for blood unstoppable in its eyes as they focus solely on the child.

In one sweeping blow, it brings down its talons.

A portion of the brick wall crumbles.

Eli still remains standing.

Imogen pushes me roughly to the side and stumbles forward, but she, too, must notice the shift in the air. That pause. She staggers to an impossible halt. I hold my breath.

“Stop it, Kieran,” Eli tells the beast, his voice quivering. “You’re scaring me.”

It snorts. Puffs out angry breaths. Shakes its head and strikes the wall once more.

I catch a glimpse of its pupils widening slowly.

The beast releases one more screech. It claws at its own face, as if battling a raging war nobody can see. Perhaps it is. Perhaps he is.

The moment the beast turns around to tear down the hallways, Imogen collapses to the floor.

Kieran does not return the next morning. We practically tear the castle apart brick by brick but find no sign of him. He is not in the stables, nor anywhere within the perimeter of the castle’s enchantment.

Bayorn searches for him at night while I spend the hours wide awake. None of this makes sense any more. The rules of the enchantment are all bent and close to breaking.

After three days, Bayorn decides to go searching for Kieran outside the borders of the enchantment.

“Are you sure?” I ask him as he throws a saddle over his horse in the stables.

“It is the only way, miss. I will be back within the hour, I promise.” He shows me the wristwatch I lent him to assure me.

I am not assured.

“I will come with you,” I say.

He opens his mouth to argue, but I stop listening. I take Alfeir out of the stall and set him up for riding.

“Where are you going?” Isabelle’s voice sounds from the entrance of the stable. She approaches us, hugging herself in the cold. Her eyes dart between our horses. “You’re going outside?”

Bayorn looks like he regrets every decision he has made this morning. “It is too dangerous, Miss Astrid. You may lose your way and never return.”

It is a risk I am willing to take, I want to say, but out loud I tell him, “Alfeir knows the way back. He is intuitive. And I will not go far; I memorized the way home from my first month here.”

“I’ll go with her,” Isabelle offers. I want to argue, but her jaw is set. “That way I can bring her home if anything happens.”

This, Bayorn cannot argue with. He heaves a begrudging sigh.

Then he nods to Valkyrie. “Take her, then. And be back fifteen minutes before the hour is up. No less.”

We obey. I help Isabelle onto Alfeir and I take Valkyrie out of the stables. She senses my anxiety – and possibly the absence of her master – and allows me onto her back with more ease than usual.

I start the timer on my watch the moment the road turns into pure dirt. Since Isabelle is less experienced in riding, we take a slower pace and keep our eyes peeled for any large, looming creature that may or may not be happy to turn us into breakfast.

“What a mess,” Isabelle says in a breath that is almost inaudible.

“Hmm?” Did something move between the snow and trees?

“All this. It’s one big, crazy mess.” She scoffs – or does she chuckle? “When you made an offer for adventure and danger back at the stadium, I don’t know why this sort of scenario never really panned out in my mind.”

I turn my attention to her. “Do you wish to return, then?”

Her chest rises and falls. Something shifts in her expression, but I cannot identify it.

“That depends on whether you want me to go home.”

My eyebrows lift in surprise. “Why?”

“Because I can’t break the curse,” she looks at me pointedly.

My mouth hangs open, and she takes this as confirmation of my intentions.

“I know you’re hoping for me to fall in love with him, but that’s just not going to happen. I’m sorry. I’m not ready for that kind of thing, you know? He’s a good friend to me. But that’s it. That’s all it will ever be, and that’s enough for me. Somehow I feel like that’s enough for him, too.”

My heart plunges. A part of me is relieved for some morbid, selfish reason. Another part of me wants to scream profanities at the sleeping trees.

“So,” she swallows, her voice growing small. “Now that you know I serve no real purpose here, do you want me to go home?”

Valkyrie snorts uneasily. My hand runs up and down the side of her neck to appease her. I suck in a breath and inhale the crisp winter air.

