Author's Note: Welcome to a new story. I have finished reading a similar story for another pairing a few days ago and fallen in love with the idea and the writing style of the author.

I have adjusted the plot for our lovely characters and added a few more details. Hope you like it, 4 more chapters will be uploaded soon! ~A


In another part of the castle, Mireille is telling her mother everything about the stranger who had saved her from the wolves. "She came out of nowhere!" she says, eyes bright like they haven't been in a long time. "Just fought through the wolves and brought me home!"

Her mother smiles indulgently, masking her trepidation and letting her go on and on about a woman she'd rather not see ever again. A woman in her castle, who won't be able to leave. She swallows back her nausea and remains silent.

Mireile's mother is named Odette, though no one has called her that to her face in many years. Once, almost twenty-eight years ago to this very date, this castle had been a little hut in the woods and she had thought she could spend her life in it with joyful optimism. Now, she is queen of a castle that hasn't aged a day since and she wants nothing more than to escape it all with her daughter.

But there is no escape. And this stranger in her castle bodes only new disruptions that will never end well. When Mireille had finally returned to bed with a new bandage and another useless attempt to heal her– those wolves are resistant to magic, they wouldn't serve any purpose if they weren't– she steps out of their quarters and into the west wing of the castle.

She had been there earlier that night, stepped through the ravaged rooms and the torn paintings and made her way to the highest room of the tower. There is a rose floating in a bell jar on the table, all but a few petals on the table below it. Odette stares at them in quiet despair and closes her eyes, drifting off to sleep in the hard chair beside them.

Meanwhile, Altena is urged to a room by Marie and Aurelia. "It's best that you stay out of her way," Marie says apologetically. "She's not great at visitors. Or people in general."

"How dare you," Aurelia says, turning to glare at the clock. "She's wonderful with the little tyke. She's just been waiting for the right person to come along." She offers a winning smile to Altena. Altena looks back at her, nonplussed. "Why don't you select something lovely to wear for breakfast tomorrow morning?"

The wardrobe, who goes by Tamra and has a friendly spinning wheel nearby, is quick to help her; and a dazed Altena is dressed and re-dressed several times before she pushes them all away. "Enough!" she says, a bit crossly. "I'm not going to breakfast. I'm not going anywhere near that woman again. You heard her. She doesn't want me around and I'm fine with that."

Aurelia and Bella exchange a look. "Well, that won't do," Bella says decisively, and brings out a sheer dress that begins somewhere halfway down Altena's chest.

As you might imagine, Altena doesn't sleep well that night, even in the luxury of the castle. She tosses and turns and thinks too often of a beautiful, terrifying woman she hardly knows with flashing eyes that soften around her daughter.

Across the castle, the same woman lies flat in bed, wide awake, her thoughts troubled with the memory of a woman who'd looked like a drowned rat as Odette had born down on her, but with eyes that had flashed with defiance through the fear. That defiance sticks in her heart and stays, like a pesky itch she can't reach, and she sighs to herself and thinks instead of the rose in the west wing of the castle.

In the morning, Odette has found no more contentment than in the night before. "No," she says immediately when Aurelia finds her. "Absolutely not."

"Don't you think you deserve better than this?" Aurelia wheedles. "Doesn't Mireille? The rose is almost bare and this woman appears in our midst and you can't tell me that she isn't a part of this. She could be the one."

"The one," Odette repeats dubiously. "That…that girl would be my true love? I've known her for half a day and I already hate her. She's obnoxious. Irritating."

"So are you!" Aurelia throws up her hands. A candle flies from her hands toward the bed, setting Odette's pillow on fire. "It's a perfect match!"

"Aurelia…"

Aurelia hops down to face Odette, her eyes beseeching. "At least give her a chance. Invite her down for breakfast. Maybe she'll surprise you."

Odette heaves a sigh. "Fine. But that's all. No schemes, no games. I'll order her to breakfast and then I'm done."

"Deal!" Aurelia agrees, waving her candle-less arm in the air as Odette heads for the door. "Wait, did you say order?"

But Odette is already out of the room, Aurelia shouting after her, "Be nice!" to no avail.

She knows where the woman would be staying, knows which room is the only one in the castle where anyone had ever stayed before. She raps on the door once and barks out, "You will join me for breakfast!"

The response is succinct and as obnoxious as expected. "Go to hell!"

