What was wrong with me? With my beastly fur coat, the cold almost never bothered me. Perhaps it was the combination of being soaked to the bone along with the strange wind that was howling over the river like a pack of wild banshees. Yes, that must be it.
“Griselle? Griselle!” Drury’s voice drifted down to me from the castle, along with shouts from the villagers.
“Lady Mottern!”
“My lady!”
“Where are you?”
From the sounds of things, Drury and the villagers had defeated the Razors. Relief coursed through me. Good. Now all I needed to do was get back up to the castle. I started to swipe the wet hair out of my eyes and stopped short, my hand frozen in midair right in front of my face.
I was looking at my hand. Not my fur-covered paw but my hand—my human hand.
Shock jolted through me, overpowering my concern about the cold, Drury, and everything else. I glanced down. Instead of tufts of fur sticking out through my torn, bloody, waterlogged clothes, I saw smooth, pale skin. I took another step forward and wobbled on my feet. I was so used to the heavy weight of my fur that the lighter skin of my human body seemed incredibly strange, as though my beastly form had been stuffed inside a thin, fragile paper doll.
The curse was broken.
I was a human girl again.
I should have been happy, ecstatic, overjoyed, but instead, hot tears stung my eyes, and grief and loss cracked against my heart like cold, heavy hammers. I felt like a part of myself, perhaps the very best part, had been cruelly ripped away—
“Stupid girl,” a low, angry voice snarled. “You won’t escape me that easily.”
I whirled around. Eifert was standing in front of me, his hands fisted by his sides, his ageless features twisted into a murderous scowl. The yellow glow from the castle torches above cast his face in shadow, making his skin look like it was stretched tight across his cheekbones, as though he were a skeleton that still had a bit of flesh stubbornly clinging to it.
“What happened?” I asked, my voice a weak, choked rasp.
Eifert’s lips curled back with disgust. “You might have broken one curse, but I can always cast another one on you.”
He pushed up the sleeves of his long blood-red robe, then wrapped one hand around the gold wolf pendant hanging from the chain around his neck. He raised his other hand and pointed his palm at me. Dark red magic crackled like lightning across his skin. I tensed. This was exactly what had happened when he had cursed me the first time—
“Enough,” a feminine voice cut in. “That’s enough.”
Startled, Eifert and I both whirled around. Footsteps whispered, and a woman stepped out of the snowy woods. Like Eifert’s, her face had a smooth, ageless look, marking her as a witch, and she could have been anywhere from twenty to two hundred years old. Her skin had a silvery sheen, and her eyes were the same eerie color, although her hair was a dark orange-red, like an ember that was about to blaze up into a full-fledged fire. Her long robe was similar to Eifert’s, although hers was a pale, dusky gray that blended in with the snow.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am Ramera,” the woman replied. “I am the head of the magical council in this kingdom.”
Eifert stabbed his finger at me. “This girl is mine. I can curse her as I see fit. Over and over again. You have no right to interfere.”
Ramera arched an eyebrow at him. “You seem to forget that council rules forbid witches and wizards from cursing mortals more than once. The girl broke your curse, Eifert, fair and square. It’s over. She won. You lost.”
He stamped his foot like a petulant child. “No! This girl will suffer just as I have suffered! And her daughter and all their daughters will suffer too! For as long as I live—”
Ramera waved her hand, interrupting his rant. A bolt of silvery magic shot out of her fingertips and slammed into the wizard’s chest, knocking him backward. Eifert looked down. At first, I wasn’t sure what was happening, but then I realized that the bolt had hit his golden wolf pendant—and it was rapidly melting.
“No!” Eifert screamed, cupping his hands underneath the pendant and trying to hold the melting gold in his palms. “I won’t let you do this! It’s not fair! It’s not—”
Ramera waved her hand again. A loud pop! sounded, and the earth cracked open beneath Eifert’s feet. The wizard plummeted down into the chasm, still screaming that he was going to curse me again. An instant later, the earth snapped back together, cutting off his cries and leaving the riverbank in odd, eerie silence.
“I’m sorry about that,” Ramera murmured, looking at me. “But don’t worry, Lady Griselle. You broke Eifert’s curse, so he won’t be bothering you again. I’ll see to that.”
I frowned. “But how did I break the curse? I didn’t do anything. I didn’t make a boy fall in love with me.”
A smile played across the witch’s face. “The curse only stated that you had to find true love. It didn’t specify exactly what kind.”
I shook my head. “I still don’t understand.”
“When you decided to remain a beast, you accepted yourself, despite your outward form, which most would despise,” Ramera replied. “The strongest, purest, truest love is loving yourself, inside and out, fur, teeth, talons, and all. That’s what gave you the strength to fight for your people, and that’s what broke the curse.”
She smiled at me again, then turned to go.
Confusion propelled me forward, along with desperation and that heartbreaking sense of loss. “Wait!”
Ramera stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“I actually liked being a beast.” I gestured down at my human form. “This doesn’t seem like me anymore.”
Her lips pursed in thought. “No, I suppose that human form isn’t really you anymore.” She paused. “Or, at least, not all of you.”
Ramera waved her hand for a third time, and another bolt of silvery magic shot out of her fingertips and streaked toward me. I tensed, expecting the magic to hurt, but instead, a warm, gentle power washed over me, as though I was sitting in front of a fireplace. As quickly as it came, the sensation vanished, although I could tell that something had shifted inside me.
“Eifert took your choice away, but you have more than earned it back,” Ramera said. “Girl or beast, it is for you to decide which you want to be and when and for how long. Being comfortable in one’s own skin is a power in and of itself. Use your strength wisely, Griselle.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
The witch nodded, then vanished into the forest.
When I was sure she was gone, I glanced down at my human hands again. They looked the same as I remembered, if a bit blue and wrinkled from the cold water. I drew in a breath, then let it out and reached for that warm power I could feel pulsing deep down inside me.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure it was going to work, but then the familiar dark brown fur sprouted on my skin, and my fingernails darkened and lengthened into long black talons. I released the magic, and my human form and skin took over again.
A smile spread across my face, so wide that it made my cheeks ache. This was me—all of me—and I couldn’t be happier about it.
“Griselle! Griselle!” Drury’s voice drifted down from the castle.