Arne sat in a Victorian-style chair a few feet away and sighed. “Elizabeth, I know you want to be here to make sure he’s all right, but…”

“I said I’m not leaving, Arne.”

“Does Henry know you know?”

She hesitated. “No.”

“Then he will be livid when he wakes.” His voice grew firmer, more insistent. “Trust me, it won’t be pretty. This is not the way to tell him.”

“I don’t consider his life saved until he wakes up, and you better be damn sure I’ll be here when that happens.”

Sighing again, he looked away.

“What if there is some complication in the night? I will not leave him, Arne, not like this. He’s my responsibility now, and if something were to happen to him…” She trailed off.

“Then,” he began, a tone of forfeit, “I suppose it will be both our heads, not just mine.” He stood, and she just now noticed he wore a different robe and pajamas. “There are plenty of beds. As I’m sure you have figured, Henry’s is hardly ever used, so you’re more than welcome to it.”

“I’m not leaving his side. I’ll sleep right here, beside him.”

“Now, Elizabeth, that’s just—”

“Arne, you know as well as I do, I won’t give in.”

He half-smiled, shaking his head. “Very well. I just think Henry will have more than my head if he knows you were here and I didn’t make you as comfortable as possible.”

“Blankets will do just fine.”

“And some tea. I have something I think you’ll want to see.”

***

When Arne returned, three of the plushest blankets Elizabeth had seen filled his arms. Atop the stack of blankets that were probably more expensive than every blanket she’d ever owned combined, was a pillow with a plain white pillowcase. Under his other arm, a bedroll that didn’t look much different than the ones she and her father and brother used to camp with.

He set them down beside her and with a smile was gone again. While she waited, she laid a blanket over Henry, since he would appreciate it in the morning, when he was himself again. Though she doubted that would do anything to dull his anger.

She opened the bedroll beside him and laid the second blanket atop that, then topped it with a pillow.

Arne paused upon his return, eyeing the white blanket over the beast. The look in his eyes said he understood. He placed the silver tray of tea on the Victorian table—legs curled up in a way that brought it to life—wedged between the two chairs, and motioned for her to sit. She rose to her feet with some difficulty and sat in the chair with even more difficulty, the golden cushions almost too soft for her spine.

Only one cup sat on the tray, she noticed, and Arne didn’t sit. Instead he left without saying a word, but was back quickly, this time holding a large leather book in his arms. It took her aback, threw off her reality for the briefest moment. Her book. She straightened as Arne brought it to her lap. Not her book exactly, but one just like hers. Sticky notes emerged from numerous places, and the pages appeared more worn than the ones in her copy. “I understand you and Henry have similar reading tastes,” Arne said with a smile.

She met his eyes, bluish-brown and bordered in wrinkles. “Is that…his?”

He yawned, nodding. He appeared exhausted, even older. “During the many years he was holed up here, leaving everyone to believe he had moved away, he spent hours with his nose in those pages. It has been a helpful tool.”

“How many years?”

“We came here soon after his first transformation, where it would be easier to hide. He was here as Henry Senior for ten years before disappearing, then didn’t make his appearance again as Henry Junior until ten years ago, after the accident with the Portland teens. He hid away in this place for twenty-nine years, his only escape at night, when he could roam the forest as the beast. I was his only connection to the outside world—the human world. People believed I lived here alone, keeping up Mr. Clayton’s property.”

“Almost fifty years…” Elizabeth mused with a sorrowful ache.

“Henry has been thirty-five years old for forty-nine years. And I worry that it won’t be long before he will want to hide away again, Elizabeth. You can’t let that happen.” She had no time to form a response to his request, since he added with another yawn, “Morning comes soon. I will leave you to his notes. Is there anything else I can get you, Elizabeth?”

“No, Arne, thank you.”

He hesitated. “I do think it would be wise to tie him down, just in case…”

She hesitated. He’d once crushed a bear with his jaws, out of mere instinct. “No,” she said with a subtle swallow. His instincts were natural, but the man in him could fight them.

Behind his eyes, Arne deliberated.

“Arne, as long as I keep morphine in him, he won’t wake again—not until the poison’s left his bloodstream.”

“Well,” he started, turning to leave. “I’ll say it again. I’m beyond grateful he has you to care for him.” He paused, gravity weighting his words. “I’ve spent many nights praying you were here. I just thought you should know that.”

Her chest warmed and eyes welled. She swallowed through the lump in her throat.

“Goodnight, Elizabeth,” he said, and she could only nod as he left the room. She looked down to the book, wide and thick and heavily-bound, with sticky notes sprouting from every direction. Forgetting about her tea entirely, she opened to the most curled of page markers. It was the section she’d read many times. Elizabeth wondered if Aglaé was as hypnotizing in real life as she was in the picture. She wondered how many there were, how they came to be.

Nearly every word had been highlighted with rushed yellow strokes—sentences about unbreakable curses and even the cross-reference to Diableron. She turned the page, skimming over more highlighted passages, and almost skipped over the four paragraphs that had been left alone, the dull typeset standing out against the rest, with its colorless background. The way the highlighter had deemed it too irrelevant to mark made it seem that much more significant, and she found herself reading it more carefully than the rest, her brain catching certain terms like a filter catches particles.

The bond of Cursed and Curse Breaker: Reversals, cures, or antidotes to Aglaé’s curses are never easily found. In rare instances, the antidote is simply an act that must be performed by the Cursed himself, and only the Cursed. But most often times, the curse can be broken only through the specific act of another, and when accomplished, a special connection between the Cursed and the Curse Breaker is created. In those cases, both the Cursed and Curse Breaker undergo a chemical change, creating a bond both physical and literal. Some have explained it as a oneness or a sense of belonging to the other, their lives becoming one in the same soon after the curse is broken—as in the legend of Absolon and Elvire.

She went on to read the brief account of Absolon and Elvire, whose story she remembered reading as a child: the story of how true love can conquer the barrier of any outward appearance. It was a tale with a moral, a story that had always taught her to look at one’s soul, not at their physical exterior.

It was the story of a man who was cursed by Aglaé to the confines of a dark cave for the remainder of his life, and the baker’s daughter who brought him bread. A man with skin transparent enough to see his insides, skin so sensitive that even a flicker of light left burns, and a woman who was so frightened by his hideous form that she at first left him bread only at the entrance of the cave. But eventually her pity turned to a compassion that drove her inside, and in the dark of that cave, Absolon and Elvire developed a love so deep that she never left him. It was her love that broke the spell, but in the moment the curse broke, a mob of angry villagers raided the cave and crucified her for loving a Cursed. Absolon, though alive—and a new man—had then been stabbed. He’d cradled his dead Elvire and, when his blood dripped into hers, her life was restored—all thanks to the bond that formed between them after the release of the curse, when the chemical change in the blood of the Cursed and Curse Breaker was most powerful. By the grace of that short window, and the magic in his blood, she was made whole. It was the first time such a power was realized and the only time it’d been used. According to record, that was.