Isabelle

By day, we train until we feel like our limbs will detach from our bodies. By night, we strategize.

The Prince and his guard take charge of the entire operation. If I’m being honest, it all feels like we’re preparing for some make-believe heist or a particularly tricky game of capture the flag.

Where I excel in combat, Astrid takes better charge during our evening sessions in the West Wing’s study. The men are seasoned fighters, well-versed with the meaning of a war. Yet every now and then Astrid presents an idea that makes Bayorn’s eyebrows go up. Listening to her mind work opens a window into the gears that shift in her head, meticulous and cunning. Sometimes, she’s even better than Kieran.

Then again, Kieran doesn’t seem like that much of a fighter. Sure, he fights with lethal speed and calculates every move of a piece on the chess board. But there’s just something about him I can’t really place; some reluctance of a sort.

Two nights before The Day - as per the information provided by Kieran and Imogen when they pulled a little ‘007 operation in Ainsfrel – I dine with Bayorn, Imogen and Eli in the private dining room we always use.

We chat for a bit. By the time I’m through with my food, the conversation sort of takes a somber, quieted turn. Even Eli isn’t really feeling up to his usual mischief. I suspect he understands the pending situation more than he lets on. I announce an early retirement and get up to leave.

Just before the door closes, I catch a glimpse of Bayorn reaching out to take Imogen’s hand on the table. She regards him with a sadness I’ve never quite seen in her eyes.

Suddenly, the stakes of this little game I’ve been playing for months have just been raised to a whole new level.

Astrid had eaten her quick dinner and mentioned doing a bit of reading in the library. In other words: she’s retreated to her safe place. I figure it’s probably best to spare her from another one of my intrusions, just this once. So I wander from room to room until one of the doors creaks open to reveal a head of chocolate curls just peeking over the back of an armchair.

Kieran doesn’t turn around, but I’m certain he somehow knows it’s me.

“Hey,” I say softly. “Uh...this a bad time?”

His deep breaths fill the short silence between us. Just when I think he isn’t going to answer, he rumbles, “Sure.”

I don’t know if that’s supposed to be an affirmation or otherwise. He waves a hand in the air, cuing me to enter and close the door behind me.

When I plop myself down on the sofa diagonally across from him, I realize there’s a bottle of deep gold liquid balanced on his lap. He takes a swig right out from its mouth.

He notices me staring. “Want some?” he offers me the bottle.

I’ve never really been one to party. The first – and last – time I’d attended a party with some girls from school, I ended up holding their hair back as they threw up in Grady Benson’s toilet.

“I’m not legally allowed to drink,” I say feebly.

Kieran smirks at that. “Very well,” he says, lifting the bottle to his lips for another dose.

He’s in that robe he likes to use every night, the robe that sort of reminds me of one of those rich old men who have nothing else to do but to wait to bequeath their inheritance on a kind, young waiter. I watch him massage his side and grimace.

“Does it hurt a lot tonight?” I ask.

“Quite. You should take grave care in my presence right now.”

I ignore the unspoken reference to that night he transformed right in front of me and instead say, “Still. It’s a little sad to be drinking all alone in pure silence.”

“Have you brought in a lyre, then, to play us a sad tune to go along with the mood?” he cracks a humourless smile.

“Well, I don’t have a lyre, per se.”

I reach for the phone in my pocket and the screen lights up. Ten percent. Oh well. I search through my playlist and find a soothing indie song.

The plucking of guitar strings fills the atmosphere with just a hint of life. Kieran’s curled lashes flutter briefly against the candlelight. I lean back against the sofa and let the slow beat carry us into a comfortable silence.

After sometime, I reach towards him. “You know what? San Francisco’s laws don’t apply in this place.”

“Indeed it does not,” he agrees, handing me the bottle.

I take too big a sip. Smooth liquid dribbles down my throat like molten lava, forcing me to pull a face.

We pass the bottle between us for a while.

“When do you leave?” he asks as if I’m boarding a plane in a couple of days.

“I don’t know,” I shrug. “One, two weeks?”

He nods in slow motion. “And…you will miss me the most, yes?”

I roll my eyes at his deadpan jest. “Sure, Kieran. I’ll be sure to tell my mom I met a handsome prince who lives in an enchanted castle and taught me the various ways of blinding someone with a kitchen knife. See what she thinks of that.”

“If she isn’t impressed, I don’t think any man you could ever bring home will faze her.”

“Oh, yeah. For sure.”

