“Fine,” he growled. “Get on my back. Please.”
Hiding a smirk, I climbed on. He let go of all his resistance and shifted completely from man to beast as he darted off toward the house. My heart sped in tempo with his thundering footsteps, and my hair whipped behind me. Something about being carted around by Abram made me feel alive in a way I really never had before. Or maybe that was just Abram himself.
We burst through the doorway like a pair of twin bullets. He shrugged me off of his back, placing me gently on the floor and nudging the door closed behind him with his snout.
He was all beast now—all strong hind legs, massive thighs, and thick, luscious fur. He glared at me for a moment with those familiar eyes, perhaps expecting me to be disgusted at the sight of him. But if that’s what he was looking for, he was going to be sadly disappointed.
The beast was Abram, and Abram was the beast. They were interchangeable to me now, one as much a part of the man I loved as the other.
Looking away from me, he padded up the staircase on all fours. His paws hit heavy as he neared the top.
I followed him, settling in front of the room that once held Satina.
As soon as we stopped in front of it, Abram began to morph back into the man I knew.
“Magic,” I answered, putting it together. “This room is magic, too?”
He stretched, brushing off the last bit of monster as the man fully emerged. “I told you that magic is about balance. Even curses like the one that affects me has to be equal parts light and dark. The room in the Castle held the darker magic that fueled the curse. It wanted me to suffer. When it believed keeping me alive would accomplish that, it was happy to accommodate, but when it realized … when it realized how you felt, it wanted you to die so that I would live on in agony. That’s why it dispersed when it saw that the mob was its best chance to see you dead.”
His eyes flickered to the floor.
“Which of course means that this room holds the light side of the magic. It stands to reason that this aspect of the curse yearns to see my redemption. To that end, it’ll do everything in its power to keep you safe.”
“Should have brought us here first then,” I mumbled.
“It wasn’t clear then,” he said, and he sounded sort of … hopeful.
Please don’t let him be guessing all this.
“So now it’s clear?” I asked skeptically.
“Aspects of the curse only reveal themselves when the curse is at its most powerful, which only happens when—”
“When the bitch who cast it comes back from the dead and starts a magical timer?” I asked.
He grinned, pushing the wooden door open. “You learn quickly.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said, thinking of all the things I hadn’t learned quickly enough.
Abram gestured for me to enter the room, and as soon as I crossed the threshold, I felt the magic pouring into me. It comforted me, made me feel whole, made me feel at peace.
But was this true peace, or was this an illusion like the last time?
It was then, in the midst of that clarity, that a question filtered its way into my mind. “Why did the curse want me to die?” I asked. After all, my love alone clearly wasn’t enough. “You said the outcome is already in stone, isn’t it? What does the curse know that I don’t?”
I turned to Abram. He was still on the other side of the doorway. The look on his face both troubled and soothed me. It was clear and full of the sort of stoic and tempered joy that only existed when you realized you had found the best the world has to offer … and that you were sure that you were never going to see it again.
“I wish I could answer that,” he answered. “More than anything, I wish I could tell you.”
In that moment, I could sense the truth of his feelings burning under my skin. I knew him as I knew myself. It was mystical, cellular, beyond bone deep. And I knew that he loved me. I just knew it. It was in the way he spoke to me, in the way he drove my passion and allowed me to stoke his own. It was in his voice, in his gaze. It was as singular and real as my own name.
There was something about all of this that I didn’t know, something that would make sense of this whole thing.
“Please, Abram,” I said, shaking my head. “Just say it. Whatever it is, just say tell me, and we’ll figure something out. We’ll fix it somehow.”
He swallowed, and his head shook a fraction of an inch. “I am fixing it, Charisse.”
The tone of his voice and the expression on his face sent a panic into my chest that I couldn’t explain. I started back toward the door, back toward him. “Abram, what are you doing?”
“What I have to,” he said.
Then he slammed the door shut.
I rushed toward it, but I already knew what I would find. The door wouldn’t budge. Like before, I was trapped inside, protected by magic that I knew nothing about.
“Abram!” I screamed. “Abram, open this door!”