One Year Earlier…

Defeat caught up with Wendy as she stared out at the unspoiled expanse—the farthest she'd dared wander on her own from the very specific quarter to which she'd been assigned. This spot, this patch of stone that divided her two hearts—one predictable and ordinary and kept, and another as of yet uncharted—was her favorite place in all the realm. The king and his court behind—miles removed for all the space they occupied in her thoughts—and the worlds ahead.

Her bare toes hung over the pavement's edge, longing to taste terrain. The bushes at her back sprouted spring flowers, half-dormant trees rustled in the wind that whipped the hair around her neck, a field of heather stretched out before her, swaying like amethyst waves, daring her to take the step she'd feared all these months. And in the distance, beyond the garden's edge, beyond where the palace walls ended and the southern coast began, if Wendy squinted hard enough, and if she had the courage to bear it, she imagined she could just make out the final remnants of another Age dissolving into the sea.

Baelfire's steps echoed despite the wind in her ears. Wendy didn't turn around, but she envisioned his body bent forward, hands clutching knees as he labored for breath. His guard wasn't far behind. They'd chased her from one end of the palace to the next, out the west gate, across the cobblestone courtyard, under the sculpted stone arch, through the freshly pruned labyrinthine trees, to garden's end, the clang of metal sounding a promise with each advancing step: if Bae didn't catch her, Mulan would.

"Why did you run from me?"

Wendy opened her mouth to respond, to tell him that his was a stupid question, but she'd left her voice at the threshold of his chambers, trapped inside a severely younger version of herself.

"Wen?"

His pleading tone pulled at something inside her. Something deep, ancient as the ground on which they stood. Before he could touch a hand to her shoulder and force her round, Wendy spun on her heel to face him. The wind reshaped the layers of her long hair, keeping their whipping ends from her eyes. Patches of sunlight spotted Bae's skin; tufts of dark hair were tossed about his head until they resembled the waves of heather still whispering her name.

He'd been described as, "Lacking in proper musculature for a defender of nations." His complexion had been deemed splotchy, his hair not as full as some might prefer, and he had not inherited his father's strong chin or broad shoulders. Or innate attractiveness. They wondered how such a prince as this would ever find a wife. Bae was all of these things, but Wendy didn't mind because he was positively the greatest thing to ever happen to the worlds. And in her esteem, there could be no equal.

Unlike the palace staff, so taken with doubt and disapproval, Wendy did not fear that his would be a life lived alone, but that she, herself, would be too late in proving worthy of his affections.

His open shirt hung loose from his trousers and he carried one of his boots in his hand. Seeing this made Wendy brave. "Why were you naked with that woman?"

Bae averted his eyes. Mulan, too, looked away. Wendy would've thought it comical were it not so insulting—how the two of them could be so skittish and still call her a child. Insist she was young and therefore couldn't fathom the complexities of adult emotion. Of passion and desire. Infatuation. Obsession. Lust versus love. Innocent and unaware was Wendy in their eyes. What might their reactions have been had she remarked on something more scandalous than Bae's state of undress?

"Are you in love with her?" Bae ran his hand in an upward motion from the base of his neck to the top of his head, an action that did his appearance no favors. "Or is she another distraction? Will you grow tired of her like you did my cousin and cast her aside?"

"That isn't fair—"

"Well, I should hardly think you intend to marry this one, now you've gotten what you wanted." What should've earned Wendy a reproach turned Baelfire's features cold. He looked in that moment the way his father looked before delivering a particularly mournful speech. Wendy racked her memory for the confirmation Bae wouldn't voice, for any announcement that'd accompanied the foreign court's arrival to their shores. "I've heard nothing of an engagement."

"It isn't official…yet." Wendy observed the set of his shoulders as he surveyed the garden, the strained tone his words took on, the apology in his eyes that asked her to understand. She didn't want to understand. "My father gave me an ultimatum. If I didn't choose a bride by Year's End, he'd give my inheritance over to one of my sisters' sons."

Year's End was two days ago. The visiting court had come to the capital a full month in advance so as not to disrupt the festivities. The worlds were still coming back to life—the garden that currently bore witness to their conversation showing Glowerhaven's first signs of rebirth. How long, then, had Bae been engaged? How long had he kept the secret of it to himself?