My ability to make him chuckle causes him to award me with the bottle again. I take a larger sip this time, letting a swift haziness warm up my head. Then I decide it’s enough alcohol for today.

“There is…” I blink the seeping drowsiness away. “There’s something I’ve been wondering about.”

He licks his lips and raises an eyebrow at the carpet.

“What price did you pay for the enchantress to let you guys off the hook?”

A pause. He blinks cloudily.

“Irregular transformations,” he repeats the same rap he told each of us when we first asked. “Increased danger for the rest of you…”

“Kieran.” The firmness in my tone stops him.

“The truth. Please.”

He shakes his head. “You do not believe I have already paid a great price for the freedom they are about to gain?”

They. Bayorn once mentioned, in the heat of the moment, that there’s little time left. For what?

“I won’t say anything,” my voice drops to a whisper. A silent plea. “Don’t you trust me?”

The sad sea in his eyes regards me carefully. Slowly, he sets the bottle onto the floor and leans over his elbows on his knees.

“Immortality for immortality,” he sighs, acceding. “That’s what Lady Selaena said. An alternative method to break the curse is to trade my immortality to end this…” He gestures to the room. “This cycle.”

I don’t really recognize the definition of his words more than I do the solemnity of his tone. When I understand, my eyelids flutter close. I purse my lips, feeling as if I’ve just tasted something bitter.

“Oh, Kieran.”

A warm hand rests on my knee. I open my eyes and catch him watching me kindly.

“Oh, Isabelle,” he tries to smile, but it wavers. “It’s a mercy, you know. After all these years. It is time.”

I duck my head so that I can blink the tears away. How pitiless this fairytale world is. Are happily-ever-afters only meant for wide-eyed children and not the rest of us who long for them, too?

He lets his hand slide from my leg so that he can massage the base of his neck. My phone plays a new, sadder ballad, as if sensing the atmosphere.

“Is there...is there anything I can do?” I ask helplessly.

The corners of his mouth turn down. He has to draw in a shaky breath before he can answer me properly.

“Tell Eli that I know he will grow to be a far better man than most. And tell Astrid...tell her I wanted this.”

I nod. “She’ll be crushed.” First her father, now Kieran. And – really – whoever doesn’t survive the ordeal that’s coming the day after tomorrow.

“She won’t be needing me soon enough. Wounds heal.”

How astonishing it always is to find someone so beautiful, inside and out, and yet so sad.

He takes another sip from the bottle and offers it to me, but I decline. If I sit here and drink a single drop more, I might just burst into a puddle of tears. Instead, I pick my phone up and scroll through the playlist.

The song abruptly changes into a quick rhythm of drums. The beat is almost jarring after the past few songs. It’s an easy anthem: one of the rock songs from the early 2000’s. By the time the electric guitar kicks in, I’m up on my feet.

“Do you know this one?” I say over the music, starting to bob up and down like a nutcase.

Kieran stares up at me with judgment in his eyes. He shakes his head.

The vocalist’s bass voice sounds. By this time the rhythm has travelled to my shoulders and my nodding head.

“It’s one of my favorites.”

“Okay.” A confused smile takes over his pout.

“Well? Come on.” I shimmy my way towards him and take his hands from off his lap.

Immediately the amusement fades. “What? No, no. Dancing does not bode well with me.”

“Oh, come on,” I say, pulling him to his feet. “Didn’t you promise me a dance?”

He makes a face. “That was Astrid’s idea. She...thought it would lift your spirits by a measure.”

I can’t help but snicker. “And maybe even sow some seeds for romance there, huh?”

“Probably.”

“Alright. But this is a different type of dancing. There’s no technique, no beat. You just listen to the music and let it carry you along. Like this.”

I release his hands and try to pretend I’m in the secret of my own bedroom on a Friday night. My air-guitars and shimmies are a little weirdly practiced at first, but the harder the drums go, the less I pretend.

“You look crazy,” Kieran laughs, but he starts nodding his head, too.

I feel crazy, I think. My finger beckons him away from the chair as I mouth the words.

Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe it’s the cloud that’s been hanging over his head for the longest time, and maybe he’s sick of it for just one night. Whatever it is, it causes his arms to flail in the air awkwardly. Suddenly he isn’t a cursed prince nearing the end of his days, and I’m not a girl who’s been dragged right into the middle of a fantasy world.

We are only two kids dancing in a dimly lit room, trying to make the best of our hours before the sun comes up.