"Say please," Marie hisses. Odette has no idea where she'd come from. A private meeting on how best to torment Odette, most likely, Aurelia presiding. "At least make an attempt to woo her."

"Fine," Odette says through gritted teeth, reminding herself that this woman had saved Mireille and she owes her some tiny debt. "You will join me for breakfast…please."

The woman yanks open the door, and Odette nearly gapes. Sometime over the course of the night, she'd dried herself off and been put into one of Bella's gowns, and Odette blinks, startled at the change in appearance. Those fiery eyes are now accompanied by pale skin and long hair that falls past her shoulders in waves, settling on a dress that hugs her body well enough that Odette can't tear her eyes away.

"Go fuck yourself…please," she says sweetly, and Odette is still so transfixed by the dress that she doesn't think to respond until the door is slamming shut again.

She jerks back and snarls back, infuriated, "Fine! But don't expect to eat at all, then!" and storms for the dining hall.

Inside the room, Altena plops back onto her bed, blowing a lock of hair out of her face and sighing at the ceiling in defeat. It's been twelve hours in this castle and she's already alienated its queen. "She isn't the one holding you prisoner," her wardrobe says reprovingly.

"She might as well be." She doesn't deal well with being ordered around, especially not by a woman who'd threatened her life the night before. If she's going to be trapped in this castle for the rest of her life, she isn't going to do it while catering to the queen's every whim.

And so the day had continued as a hostile standoff, testing the stubbornness of these two women who we've seen possess inexhaustible amounts of stubbornness. By the end of the day, the inexhaustible were two, and the exhausted were…well, everyone else, not least of all you, my dear reader, and me.

But while we shake our heads from afar and clocks and teapots sigh from the mantle, one girl decides to take action instead. Odette has raised her with a good heart, you see, regardless of what kind of snit she might be in right now, and Mireille is determined to ensure her savior's happiness in her castle.

She pokes her head into Altena's room just after sunset, when she knows her mother will be in the west wing alone. "I'm pretty sure this was the one thing your mother was really, really clear on," Altena says dryly when she sees her. "You're not supposed to be around me."

"I'm bored!" Mireille protests, sitting down beside her on her bed. "You don't want me to run away again, do you?"

Altena raises her eyes at her. She pouts at her. "I just thought you might be hungry. Mama isn't around right now. You can sneak down to the kitchens with me." Her stomach growls. She beams, the same smugness that Altena had recognized in her mother's voice. "So that's a yes?"

And that's how Altena's stomach betrays her to a girl who won't take no for an answer. She talks tonight as she had the night before, keeping up a steady stream of chatter when she'd been silent until now. "Mama loved me since the day I was born," she says, poking out a finger to wipe dust off a railing. "My father didn't want me" she continues on, unaware of the thunderstruck look on Altena's face. "Mama promised me that I'd never be alone."

"Oh," Altena manages. She can't remember her own birth, of course. She doesn't know what had been said to the midwife or what her mother's final words had been, but she knows that this girl, locked in a castle with a mother who looks at her with the same eyes that the queen had the night before, is infinitely fortunate for it.

Her steps are a bit slower now, but Mireille doesn't seem to notice, and they're soon welcomed into the kitchen by an overeager set of dishes and glasses. Altena settles down, positively famished, and stares in wonder at the table as it fills itself up.

She doesn't know it, but she's being watched.

High in the west wing of the castle, Odette is sitting in solitude with the dying rose. There's a mirror hanging from the wall, one of the few items in the wing that haven't been wrecked or covered in dust. And in the mirror, Odette can see her kitchens with perfect clarity: her daughter, seated at the table as the dishes perform a little dance for their new guest; Aurelia, lighting the table and being carried from dish to dish as though she's the star of the show as Marie hops away, alarmed; and the woman named Altena, laughing helplessly at the entire scene before her.

Her eyes are bright and she looks younger, somehow, more alive. Odette is spellbound by her smile, caught in her glittering eyes and the way she exchanges a grin with Mireille before she turns back to the table. Like this, she seems less a bullish stranger, come to invade Odette's peace of mind, and more…whatever it is that Aurelia and Marie see in her.

But Odette, queen of a cursed castle, hasn't endured while frozen in time for twenty-eight years by chasing dreams of broken curses. No, Odette knows well enough that the rose and its promise had only been a cruel joke by the wizard who had cursed her.

