PROLOGUE
Trust. The one thing every relationship is built on.
Or, at least that's what he heard. Despite all his relationships, the wives he had, the man called Bluebeard felt he was far from an authority on the subject.
'Maybe that was my problem', he thought. 'I should have married someone I trusted. Someone who would have trusted me back.'
But it didn't matter anymore. After this last fiasco… He doubted he would want to get married again. Not even chasing away the loneliness was worth it, not if he was left like this, worse than when he began. He looked down at the sword in his hands and another wave of revulsion passed through his still shaking frame. Inlaid with jewels, it seemed more an ornament than a true sword.
Hard to imagine that this weapon took the life a human being just minutes before.
"Brooding over your misfortunes, my friend?" came the mysterious voice of his old friend. His only friend in this wretched world. "You know it's not good for the soul."
"Neither is murdering your wife, the last I heard," he murmured as he returned the still bloody sword into its scabbard, uncaring whether it will rot. But he had a feeling the next time he pulled it out, it will be just as gleaming as it always was. Magic kept it pristine, rather than care.
"Murder? I doubt that. She betrayed you like the others, did she not?" Hector raised an eyebrow, but Bluebeard refused to turn and meet his eyes.
"Did she? I wonder." His eyes took in the rich mahogany of his desk, the pristine state of his library, and the raging storm just outside his window. "Did she betray me, when it was me who set up the test in the first place?"
"Of course she did," Hector didn't hesitate to respond. "That is why we've built this test, after all. To weed out the unworthy, so that you can enjoy life with a woman you know you can trust. How hard can it be, to obey a simple command 'Don't open a door'?"
Bluebeard didn't reply and continued staring at the raging storm. He was too tired to rehash the old argument - whether he was worthy of having a wife, if he set up deadly tests, and killed the woman he tied his life to for the simple transgression of opening a door he gave her a key to.
There was a moment of silence, then he heard Hector sigh, "I'm sure that a trustworthy woman will appear in your life soon, my friend. I'm certain of it."
That caught his attention. He finally turned to face the sorcerer. "Really? You've never said that to me before."
"Well, I've never felt it before, but I do now. Give it one last chance." Hector smiled at him, but it brought Bluebeard no comfort.
His eyes narrowed. "If you've never felt it before, why didn't you warn me? Maybe I wouldn't have…"
Hector only sighed, "You know that's not how this works. We of Power cannot tell when or if a Vision will come to us. We can only be grateful when it does."
Bluebeard closed his eyes in pain and turned back towards the window. The storm slowly broke, and he watched as the clouds parted to let in the first rays of the dying sun. 'Fitting', he thought, 'that Lucretia would die, just as the sun set. She did always think that the sun rose and fell with her.' Yet the moment the thought passed through his mind, he winced and chastised himself. Even if she was… confident, he had no right to think badly of her. Not now. Not ever.
Not after he killed her.
He wondered once again why he ever thought the test would be a good idea.
But if Hector said that he will meet the right woman, then he will… maybe he will give this marriage business one last chance. After all, who could he trust if not his friend?
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"My prince will come! I'm sure of it!" Josephine's exclaimed, and Camilla was once again struck with the realization of just how young her friend was.
But she was not about to complain. She should be glad to have Josephine around. You can't be picky about your friends when you spend all your life living in the forest, after all.
"He will come for me in a beautiful white carriage, and take me with him to live in his castle!" Josephine continued, and her voice was filled with exuberance at the very thought of her dream prince.
Camilla stretched her arms, grabbed the ladle again and started stirring the herb mixture again. Princes and castles… But she decided to indulge the girl. "What would your prince be like?"
Her friend's face lit up. Poor thing probably had everyone discount her dreams as nothing more than fantasies. Josephine's desire to talk about her dream-prince spilled into her voice as she started listing the must-have qualities of her prince. "Well! He's just like every rich prince! Tall, and strong, and young, and beautiful! He has long blond hair, gorgeous blue eyes, and an amazing smile. Of course, he's also rich, has stables full of pure white horses and a huge ballroom where we will dance every evening…" she sighed, overcome by her own fantasy.