“Do you still want to stay here?” I turn the question back to her instead. This time, my words are not sugar-coated with ardent promises; I tire of promises. “Even if you face the possibility of death and the chance of no return to your home, your mother and brother and your favorite uncle Sal – would you still stay?”

Isabelle stares at Alfeir’s mane, as if he can answer the question for her. She draws a deep breath.

“I used to not live at all. Back at home, people didn’t even know me as the quiet type; they just didn’t know I even existed. Period. The only time anybody ever really took notice of me was when someone circulated a picture of me naked.”

Her voice tightens. “After some time, you start to believe you are nothing, you know? That’s the worst thing: not to be absolutely nothing, but to be nothing much. Like no matter what you do, it’s never going to be enough.

“And then suddenly, I run into this crying girl. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have approached a total stranger. But I think it’s destiny that I did. It’s destiny that I’m here. And I like the person I am here – I’m stronger. Braver, and yet still myself. I can be whoever I want to be. I’ve never felt more like myself as I do with you guys, in this strange little world. So what kind of a person will I be if I were to just leave you in your struggle?”

I watch her silently as she closes her eyes and tilts her head to the sky. Overhead, the first flakes of snow begin to fall. They touch the trees, the horses, our cloaks, like feathers that melt.

“If you die,” I speak in low tones as if someone else can hear us. “You will never be able to change whatever it is you wish to change in your life at home. All this,” I gesture to the cold world. “All this is my reality. Not yours.”

“You are every bit as much alive as I am,” she insists, eyes flashing open. “It was hard to wrap my head around this place at first, but I see your pain. It’s the same pain there is back where I’m from. Our realities may be different, Astrid, but you and I are definitely real. You and I are real.”

She is right. Of course she is right.

Isabelle turns her gaze on me expectantly. Her question still hangs in the air:

Now that you know I serve no real purpose here, do you want me to go home?

“I want you to stay,” I say as softly as the snow. “You do have a purpose here: you are my friend.”

Her molten brown eyes study me with a happy sadness.

But before she can utter a word, distant shouts interrupt our conversation.

I squint and catch a glimpse of a group of people trudging through the snow: some are on horseback and some are on foot. All of them yield weapons.

I glance at my watch. We have only been away for twenty-three minutes. We could not have gotten far.

“Astrid, over there!”

My eyes follow Isabelle’s finger until I see it: a figure crumpled in the snow. We steer our horses as far between the trees as we can. When Alfeir whinnies and refuses to approach any closer, we both dismount our rides.

Our feet kick against the thick snow as we run. I nearly trip over concealed roots thrice.

Kieran lies shivering in scarlet-painted snow – fresh blood.

I unclasp the buckle on my cloak and throw it around him, the morning cold settling immediately into my skin. Isabelle drops to her knees and shakes him awake, calling his name as loudly as she dares. In the distance, the shouts continue.

He barely opens his eyes. His teeth chatter madly against each other.

My hand slips under the cloak to find his. They are so, so cold.

“As...trid,” his lips barely move.

“I’m here, I’m here.”

I motion to Isabelle. Together, we try to hoist him up to a sitting position.

“Where am I?”

I do not know. I wonder if we can even find our way back. Dirt and blood are smeared across his face, arms and feet. On Isabelle’s muted count, we wrap his arms over our shoulders and push him to a stand.

“Where...are we going?” he asks again in that dazed voice. At least now he regains the strength in his feet and stumbles along towards the horses.

Valkyrie recognizes him instantly. She folds her knees in the dirt when we struggle to hoist up onto her back; I succumb to the urge to thank the mare. We position ourselves so that he sits securely on her back before she stands, and then I mount her behind him.

I grip the reins and wait for Isabelle to lead the way on Alfeir. Kieran leans heavily against my body.

“Where…” he repeats.

“Home,” I tell him. “We are going home.”