True love and a broken curse are as impossible an ending for her as they've been since the night her husband had done the unforgiveable, even more so now. The only true love she can ever have again is Mireille's, and she is better for it.

No woman will change that, not now or forever. Not even one who can stop Odette's breath with only a smile.


You would think, in a castle the size of our heroines' residence, it would be easy enough for them to avoid each other. At least one of them has spent a good portion of her life in Laurent Bouquet's sprawling complex and managed days, even weeks, of not seeing the owner of the house, and that had been only an estate. This is a castle, and Odette and Altena are unpleasantly surprised at how often they seem to wind up in each other's midst.

First, there's an incident in the dining room that ends with Odette stalking from the room in a huff and a number of forks sighing reprovingly. "I didn't mean it like that!" Altena had protested, and Aurelia had offered her a withering look that had been less than encouraging. And yes, Altena had meant it like that, and Odette had been justified in storming off that time.

I won't bore you with the details of the various incidents. Too many are snide remarks taken too harshly, Odette quick to anger and Altena quick to provoke. Too many are Altena-who-runs suddenly trapped and lashing out at the only person who seems to fight back. Too many are Odette with a dying rose on her mind and her heart clogged with fear and fury at her fate.

Altena walks past the west wing of the castle more than she absolutely has to, peering in surreptitiously and seeing nothing but closed doors. Altena is also rather atrocious at avoiding Odette in the first place, on par with only Odette herself. Aurelia scoffs at both of them. Marie is quietly wistful. Cece is certain already.

Mireille's thoughts on the matter are her own, and I won't disclose them to you just yet. I can only tell you that she makes no particular effort to keep the women apart, but she winds up leaving just as frustrated as they are, more often than not.

One day late in the first week, Altena bursts into a sitting room and demands, "What the hell?"

"What now?" Odette says tiredly, shutting her book with a sigh. "Come to critique my staff? My housekeeping? My face?"

"Don't be stupid, you're beautiful," Altena says irritably. Most everything about Odette irritates her, particularly the way her lips part for a moment like she's actually surprised by the comment and then set in a grim line. "What did you do to my coat?"

The coat she refers to in this case isn't an ordinary one, carelessly borrowed from Bella's closet. No, this is the one Altena had first purchased after she'd caught her first mark, a singular reward from Laurent Bouquet that had meant, to Altena, freedom and the promise of a future. She'd ridden through a pack of wolves with a rain-soaked red riding coat and saved a girl, and now the only thing she still owns is missing from her room.

"Ah, that." Odette busies herself with her book, revealing nothing– least of all, that she'd seen it in there while surreptitiously glancing into Altena's quarters. It had been filthy and worn but folded with care, set in a place of pride on her nightstand. Odette had felt an uncomfortable twinge in her heart and had sent the coat downstairs for cleaning. "I burned it."

"You–" Altena sucks in a breath. "You–" She breathes fast, her fists clenched, her eyes dark and furious. Odette, despite herself, has discovered a certain kind of glee that rushes through her veins when Altena's face screws up like this. She bites her lip to contain her smirk.

"It was unseemly," Odette says calmly. "I won't have peasantry in my home."

"It was the only thing I had from outside," Altena says in a low tone, and Odette's stomach twists at the emptiness in her voice. She nearly opens her mouth to admit the truth, but Altena's already on the warpath. "You took my freedom. You took my privacy. You treat me like I'm the enemy here instead of a victim of whatever curse you brought upon yourself, and you had to take my coat, too?"

Odette stops listening somewhere around whatever curse you brought upon yourself, the glee in her veins turning ice-cold to fury. "Do you think I want you here?" she spits out. "Do you think I asked for some girl to invade my castle and make yourself at home in this prison?"

"So sorry I saved your daughter's life!" Altena snaps, throwing up her hands.

Odette grinds her teeth together, fingers digging into the cover of her book. "And you're going to claim that was altruism?" She doesn't pause to contemplate that idea, not when the retorts are flying fast and Altena's eyes are nearly pure purple in intensity right now. "I know what you were after. I know why a street rat–" And Altena flinches, but Odette doesn't notice. "–would save a girl who lived in a castle that looks like this. You got what you deserved," she bites out. "I have no pity to spare for you!"