Camilla sighed, as she gave her only friend a fond yet exasperated look.
Unfortunately, Josephine saw the look and crossed her hands over her chest, "What? Don't tell me you wouldn't like my prince if you met him!" When Camilla only shrugged, Josephine pouted, then her mouth spread in a sly smirk, "Then what would your prince be like, Camilla?"
Camilla lifted an eyebrow, "What makes you think I have one?" She continued stirring the herbal medicine for Josephine's brother, Gustav, despite the ache in her arms. She didn't want to talk about 'her prince'. Didn't even want to think about something she'll never have.
Josephine's eye-roll could almost be heard, "Come on! Every girl has one. What's yours like?"
She sighed. There was no denying Josephine when she got like this. And, well, she supposed it was only fair to share. "He'd be kind to me." When Josephine only continued to stare at her expectantly, Camilla smiled a little, "That's it, Josie. He'd be kind. The rest… I don't care about the rest."
Her friend snorted and crossed arms over her chest. "Sure, you say that now. But what if he came here tomorrow and was completely ugly?"
Camilla couldn't help but laugh. "Then I'd welcome him with open arms, and cook him a dinner." When Josie still looked ready to argue, she continued, "I'm used to dealing with gangrene and injuries that would make most people faint from horror. No man's face could ever terrify me. As long as he's reasonably healthy, I don't care what he looks like. If he's not healthy, I will do my best to make him so." She stirred the medicine again, "Face doesn't matter."
Josephine frowned in thought, then asked in a much quieter voice, "And the rest?"
Camilla stared into the thick foliage around her hut, lost in her own thoughts, "It would be nice if he could take care of himself, or at least was willing to do some chores around the house…"
"But that's not a prince! That's just a man!" Josephine was horrified at her friend's unromantic views.
Camilla bowed her head. She didn't want to say it out loud - that at her age, she'd consider any kind man willing to marry her a fairytale prince. When women got her age, they usually already had a gaggle of children clutching at their aprons… and she was still alone.
She didn't have high hopes of ever getting any man, much less a fairytale prince. Twenty-six and living away from both the nearby villages, it was doubtful that a man would be willing to come live with her so far away from other people. And as a herbalist, she needed to live close to where the wild herbs grew. In the forest.
But then, things had always been like that. She never had any hopes in the first place, and so didn't think about her lonely fate as a drawback. It was… just the way things were.
"Well, maybe 'just a man' would be enough for me. But if you want to hear about my dream man, then…" she paused to actually think about it. Something she last did some, what, ten years ago? "He'd be… strong. Able to protect me if I needed him, but willing to let me make my own decisions and live my own life when I'm safe. He'd talk to me, and listen to what I have to say, just as much as I'd listen to him. He'd be well-travelled and would talk about all the wonders he'd seen. He would have opinions and wouldn't be afraid to say them, yet respect that I can have different ones and won't force me to accept his."
She sighed and closed her eyes. "It would be someone I could trust."
Josephine quieted down, and now only looked at Camilla with sorrowful eyes, feeling she stepped into something personal. "Trust?" she whispered.
"Yes. Someone who'd be there for me, and who I can trust to have my back, if anything happened. Someone who wouldn't leave me if things turned rough, and who wouldn't betray me, even if we argued or disagreed. That's the man I'd love."
"Oh." Josephine hugged her knees where she sat on the tree stump in front of Camilla's house and stared at the ground. Then her lips turned up in a mischievous grin, "But it would still be nice if he were young and beautiful!"
Camilla only laughed and stretched her arms again, "Yes, Josephine. It would be nice." Then she shook her head, "But if he were young, he wouldn't have much chance to become well-travelled, now would he?"
Josephine only shook her head at Camilla's utterly unromantic notions. "You're a lost cause, Millie-Camillie," she sing-song-ed her childhood nickname. "I will wait for my prince in his gilded white carriage, and you can wait for…"
She squealed and lifted her feet in shock as Camilla dumped the cauldron full of herbal medicine right in front of her. She could only be glad that the heavy thing didn't fall on her toes.
