Page 67 of To Ride the Wind

“No,” he said sharply. “There’s no point now. The damage is already done. At least let me see you for these last moments.”

“What do you mean?” she gasped as he removed the candle from her now trembling hold and placed it on the small table beside the bed. “What last moments?”

“Three months,” he said. “That’s all we needed. Three months’ worth of nights. We were nearly there.”

“I don’t understand.” Charlotte’s trembling had spread from her hands to her whole body.

“When I left home to go adventuring on my own—a foolish notion I know now—I was captured in these valleys. The people who captured me wanted me to break their enchantment through my marriage. But something went wrong. I don’t know why—I don’t think they do either. I was supposed to be a bear at night, not during the day. It ruined their plans.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Many marriage ceremonies are too elaborate to be completed between a human and a bear.”

Charlotte swallowed painfully, putting together the pieces he hadn’t said. “The mountain kingdom. They stole a husband for their princess. They wanted to marry you to Gwen!”

“Who?” he asked blankly.

“The mountain princess,” she cried. “The one in the portrait.”

“The portrait?” He frowned for a moment before his brow cleared. “Oh, you mean the one in the dining room? I never go in there.”

“You…never go in there?” Charlotte whispered, trying to understand the seismic shocks that kept hitting her.

He laughed again, another bitter sound. “An empty castle except for one furnished room? This place didn’t come from the bell—it’s part of my enchantment, and it was a little obvious in its efforts to sway me with that one.”

“They…they weren’t your portraits?” Charlotte stammered.

“There were others?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

“In the side tables. And those came from the bell, after I arrived.”

“When the bell interacts with the castle, it’s affected by the castle’s enchantment.” He shrugged. “I never even met the princess. If they ever told me her name, I don’t remember it. I certainly had no desire to eat my meals with her looming over me. She’s the reason for my capture, my imprisonment in the body of a bear, all of it. Even if she didn’t order it herself, she’s still at the root of my involvement.”

Gwen wasn’t his lost love, she was his enemy—although she didn’t know it. From her reaction to Charlotte’s story, she clearly had no idea who Henry was or what had been done to him in her name.

“So you didn’t create this castle yourself?” Charlotte gasped out.

“I came here from the mountain kingdom, and the castle already existed when I arrived. Even with the bell, I could hardly change anything until you arrived.”

He spoke in a dead, hopeless tone, and Charlotte feared she might be sick.

“How did you escape them?” she asked.

“I didn’t. When it all went wrong, she released me.”

“Who is she?” Charlotte whispered.

“The mountain queen. The ones who captured me were her people, and she’s the one who enchanted me. As I said, I was intended to marry their princess, but when the enchantment went wrong, she gave me the bell and told me that if I wanted to live, I had to find my own way to break the enchantment. She tied me to her with a second enchantment so that if I did break it, I would be forcibly returned to them. So I had two choices: live as a bear forever, or reclaim my true form and be forced to marry the princess as they planned.”

“But why free you in the first place?” Charlotte asked, trying to make sense of the nightmare she had suddenly found herself in.

“The mountain court has been enchanted for as many years as we’ve been alive,” he said. “If they had the answer to breaking the enchantment, they would have done so long ago.”

“And they expected you to find a way free?” Charlotte asked.

Henry shrugged. “I’m a prince and uninvolved in their schemes. There are always ways for one such as me to free themself. All the stories say it.”

“A…a prince,” Charlotte gasped. “What do you mean? I thought—”

“That’s another thing I loved about you,” he said sadly. “That you didn’t know I was a prince. You knew me only as Henry, not Prince Henry, soon to be crown prince of Arcadia.”

Charlotte gasped again, remembering his promise that he would move her family and establish them in Arcadia. She had even known Crown Prince Maximilian and Princess Alyssa’s only son was called Henry. But it had never occurred to her to put those things together. Had he been planning to move her family after he broke his enchantment?

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