"You think I did it for a reward?" Altena says disbelievingly. "Do you think the whole world is as cold as you?" Odette's glower is on at full blast. "I didn't save her for any of that! I saved her because she was in trouble and I cared! Not everyone is as horrible as you are!"

Odette scoffs. There is a tiny voice in her head, one that whispers warnings about a wilting rose and this woman who does seem to care quite a bit, but she pushes it aside. "You're lying," she says stubbornly.

"You're unbelievable." Altena whirls around, stalks for the door, and then whirls back. "And you know what? Next time, instead of blaming me for saving Mireille, why don't you take a good, hard look at yourself and think about why it is that Mireille was so desperate to run away from you."

"Leave her out of this!" Odette snarls, rising to her feet. She takes four steps across the room, standing toe-to-toe with Altena in utter fury. "You keep Mireille away from your foul ideas of…" She's shaking, the tiny voice quieted and a thousand new fears and helpless doubts running through her head. In another story, with women far less stubborn, she might have wept right then.

But not this one, where these two have only ever learned how to fight. "And I knew!" Altena says fiercely. "I knew what would happen if I crossed into the castle. I've heard the stories." Odette stills, her heart pounding with new fear now. But Altena doesn't notice. "When I met you, I thought they were wrong about what lived in this castle. But I was an idiot." Her breaths escape in quick puffs, her chest heaving with fury, and Odette can feel the heat coming off her in waves. "They were right all along. You really are a beast."

Odette slaps her, catches her nail on Altena's lip and draws blood. Altena laughs, hard and wild, as Odette flees from the room, still trembling with suppressed fury and sorrow.

And Altena laughs and bleeds and heads upstairs just in time to see Marie struggling to set down a pile of freshly laundered clothes in front of bella. The red coat is folded on top of it, gleaming like it hasn't since Altena had first purchased it, and Altena curls up on her bed with it still in her arms as the laughter turns to frustrated tears.

And as Altena is regretting her outburst and wondering why the hell Odette has to make everything so hard– as Marie climbs onto the bed and pats her shoulder with one awkward non-hand– Odette is already back in the west wing, her hand resting on the bell jar and her eyes fixed on the image of Altena in her mirror. She isn't weeping. She sits rigid, in absolute silence, and then she tears the bell jar from the rose it protects and hurls it at the mirror.

It bounces off, doesn't even crack the mirror, and when it falls to the ground, it shatters. Odette doesn't flinch, doesn't move, and a new bell jar appears over the rose before she turns back.


In summary, our early episodes are…less than ideal. I've seen my share of fairytales in the past, and none have been quite as fraught as this. It's a miracle that they made it past the first week of coexistence, let alone…

Oh dear, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's return to Altena instead, yes?

Altena is still learning more and more about the castle. Mireille shows her secret passageways and high towers in the north wing, and Altena asks probing inquiries about the west wing that have her shrugging. "I don't know. Mama doesn't like me going there, either."

Altena learns quickly to avoid the front gardens of the castle, where she'd first come in. It only takes several steps toward the gate before the growling begins, and she'd dared once to keep walking and had nearly lost a hand to a wolf's snapping jaw. She'd avoided going outdoors since, anywhere but the balconies and porches within the castle, and so she's startled one morning to look down from a balcony and find a neatly tended cherry blossom tree behind the castle.

It's still within the gate, at the base of the small hills that hide the castle, and so she pokes around until she finds a door behind the kitchen that leads to the outdoors.

Altena wanders around, half expecting to find a walking and talking garden hoe, but instead, she nearly trips over a woman, bent over the roots of the tree. She yelps out a curse, flailing and catching herself on the tree trunk, and Odette says dryly, "Incompetent as always. What was that, attempted murder?"

"You!" Altena straightens, her lips pressing together. She's been doing her best to avoid the queen since their last argument, building up their next encounter in her mind so much that it comes as a surprise to see Odette is only a woman, dressed in casual clothes with dirt on her knees. "What are you doing out here?" She begins accusingly and then falters, taken off guard.

Odette blinks at her, amused. "This is my orchard. I tend the trees." She stands up, wiping off her knees with a swift movement, and then plucks a flower from the lowest branches of the tree. "I'm rather good at it," she says, looking down at the flower in her palm.