"You can wait for Gustav's cough syrup to cool down," Camilla smirked at Josephine's pout. "And don't insult my prince. He's a great man."
They exchanged a look, then both of them cracked up.
Camilla stretched her hands above her head one last time and looked up at the bright summer sky. Somehow, it didn't matter anymore if her prince was coming or not. It felt good to dream, but she refused to let her dreams consume her. There was simply too much work for her to do, to spend all her time thinking and worrying about impossible things.
As the only herbalist for both Trebatice and Vrbove, one who lived in the forest between them and had to care for the well-being of both villages, she couldn't afford to waste time daydreaming. There were sick to tend to, medicines to prepare, bandages to sanitize since the people didn't bother or know how… and now to bottle and hopefully sell a cauldron-full of cough syrup at the next market-day.
Now where did she put all those bottles she cleaned last week?
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Bluebeard let the branch fall into place as he took a step back, deeper into the thick foliage around the herbalist's hut.
He didn't know what to think. He followed the beautiful young Josephine since the moment she first started talking about her beloved prince and the white carriage she dreamed of. The dream she described to her brothers. He saw her meet the strange, thin herbalist and used his hunting skills to… well, stalk them to the wooden hut in the middle of the forest. So far so good.
But when they started talking… He never felt more confused.
Josephine was in many ways the same as his previous wives: young, pure, beautiful and innocent. The only difference was that she was not of noble birth herself. Her youthful naiveté was also to be expected - she was young, after all. But he has found that a wife's expectations of 'young and beautiful' were easily cast aside, once a rich man made his offer. Either the woman in question or her family would accept the offer, no matter what he looked like.
He had already concocted plans in his head to buy a pure-white carriage to impress the girl into marrying him. But then… then the herbalist described her dream. Dream that didn't ask for 'young and beautiful'.
'Wouldn't it be better to marry a woman who didn't have expectations he couldn't meet?'
At first, he only had eyes for the young beauty who obviously searched for him. Or, well, someone like him, once she got rid of her useless dreams and faced reality. Yet when her friend started talking, Bluebeard was shocked to realize his expectations of a wife were just as naive and childish as those of the young beauty.
He was impressed by the herbalist's idea of 'a fairy tale prince'. What kind of person it was. This was the first time he saw himself as someone's dream. He swallowed and leaned against a tree.
What the herbalist asked for was within his ability to provide. Kindness, respect, acceptance… and trust. He could do that. In fact, it was something he tried to give all his wives… with limited success. But the fact remained - this was the kind of woman who wouldn't have to accommodate her dreams to match him.
He already matched them.
This was the kind of woman he searched for. This was the woman…
He grasped the branch to move it aside and watch the woman bend over a cauldron of medicine again. Long red hair that fell down her back in almost straight lines. Thin, long, unremarkable face covered in freckles. A small worried frown between her eyebrows, tan lines all over her arms and slowly forming wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She was tall for a woman, even if she was still smaller than him… and surprisingly thin for the strength she displayed as she mixed the quickly thickening syrup. No curves in sight either. All in all, a plain, common woman in all aspects.
Well, all but one, he thought as he watched her smile at something her beautiful young friend said. Her entire face lit up as she laughed in response. The smooth, almost noble cadence of her voice bewitched him… as did the things she said. This was a woman who wouldn't bore him. He could see himself talking to her during long, cold winter nights at his castle. He could imagine her whisper to him in their bed in the middle of the night…
The force of his excitement surprised him. It has been a long time since he last felt any true want for a woman. His wives were certainly beautiful and noble, but… After the third catastrophe, he got married to chase away the gnawing loneliness of his castle, in the hopes that this time, things will be better. Perhaps to produce an heir. Not because he actually desired any of them.
But this Camilla woke something in him he hadn't felt since… since Abigail. Almost ten years ago. He could only hope that he will be worthy of her trust.
With a shock, he realized that he seriously considered asking for the herbalist's hand in marriage for her voice and dreams alone. He let the branch carefully fall back into place and turned to make his way back to his castle.
He had a lot to think about.
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