He gripped my shoulders. “You told me you didn’t want to marry him, girl. I didn’t forget that.”
I launched myself into his arms, buried my face in his chest, clung to him and let my tears fall. Eventually, I managed to choke the whole story out between my sobs, and my father held me all the tighter.
“Is there a child?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Even if there was, we would sort it out. We would sort it out. I would sooner feed myself to a monster than my baby girl.”
I finally realized how much I’d hurt him when I’d left. “I’m sorry, Papa. I didn’t even do it to save you. I just wanted to run, and I ran ... I ran as far as I could. Papa, I even hoped ... I even hoped the beast would eat me and I’d be done.”
“Don’t say that.” His arms nearly crushed me, and his own tears dripped on my hair.
Perhaps I was too big for his lap, but I still fit in his arms, and I stayed there until the sobs eased, until the salt of my tears felt different, until they soothed instead of burned. Mixed with all the stagnant fear and loss, there was relief too. There were still ghosts in the corners, but for the moment, they felt wispy, as they should. They felt like something that might one day fade to barely a shadow.
In my father’s acceptance, I found the safety I’d searched for.
Chapter
15
Settling at home was as easy as falling into a familiar bed. There was a groove already worn for me; I had only to embrace it. I tended the house, which allowed Callista more opportunity to finish sewing orders, and where I could, I helped Papa. Even with crops dormant, there was work to be done—chickens to tend and firewood to stack. The winter air stung my face and lungs with invigorating force. If I had risen from the grave in returning to my family, it was not as an emaciated skeleton but as a woman reborn.
And yet ...
I wondered if he went to the library without me, if he sat in his red armchair, or perhaps in mine. If he read the story of the swan who wished to be human.
Returning home had filled a hollow in my heart, but there was one remaining.
And I could not fill both.
My breath clouded the raw air. The chickens squawked in protest at my presence, demanding to be fed, but my eyes were on the enchanted forest. I tossed a careless handful of grain in the snow, then stepped over the scuttling birds to exit the fence gate. The trees loomed above me, taller with every step, and between them, I spotted a glimpse of glittering blue.
By the time I reached the forest’s edge, she was gone.
Hadn’t I decided by now?
Hadn’t I learned?
If I made the selfish wish to have both, perhaps Beast’s new prison would be our cottage, which was already too cramped. Or perhaps my family would be trapped at the castle, Callista ripped from her fiancé, Rob from his opportunities of advancement, none of us happy though we had all magic at our disposal.
This was not the place for magic; it was the place for decisions.
And I could not decide.
That evening, while Callista and I cooked, she gushed about the upcoming winter festival.
“It will be in the Merrells’ barn.” Her dashing fiancé, whom I had yet to meet, was the Merrell family’s youngest boy, just turned twenty-one. “Everyone will bring food, and there will be dancing. You must come, Beauty.”
I shifted, pressing all my weight into the dough I kneaded so Callista wouldn’t make fun of my weak hands again. “Hardly a festival in one barn. Will the stilt walker endanger the rafters?”
“Must you always mince my words? A celebration, then. Tell me you’ll come.”
“When is it?”
“The first day of the new year.”
“How far is that?”
