Everett prowled back toward the castle as the first rays of dawn began peeking over the jagged edges of the mountains and dappling the gently rolling hills with morning. His mood was foul, but his spirit was determined.
Lenore was right. He would have to look for the treasure, if there was one, rather than spend the rest of his existence consigning himself to a miserable life of transformations that left him confused and disturbed. Until one day, he might never turn back to a man.
He could become a wolf at will, during the daytime. But never during the night could he become a man at will. What if one day, he could never transform back to himself–back to the remnants of civility he clung to?
So it was with a heavy heart but a resolute will that he trudged the steps up to his own castle.
"Did you enjoy your night in the doghouse?" Lenore asked him when he made his way through the foyer, past the open door leading to the dining room. She was primly eating a slice of toast covered in raspberry preserves.
He sat across from her, uncaring that he ought to change his attire or at least comb his hair, let alone take a bath. "I've decided to join you on your wild goose chase. At the very least, I can no longer allow myself to be constantly subject to the increasingly tyrannical parameters of my curse."
"Meaning?" She arched one blonde eyebrow, the picture of nonchalance, but the curiosity in her gaze gripped him.
He reached out to wipe a spot of jam away from the corner of her mouth. The sharp line of her clavicle jutted out as she took a sharp intake of breath, the only sign that she'd responded at all to his touch.
"Meaning, I don't want to live as a wolf anymore. If there is something that Marya left here, some treasure, then I want to find it, and use it against her." He licked the jam off his thumb.
Her lips curved into a grin. "I'm glad you've decided to see sense. Though, perhaps you should also see the inside of a washbasin."
He rolled his eyes. "Is this what I get for agreeing with you?"
"All I'm saying is, Butterscotch smells better than you do," she said with a teasing smirk as he walked out.
He felt her eyes trail him all the way down the hall.
As he sank into his bath, his tired muscles uncoiling at the hot steam and the scent of evergreen, he pondered how best to begin their search. Should they be looking for a real item? Seeing if something looked magical or not? It had been a long time since he'd done anything like this, and animals were a good deal easier to track than magical items that may or may not have existed.
As he took a razor to his scruffy beard, careful not to cut his throat, he pondered what the item could be. Marya had a taste for the macabre. She likely wouldn't hide some obvious book of spells, or leave a wolf's pelt as the magical item. No, that would be too easy for her. She wouldn't enjoy the game enough–and that was all life was to her. A game.
It would have to be something they didn't expect, which only made it all the harder. What could it be?
He would have to go back to the old cottage on the grounds and gather the rest of her old letters, the handful of notes she'd written to him that he'd never read or burned, not wanting to face the facts of who he had married and what she had done to him.
Those mocking words and the slanting slope of her penmanship had irritated him to no end, especially last night, seeing the letter in Lenore's grasp. He despised the association of the two of them together, even if only through a letter, though he knew well enough that without Marya's curse–he never would have met Lenore.
Perhaps there was some cruel fate, but its twists had plenty of blessings, as well.
When he had finished dressing, he ate a brief meal of bread and cheese before enlisting Lenore to make the trek out to the old cottage with him.
She opted to ride her horse–Caramel, or whatever his name was–who was still slightly skittish around him, especially in his wolf form. He walked beside her, his pace preternaturally fast thanks to his more wolfish characteristics. They arrived at the cottage at an hour far too soon for his liking.
He had been dreading this visit. But it had to be done.
Shoving open the door, he propped it open with a rock while Lenore tied her horse to the post outside it. She stroked the horse's head, murmuring sweet sentiments to it.
He snorted. "You pamper that horse."
"Perhaps I simply have an affinity for animals," she said, giving one caress to the creature before dropping her hand. "I was never allowed pets growing up, though I always wanted one. My father said it was an expensive frivolity we couldn't afford."
"Your father would have been right."
He motioned for his wife to get into the hut. "After you."
Her eyebrows rose as she stepped inside, ducking her head slightly to avoid hitting it on the beam. "What a gentleman."
"I have my moments." He wished he had brought some sort of candle or a torch as he entered the dimly lit, squalid building. Left abandoned for half a century, it wasn't in the best shape. He drew aside a dusty curtain and tied the drape up so that some sunlight could peer through, and Everett was surprised to see that some of the items looked like they had been disturbed. "Someone's been in here."
"That would be me," Lenore said. "I... On the day I ran away after our argument, when that hideous monster came with a message from Marya, I found this place. And some letters. I took one of them to read."
"Did you now," he murmured. He wasn't angry–he had no right or reason to be. This hut was no longer his property, far from his home, but he was surprised she hadn't told him until now. "Did you find anything interesting in the letter?"