Altena stares at her, amazed at how beautiful she looks

When Odette doesn't say anything, Altena looks up and sees Odette's lips parted, her eyes glazed where they're directed at Altena's face. She flushes and bites her lip as Odette's face finally jerks up guiltily. "I…" Odette takes a breath and then begins again. "I still remember the day when I found Mireille crying in the forest with these flowers falling down around her. I was shocked to see her again..." Her eyes are distant now, soft as they never have been before. "I thought I had lost her the moment I stepped into this forest, but then she was brought into the forest by my own husband."

"Oh," Altena says, nearly voiceless at Odette's glazed eyes. "You…"

It's as though Odette is transformed in an instant, her face suddenly wary and dangerous. "What?" she barks out, defensive again.

Altena's eyebrows shoot up and she makes an effort not to snap back. "I was just going to say that you're a really good mother to Mireille" she mutters. Odette's eyes round and she looks unguarded again for a moment. It galvanizes Altena. "It's your only redeeming quality, actually," she offers, less rancor in her voice than there could have been.

Odette stares at her for a moment, her lips pursed together. "Is that supposed to be an apology?"

It absolutely is, though Altena isn't prepared to admit it under Odette's judging eyes. "No!" she says, scowling. "I'm not going to apologize for you calling me…"

My apologies for interrupting the tale here, but I think it may be instructive to look back again to the grubby-faced girl locked in a prison for a moment, to her huddled in a corner as her captor walks in. He kicks over a loaf of bread with a snide your meal, street rat, and she scrabbles at hard bread with her teeth, fading back into the shadows of her cell.

I can tell you that in the two years that Altena spent in a jail cell, she'd almost forgotten her own name. Sometimes she'd forget that she'd been a person at all, someone beyond a shadow creature alone in a cage. Street rat had become a new identity, of sorts, and even in the days when she is hardest, it still probes deep.

She doesn't tell any of this to Odette, of course. Not now. Maybe someday.

Instead, there's a tense silence and then Odette speaks again. "It isn't quite as unseemly now that it's clean," she says, reaching out to tug at Altena's coat. It's an apology of sorts as well, and Altena's cheeks heat up accordingly.

Altena shrugs, feeling helpless and uncertain in their exchange. "It's just a coat. I just…it was the first thing I ever really had, you know?" Odette doesn't respond, only waits, and Altena ventures on. "I find people who don't want to be found."

"I've noticed," Odette says dryly.

Altena scowls at her. "No, it's my job. I spent a few years locked up when I was pretty young. I was freed by a man who thought I had some talent, and this was…" She bites her lip. "He paid me handsomely after the first time I brought in a criminal. He said it was an investment in me. No one had ever invested in me before. So I purchased the coat and I…" She shrugs. Odette's eyes are unreadable. "It's important to me."

"I see," Odette murmurs. And there's a moment here in our tale– not a turning point, though that will come soon– but a moment of clarity, in which two women can stand opposite each other and dare to bend, unexpectedly. And Odette, a distant queen who quails at the thought of opening up to a crass stranger, suddenly wants to know more– everything– about the woman fiddling with her coat opposite her. "Do you think your employer is searching for you now?"

Altena shakes her head. "I go on a lot of long trips to track my marks. I don't come back until I win." She grins for a moment, fierce and proud, and Odette can't tear her eyes from Altena's face. "And I always win."

A shadow crosses her face. "Though…this time, I suppose not," she says, raising her eyes to gaze at the mountains that rise above them. "Maybe in time, he'll realize I'm gone and replace me. He'll think I ran off." She sounds disturbed at the idea. "I never wanted…"

"Is there anyone else who'd be looking for you?" Odette asks, curious. Altena looks at her askance. "I worry about my privacy," Odette says swiftly.

"Of course you do," Altena says, and there's a note of disdain in her voice that has odette deflating, suddenly reminded that her change of heart doesn't mean that Altena's had one of her own.

Alas, she has no way of knowing that Altena is just as deflated, brought from a moment where they'd seemed to almost have something back to a stark reminder that Odette is only inquiring for her own sake. "Don't worry," Altena says flatly, "I don't have anyone who would care about me. No family at all." The words shouldn't hurt quite this much after all these years, but somehow they still do.

Odette's lips curl into a smile, unbidden, and Altena gapes at her callousness. She'd known Odette could be angry, of course, and self-centered as hell, but she'd never truly thought her capable of such cruelty. But then Odette says wryly, "My husband was the one who put me in this castle. I can't help but envy you a bit," and Altena doesn't know how to respond to that at all.

