Page 80 of Apples Dipped in Gold

I was a terrible lover but a worse protector.

That reality struck even harder as I entered the witch’s cottage and was overwhelmed by a foul stench. I could not place it exactly, but it was sickly sweet and burned my nose. Bile surged into the back of my throat. It was so instantaneous, I choked as I swallowed it down.

If Samara had managed to spend hours in this cottage, I could stay for a few seconds.

I stepped into the kitchen. There was a trail of bloodon the floor between a rotten wooden table and a large blazing hearth over which a cauldron boiled fiercely. Seeing it filled me with dread. What had the witch had planned for my beloved?

I found her body just beyond the table and her head in the sink. Her face was gray and waxy, but her eyes were open, and she stared back at me just as she had in the field.

I shoved my thumb into the corner of her eye, and when her eye popped from its socket, I tore it loose. I did the same with the second.

After it was done, I stared down at her face before catching sight of a row of knives laid out neatly on the counter, and an anger unlike anything I’d ever felt burned through me. I reached for one and before I could think twice, I shoved it deep into the witch’s face. I jerked it loose and did it again.

And again.

And again.

I slammed the blade into her until I couldn’t breathe. When I was finished and her face was nothing more than a bloody pulp, I screamed until my voice gave out, dissipating into silence.

“Feeling better?” asked the fox.

I wondered at what point he had decided to join me.

“No,” I growled. I scooped up the eyes I’d removed from the witch and threw them at the fox. “Here are your fucking eyes.”

They landed at his feet. He watched them roll away until they disappeared under the table and then looked at me.

“They are your eyes, Prince of Nightshade,” said the fox.

I knew it, but I did not want it to be true. At this moment, I could not understand my own actions. I did not know why I had sent Samara back to this cottage, especially after the night we had shared. I had made love to her. I had made love to her, and no one else had before, and I had let her leave my side to sleep in a house of horror.

I should have kept her by me. I should have spent the rest of the night inside her.

Instead, I had traded all that for a pair of eyes I could barely look at.

“She apologized to me,” I said, grinding my teeth so hard my jaw ached. “She, bloody and broken, apologized tome.”

“What do you expect from a woman who is used to abuse?”

My eyes burned.

Only one thing was clear to me now. Cursed or not—I did not know anymore—nothing changed the fact that I was unworthy of Samara’s true love.

“We had better be on our way,” said the fox. “Find her eyes, and cut her nails. Tonight, we will find where the wishing tree will grow.”

The fox turned and left the cottage, and I followed soon after, but not before dropping the witch’s head into her boiling cauldron and setting her cottage alight.

* * *

We traveled until the sun went down. Fox led the way, and Samara followed. As usual, I lingered behind, carrying the satchel, which felt strangely heavy, weighed down by the witch’s eyes and her long iron claws.

Though I desired to walk beside my beloved, it felt like a reward I didn’t deserve, so I kept my distance, and she kept hers. I wondered how she felt about me now, in the aftermath of my failure. Did she regret giving herself to me? Did she love me less? Did she love me at all?

The questions gnawed at me the longer we went without speaking, but I could not bring myself to ask. I was afraid and ashamed.

Coward, I thought.

The sun was setting when we stopped at the base of a hill where there were many trees, and the foliage was dense.

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