"And you choose her?"

She was beautiful, of course. The visiting princess. And her marriage to Bae made sense, even if Wendy was loath to admit it. With the rate at which the courts were crumbling, the capital could use any ally willing to take it.

Baelfire's gaze faltered and tension formed in his jaw. "She's really not quite so terrible once you've spent time with her."

Or seen her without her clothes?

"Really not quite so terrible," Wendy echoed his words back to him, that he might grasp their absurdity. "You're a true romantic, Bae, has anyone told you that?" He grinned like she'd paid him a compliment. "Why her?"

"I want to be king," he said. But this statement must've sounded as flat to him as it did to her because he rushed to add: "There is great unrest in the worlds right now, Wen. The peaceful co-existence our ancestors achieved—well, it's no longer feasible. Too much has changed. Too much has remained the same. This degree of conflict hasn't been seen since the Ogre Wars—with an immortal army on our side, we might stand a chance against the m…" he cleared his throat, his eyes darting to Wendy and then away, "…those who seek to invade."

"Monsters?" Bae had the good sense to look ashamed. "Is that what you were going to say?"

He looked out at the horizon, at the diminishing decay Wendy had turned her back on. He couldn't see it, of course. In truth, Wendy couldn't either. Not with her half-mortal eyes. But she'd felt it, same as every year when their world was reborn. It was like a thousand deaths ripping through her. And she could've sworn, though she'd only admitted as much to Bae once and would not be so foolish again, that it'd been the cries of a great multitude that'd wrenched her from a restless sleep. It wasn't normal, Bae had told her, to feel things as deeply as Wendy did. It wasn't human.

Everyone else saw the changes—once fruitful farmlands turned barren, rivers that once overflowed turned to dried-up fissures in the earth—but none of them felt it when their world died.

Baelfire didn't want to answer—or, more to the point, he didn't want to answer honestly. "Yes."

"Do you think I'm a monster?"

"How can you ask me that?"

"But Emma is?"

"Emma is…" Bae sighed, closing his eyes to help rein in his impatience, "…different."

He had that look again. The one Wendy would've previously described as vacant. She realized now how full it was. How loaded with unshared burdens. How heavy they must've been to carry all on his own.

Wendy swallowed against a dry throat as the wind persuaded her forward, as it urged her to say what she'd later loathe herself for letting loose—what should've stayed locked away, deep down, where no one would ever bear witness to its wretched longing. "You could marry me."

Baelfire laughed, but the sound ceased when he observed Wendy's conviction. She stared up at him, silently imploring him to see her as the woman she was well on her way to becoming and not the little girl who'd followed his every move from the very instant she knew how. But she felt the futility of her actions as a voice in the back of her mind chose this moment to mock her.

"Poor little darling. So naïve."

"I know I'm not technically mortal, not fully. But my mother was. Or my father. It's why they gave me away. It has to be. And I know James is only a Lord—"

"Wendy…" he brushed the hair from her shoulder, against the wind, and rested his hand in its place.

Don't say it.

Please don't say it.

"You are still very young."

Wendy's shoulders slumped. She tried to injure Bae with a scowl, conscious of the fact that such mental aptitude was not only forbidden under the law, like all magic, but nigh on unheard of in Glowerhaven these days. "I'm not so young."

"No? I was practically the age that you are now the day you were born."

"Five years younger, actually, and what does that matter?"

"It matters."

Wendy's voice shook around the words, "I love you," but she didn't regret them. Not yet. Not when they were the final desperate appeal of a heart that wasn't ready to surrender.

Baelfire took to one knee, his expression pained. "I love you, too—of course I do. But Wen, it has to be this way. I had to choose someone…else. Tell me you understand."

Wendy wanted nothing more than to turn from him and run headlong into another life. The same one that'd called to her these thirteen years, that'd beckoned her like the home she didn't remember leaving. She wanted to run her fingers through the fields of heather and let the wind carry her fast and far away. What undying lands still waited beyond the Gates of Glowerhaven?

She settled for a single solemn nod and said, "I understand."