She fiddles at her coat again, rubs her thumbs against the newly soft-again fabric and endures Odette's gaze on her in silence until she can't restrain herself anymore. "Why did you tell me that you burned it?" she asks tentatively, because Odette is baffling and Altena never knows what to expect from her.

"Ah." Odette quirks a smile, and a new tiny voice within her that sounds alarmingly like Aurelia says tell her the truth. See what happens. She doesn't need to be urged. There's something about Altena that draws out her truest self, each and every time, for better or for worse. "I suppose…I enjoyed seeing you riled up over it."

That had certainly not been the answer Altena had been expecting. Altena drops her hand, her eyes wide, and she gapes at a still-smiling Odette. "What?" Odette is still smirking, insufferable, as though she thinks that she's won this round. Altena blinks rapidly, infuriated and…much too flustered. "You…you're a piece of work."

"Thank you," Odette says serenely.

Altena glares hard at her and then stops abruptly, frustrated. "I can't even get angry now, can I? Because apparently you think it's– you think it's–" She flails, at a loss for words.

Odette, however, seems to still have at least one. "Cute?" she suggests, and the stiffness and hostility fade from her face for one unguarded moment.

"Cute?" Altena stammers, horrified.

Odette's eyes only glint in amused response, and Altena's ire rises again and stutters to a halt behind her flabbergasted frustration. "You're full of it," she snaps, gritting her teeth and so off-balance that she can hardly focus at all. "I don't know what kind of game you're playing with me, but if you think you can manipulate me into…" She notices what can't possibly be fondness on Odette's face, an eyebrow arched and her lips twitching and her eyes very warm. "Into…" Altena's cheeks are heated, her heart beating a hair too wildly and her fists burrowed in her coat. "That's it!" she bursts out, overwhelmed. "I'm done!"

She storms from the orchards, back into the shelter of the castle where she can lean against a counter in the kitchens, breathing hard as though she'd just fought a battle.

Back in the orchards, Odette leans against a tree, her own heart pounding with the same wildness that Altena's had been. And Altena doesn't know it, but Odette is just as helpless, as out of her depth and control as she had on the day she'd been entombed in this castle, and she can't– She won't–

She thinks of the rose, wilting away in a room high above her, and she sucks in a shaky breath before her lips settle into a grim line. To hell with the rose. To hell with bending and exposing every vulnerability to a woman she can hardly be around without fighting. To hell with the way her heart flutters with renewed hope each time Altena had been taken off guard in front of her.

There are no happy endings. There is no hope. And she has to stay the hell away from Altena if she ever wants to acknowledge that.


There comes a time in any story when our heroes are in limbo; when any action requires making overtures they're not ready for or capable of. There's the nagging suspicion that something is going to have to change, that it's only a matter of time before everything they know is turned upside down, and there's a rush and a fear and finally, a movement forward.

Odette, however, is in no state to make a movement forward. Odette keeps to herself again, watches from the balcony of the west wing as Altena paces in circles around the orchard. Odette has quiet meals with Mireille that Altena is still too stubborn to attend, and Odette avoids ALtena wherever she can.

"Is she really that bad?" Mireille asks one evening. They're in a quiet sitting room far across the castle from Altena's usual pacing grounds, Odette flipping through a book and Mireille with her head on her shoulder as she watches the pages turn with sleepy eyes. "Altena, I mean. I like her a lot. I don't know why you two hate each other so much."

"It's a bit more complicated than that, my little princess," Odette murmurs, absentminded fingers stroking her arm. "Or maybe it isn't. Sometimes…there are just some people who can't get along."

"But what about the curse?" Mireille's eyes are open and guileless, just a child who sees things too clearly. Odette thinks for a moment about I was just going to say that you're a really good mother to Mireille and she feels sick for a moment, nauseous at the thought of a rose and a lie that even Mireille believes. "If she's the one…"

"Mireille," Odette says pleadingly. It's been nearly ten years of this, the two of them together in a castle prison, and she can already see how a first glimpse of sunlight is making Mireille dream. "There is no one. Your father didn't put me in here to find happiness. If nothing else, Altena is here to prolong my agony." A shoulder turns stiff and bony against her arm, and she winces, close to tears. "I'm sorry. I wish there were a way–" She sucks in a breath.