"Simply a condemnation of your character," she said. Stretching up onto the tips of her toes, her slippers crunching on the fallen leaves that had blown into the structure since the door had been left open, she pulled aside the other curtain to reveal more of the hut's contents.
The breeze stirred the curtains, and rifled the edges of a stack of yellowing letters. He snatched them up before they could blow away. "It seems far too fortunate that she would simply leave a series of letters here for us to discover. Unless... that's exactly what she wanted."
"What do you mean?" Lenore arched a brow. "Wouldn't she have killed us while she had the chance?"
"She's been more bold lately. Sending her minions up here, when she lives in the court below our feet. She didn't seem surprised when she found us stumbling into the Court of Curses, even though I hadn't known that cellar entrance was there before." He shook his head. "Something isn't right. I can feel it in my bones."
"Perhaps that's arthritis. You're nearing seventy." Lenore's words, while light and teasing, didn't match her expression. Somber worry pinched her brows together as she took in his words. "What do you think? That she's up to something?"
"That night... That horrible night, when I became what I am, when she cursed me..." He ran a hand through his hair, the papers crumpling in his fist. "She told me that if, in the span of a century, I did not find a way to break her curse, I would remain a wolf forever."
"Do you believe her?"
"She enjoys making dire predictions. Most of her curses usually have some sort of end point," he said. "Some false hope to look toward; after all, all those poor ghosts working in the castle were once human, being told that in the afterlife, they would have their curses of torment broken. They were, only to be replaced with courses of indentured servitude."
"So you think she'll levy another curse on you, after this one ends?" Lenore asked, her voice tender. She was so fragile. So vibrant. So human.
"I don't know. All I know is, I'm finished with playing her games by her rules." The pages in his fist crinkled. "We need to stop her."
#
Buoyed by Everett's words, the two of them spent the next month searching the castle. The hours slid into days, sun rising and setting, and still all they seemed to have in front of them was knowledge that could never be fully understood or mastered, let alone applied to break a curse or find a treasure.
They'd amassed a large pile of anything that looked like it could be the enchanted object or treasure that Marya had spoken of, placing all the items in the dining room. Staring at the tomes and boxes, Lenore worried her lower lip. Her husband's chilling tone when he'd discussed his curse and its possible consequences sent a shudder down her spine, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.
She pored over old books left in the library that Everett had apparently collected, books on magic and curse-breaking that he'd studied before he'd abandoned all hope of ever being saved–of ever saving himself.
One of the lines jumped out at her. One of the easiest ways to contain a magical item is by placing it in the belly of an animal. She blinked. Once. Then twice.
The belly of an animal?
Her gaze drifted away from the book she was reading and in the direction of the stables.
What had Everett said about that horse? That it had always shied away from him? That it wasn't a fairy horse, but merely enchanted to lead a long life? Wouldn't it make sense for Marya to enchant a creature to live an immortal lifespan and then place some treasure inside of it, like a golden goose laying eggs?
Her mind swarmed with possibilities, each thought swatted away just as quickly as a buzzing bee or stinging gadfly. Did it make sense? She didn't want it to, but the horse...
The horse was the only creature she had to love—the only sort of pet she'd ever had. To think that it might be simply one of Marya's devices made to do her bidding sickened her. Butterscotch deserved better than that, to be the plaything of a vile and wicked woman.
Yet Lenore didn't know what she would do if the treasure was in the horse.
She marched up the stairs, not paying attention to where she was going. She had intended to find her way back to her room, but must have made a wrong turn or bypassed the hallway entirely, because she ended up instead at the top of an enormously tall, empty tower.
All around her was jet black stone, each brick laid into the wall with veining that could only be marble or granite. Unlike her room, no vines grew over the stones or grass peeked between the floorboards.
Instead, it was completely barren. Cold. Her voice echoed when she nearly slipped, biting back a yelp to no avail.
She gazed through the spire's windows, and saw smoke.
The thick black plumes came from the direction of her village–from the direction of her father, and her brother's home. It didn't behave like normal smoke. Didn't dissipate immediately, didn't hang in the air, didn't tinge the atmosphere with that dry, suffocating scent.
As she watched, a tendril of the smoke seemed to waft toward her, though she must have been at least a few miles away from the village in the castle. It came so close that a wisp of it brushed her face. She breathed it in.
Magic. That magic scent–burnt sugar and something off, something wrong–spoke to her of dark magic. Of the Court of Curses.
Her stomach dropped a thousand stories, her heart plummeting to the bottom of the staircase.
Fire.
She needed to return home, to see what was left of her family.
If there was anything left of them at all.