Page 40 of To Ride the Wind

She hadn’t dreamed her strange marriage could bring such joy and contentment. From the beginning she had felt seen and known by Henry, but the nights of sharing their hearts in the darkness had deepened that sense into a surety. The only thing that marred Charlotte’s happiness was her growing desire to be rid of the barriers that still held them apart. The gulf in the middle of their vast bed had never felt so large.

Eventually there came a morning when Henry waited outside her door with a different air from usual.

“I’m sorry, Lottie,” he said without preamble, “but I can’t read with you today. I’m heading into the forest, and I fear I’ll be gone most of the day. Will you be all right on your own?”

Charlotte wanted to protest that she didn’t want to be alone. For a second she even considered asking if she could accompany him. But no matter how comfortable she had become with him as a person, her husband spent his days as a bear. There were parts of his life she couldn’t share.

“Of course I’ll be fine,” she said instead. “I don’t want to risk missing anything important in the books, though, so I’ll wait for you to return to resume the research.”

He thanked her, but he seemed distracted and eager to be gone. After his departure, Charlotte wandered listlessly, realizing her feet had taken her along her usual route. But when she arrived in the doorway of the library, she couldn’t bring herself to go in. The library was her haven within the castle—a place of comfort and enjoyment—but it felt empty without Henry.

“Stop this,” she said aloud to herself. “Since when have you become someone uncomfortable in your own company?”

Many of her most enjoyable days in the valley had been the ones when she slipped away and roamed the forest alone. She refused to become a person who couldn’t cope with being alone.

Turning her back on the library, she decided to go exploring. With the bell safely in her pocket, she knew she could always find a way back if she needed one. But it was past time she discovered the extent of her new home.

Everywhere she went, she found the same red carpet underfoot, and the corridors were lined with variations of the same tapestry and sprinklings of identical chairs.

“Beautiful and practical, but limited,” she muttered to herself after viewing the same tapestry for the fifth time. Apparently the bell’s power wasn’t as vast as it had seemed.

The carpet and decorations still achieved a positive effect, however. Even impersonal, repetitive decoration was better than a whole building full of nothing but stark, cold stone, so she was far from complaining.

“But why is it so large?” she mused as she looked into yet another empty room. “If Henry used the bell to create a home for himself after the enchantment, why did he ask for such an enormous one? Or had the castle sprung into being as part of the original enchantment? Did it mirror a real place, like when Henry had asked for a copy of the books that already existed in the royal libraries?”

The thought stilled her steps, and she gazed at the walls around her with new eyes. Was she roaming a copy of a real place that had once featured in Henry’s life? If so, what had brought him to a castle? Was it the castle of his home kingdom?

She had always heard that both Rangmere’s capital and its palace were austere places of gray stone. Never having visited them herself, she had no idea if she was now living in an enchanted version of Queen Ava’s castle.

She continued her exploration, but everything she saw had a new fascination. It became a game to guess at the original purpose of the rooms. Bare of furniture, many of them looked foreign, but she could make guesses from their shape and location.

Opening another door, she stepped into the first room that wasn’t empty. Stretching along the length of the room was a long dining table of heavy, dark wood. It stood alone except for a single elaborate chair at its head.

Charlotte stood transfixed, but it wasn’t because of the unusual presence of furniture or even from the mental image of Henry eating alone after sundown each evening, the long table stretching emptily before him. Her attention was caught by an enormous portrait hanging on the far wall, facing the head of the table.

The brunette woman was both young and beautiful, and she was dressed in a filmy gown of blue. Her face shone with a gentle strength that gave her an appealing quality that was hard to put into words. She evoked a protective instinct that was unfamiliar to Charlotte as the youngest in her family.

She wanted to shake off the feeling, to laugh at herself. After all, this woman looked several years older than Charlotte and from the quality of her dress, she didn’t need anything that a girl from the valleys could supply.

But the woman wasn’t so easily put aside. Her stomach churned as the image of Henry’s solitary meals soured in her mind. Before her arrival, the entire castle had been unadorned. Henry hadn’t added a single piece of furniture or decoration outside of the library—except for this table and this single painting.

How many nights had he sat here, gazing at the woman in the portrait? What sort of protective instincts had she roused in him?

Charlotte ran from the room, slamming the door behind her, her heart pounding. But the image of the painting had been burned into her mind. She might have closed the door, but she could still see it in front of her eyes.

Charlotte was playacting as a princess in this empty castle, but the woman in the painting clearly belonged in such a setting. The painter had captured a poise that Charlotte envied but also a light of kindness that only made her feel sick.

The woman in that painting was one it would be easy to love. She pressed her hand against her stomach, her nausea surging.

She knew something had compelled Henry to marry her. Even without knowing his secrets, he had hinted as much. There was something he needed from her, and it was more than mere companionship.

Had this enchantment separated Henry from the woman he loved? And then, even worse, had it forced him into marriage with someone else? Had he sat here, night after night, longing for his lost love and trying to strengthen himself to put her aside and marry another?

Before their marriage, Henry had been earnest in assuring her that it was a legal marriage only. And even after she discovered the truth of his enchantment, he had repeated those promises. She had assumed his words were for her sake, and they had been gratefully received. In the growing relationship between them, it had been easy to forget about their early intentions. She had even started gathering the courage to tell him she no longer needed such distance between them.

But now the words took on a different light. Was Henry’s determination to keep his distance not about Charlotte’s comfort but his own emotions?

She stumbled down the corridor, heading back to more familiar parts of the castle. But now everywhere she walked, she was followed by the specter of Henry’s life. The curious interest from earlier was gone, replaced with a burning in her chest as she imagined Henry walking identical halls with the woman by his side.

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