There's a secret between mother and daughter, one nearly tangible in their quietest interactions: a night, three years earlier, with a girl who'd wept and screamed and shouted you're not my mother, you did this to us, I want to be free as the weight of years of captivity had finally pulled her underwater. A night, three years earlier, when her mother had tucked her into bed anyway, kissed her cheek with an I love you, and gone upstairs and thrown herself off the balcony.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that Odette had wanted to die that evening, to try the one thing left to break the curse that had hurt her own daughter so. Instead, she'd landed on the ground with her body bent impossibly, but her heart still beating. The rose had bloomed ever brighter when Marie had found her, gleaming mockingly from the window.

It had taken months before the bones had knitted back together around her cursed, immortal body, a pale-faced Mireille curled around her each night. "Too precocious for her own good," Odette had said dismally, because she'd understood even with the falsehoods she'd offered her.

And now, with Mireille's charge into the wolves and this new hope surrounding Altena, Odette fears and Mireille's shoulder slumps again. "It's okay," she says. "It's okay, she doesn't have to…" Her voice cracks. Odette kisses her forehead, and if there were a curse that could be broken here, it would shatter with that touch alone. "I just want us to be happy."

Odette has no answer for that.

Across the castle, Altena is crouched in front of a tree, glaring at the stars twinkling down at her as she searches for uncooperative answers as well. A teapot is perched beside her, in careful silence as though she suspects she might get a fistful of frustration if she says the wrong thing. "I just…the nerve!" Altena says furiously. "We finally get along for a couple of seconds and now she's blatantly avoiding me? What the hell?"

She's been lurking, waiting for some kind of…follow-up, maybe, some explanation or something that would clear up whatever had gone on between them. Instead, it's almost as though Odette is deliberately changing her schedule, going out of her way to avoid ALtena. And actually succeeding, for a change.

Odette might be comfortable being in limbo, but Altena is certainly not, buzzing with impatience and a need to move before she loses her mind. "She's a coward," Altena fumes, twisting around to glare up at the balcony where she knows the west wing is. "I can't believe I actually…I thought that we could…" She lets out an unintelligible grunt of frustration. "How the hell do you put up with her?"

Cece shrugs, the ceramic bumping upward where her shoulders should be. "It's…complicated," she says, and she sounds almost guilty. Altena peers at her, suddenly confused, and Cece smiles sadly and says nothing more.

A scene, if you will: a familiar one, a young woman shaking on the ground with fear and horror cleary on her face. A curse cast in cold fury. And just outside the scene, a second woman watches in horror, her father's best soldier standing beside her with her sword drawn.

Aging has always defied reason in the castle. Cece knows sometimes that she is older now– that she must be, as the scared young woman had grown into an angry woman into a wistful mother– but she's never seen herself in the mirror, not since she'd been barely an adolescent who'd nearly started a war.

But she is older now, perhaps the same age as the woman kneeling beside her with fire in her eyes and something lost and uncertain in her voice, and Cece sees her and thinks of a young woman who'd grown into a woman who still won't speak to Cece. And that creeping hope that had so suffused Mireille for a moment rises in her as well.

Altena, of course, shares none of their optimism, and Cece's silence on the matter is enough to work herself back into a fury. She's guided by distaste– everyone is so tolerant, dammit, as though Odette is only misunderstood. People aren't misunderstood. People are assholes, and good people make excuses for them.

And as the evening passes– as Mireille returns to her room and Odette retires to the west wing, as Aurelis provokes Marie until the bulk of the castle staff is distracted by the squabble, as Cee watches Altena stalk away with thoughtful eyes– Altena is furious enough to consider pushing past breaking point, finally giving way and yanking them out of limbo.

When she makes it past the staff and upstairs, no one looks at her twice, not even when she makes a sharp turn away from her bedroom and toward the west wing.

And abruptly, she's in forbidden territory, fists clenched and raring for a fight. She pushes open a door and stalks in, ready to explode at Odette, and pauses momentarily in bewilderment.

The castle is opulent, a sort of grandeur to it that hearkens back to the days of true power and wealth. The west wing, however…

It looks almost like Altena's cottage, at first glance. The ceiling is lower, the paneling dark wood without any marble or gold. There's a cozy-looking couch on one side of the room, a cold stove on the other, and it's as though another building entirely had been transplanted into the castle.

There's a door at the back of the room, and Altena opens it and finds a bedroom, then another. The cottage is small but warm, homey in a way that the castle never quite masters, and Altena is startled when she opens a final door and finds the stone staircase of the castle tower instead of more of the cottage.

As she climbs up the spiral staircase, confusion fades back to ire. There are torn tapestries up here, a young woman posing with a man whose face has been burned beyond recognition. In another painting, it's the woman herself who has been burned out of it, the tattered tapestry hanging half off the walk. Altena's feet crunch on broken glass and she sets her jaw, preparing to confront Odette at last in a place where she can't run.

Odette is at the top of the stairs.

She's sitting in front of a table with a bell jar atop it, a rose glowing as it floats within the jar. As Altena stares, a petal falls from the rose and Odette lets out a strangled noise and turns away from it–

–Right toward ALtena. Altena freezes, a deer caught by a torch, and Odette says slowly, "What…the hell…are you doing here?" Her eyes are blazing, her hands quivering as she stands, and she seems like an alien person, like the woman who had found ALtena in her castle on that first night.

Altena gathers her courage. "I want to talk to you."

"I told you the west wing was off-limits," Odette snarls, her voice carrying down the staircase, rich and dark and deadly. "Get out."

You may recall that Altena has the unfortunate habit of pushing back when shoved. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me–"

She's abruptly stopped by a fire. No, a ball of fire, flaming as it hurtles past her and the heat emanating from it lightly singes some hair. "Get out!" Odette roars, drawing another from her hands and hurling it at Altena. "Get out of my home, get out of my castle, get out!"

There's a violet energy sparking behind her, a halo of fire and magic like none Altena's ever seen as new fireballs hit the walls on either side of her. Altena's never experienced magic like this– never suspected it could be real, never suspected it of the woman she hardly knows who rules this castle– and she's terrified, heart-pounding, knee-wobbling, shaking with terror. Odette looks just as terrified beneath the fury as she continues to throw fireballs that never hit ALtena, as though Odette is chasing her away with faux aggression. "Get out!" Odette howls, and Altena finally runs, eyes stinging with abject fear.

She doesn't run to her room. She doesn't even run to Cece, or to anyone else in this twisted, magic-ridden castle. She can only hurtle down out of the west wing, into the abandoned front hall, and stagger out the door without a second look back.

There are some things that our minds can't conceive of even once we're faced with them, and Altena's line in the sand is a tower on fire, a woman with murder in her eyes, and the kind of fear that could bring her to her knees. She isn't thinking when she climbs onto her horse and rides forward toward the gate in a panic; but if she had remembered the wolves, it's likely that they wouldn't have stopped her.

Not until she's already halfway toward the gate and they've materialized around her, and at that point she doesn't give a damn. "I got past you to get in," she grits out, kicking away a wolf. "You don't think I can't to get out?" The wolf's teeth sink into her heel instead, and she's thrown off balance and yanked from her horse instead. "Damn it!" she cries out, her eyes still stinging but now with frustrated tears.

The wolves are everywhere, pressing down on her so she can't stand or run, and the gate is nowhere near her. She punches one in the neck, kicks another, desperately tries to push them away and fails. Her head falls back against hard stone, her neck exposed, and she hears a growl and closes her eyes, tears trickling from them as she waits for them to finish her off.

Instead, there's a bright light and a weight is suddenly thrown from her. She cracks open an eye, disbelieving and astonished, and sees a woman standing over her.

Odette is still glowing with that violet light, and maybe that's why her blows are hitting the wolves; they fall back and charge again and again and again, clawing at her as she claws at them and tearing into her. Altena struggles to sit up and is dizzy, her head pounding and her body not moving properly, and all she sees is Odette like a beacon of light in front of her, keeping the wolves from ALtena with desperate, faltering blows.

She hurls fire at the wolves with a final surge of strength and they retreat at last, vanishing from their place at the gate, and Odette turns and blinks at the empty path with bleary eyes before she drops unceremoniously to the ground.

ALtena catches her before she hits the stone path, cradling her in her arms as she scuttles away from the wolves. She musters up enough energy to climb back onto her horse, Odette wrapped in her embrace as Altena's head droops, and she rides him back into the front hall and tumbles down to the fireplace, her face still wet and her heart thudding against her ribs.

She doesn't think to fear the woman in her arms again.