Archive of Our Own

Marinette has been alone for a very long time. Plague took her mother, God rest her, and afterward, in the instant she looks at her father, she knows he will not wait long to join her; the mark of death lies not on his face, but in his eyes, a strange, wild, fey look that persists no matter what he does or says.

It only means he is thinking of her mother, Marinette knows, but she is not at all surprised when the simplest of colds carries him off the next fall.

Part of him died when her mother did. The rest just took a little longer to follow.

She buries him next to her mother in a grave in the forest beyond their house, where the tall trees can watch over them in the afterlife; Marinette has no illusions about what will happen to their physical bodies as soon as her back is turned, but is that not too a part of the time after life? Is that not a kind of immortality all its own? And anyway, their spirits are long gone, in some realm beyond this mortal plan or living quite another kind of life entirely, who can say?

Her mother and father were never ones to care about the form of a thing. Only its essence. They wouldn't mind.

Marinette lives on her own after that in the small cottage which has been passed down through generations of her father's family. If she were a different kind of person, or if this cottage were not so chock full of memories, she might be lonely; she can go up to a week without seeing anyone at all, from market day to market day again, where she sells the rough, hearty bread her family has always been known for. Twice a year, a wandering peddler's path takes her directly past Marinette's cottage, carrying in her tiny wagon the sort of small, light, precious things it can be hard to find outside of a city: nails, lengths of ribbon, scraps of velvet and silk and lace, almanacs. But Alya's favorite thing to trade, the lightest, the most essential thing of all –

News.

Much of it is no more than gossip about the king and his court and their affairs and their wars. What does that sort of news matter to Marinette, who has never seen a king, or a war, or a noble? She lives in Aquitaine, or so Alya tells her, but that is a name that has no meaning to her, given by a distant man who desired to set it apart from some other man's property. Let that man come to her cottage and try to rule her. It would take a sword to do it. And Marinette is not without means of her own.

She has said this to Alya before. It made her laugh, the sort of laugh one gives to small children as a gift when they've been silly, but she made no protest; perhaps Alya sensed that Marinette was serious. Is serious.

Today's news is no different.

"The king has a new mistress," Alya tells Marinette as she hop-skips down the sideboard to land barefoot in the grass. "Scandalous. No older than his own son, and the last one not two months in her grave. I heard a whisper that the current one had more than a hand in making sure there was an opening, too." She sighs explosively, stretching for the sky and arching her back until it cracks in three places. "Absolutely delicious."

Marinette, who is holding the nose-harness on Alya's stubborn pony, exchanges a glance with her much quieter husband. Nino shrugs.

This is Alya, he seems to say with nothing more than the fondness in his eyes and a tiny, wry smile. Take her as she comes.

"It's so good to see you," Marinette says to both of them with a huge smile. She means it, too, even though her ears are probably going to fall off between now and tomorrow, when they leave for the next stop on their journey, a small monastery more than ten miles from here that straddles the river in order to make some sort of sacramental wine.

She's not used to people anymore; she's used to the silence, to the trees whispering in the wind that winds through the forest, to the rhythms of the wildlife that lives inside of it, sometimes coming close enough to sleep right underneath her bedroom window. The forest is her home. It shelters her, it feeds her; sometimes Marinette feels like it cares for her, as much as it's capable of caring for any living thing beneath its boughs.

But she's never reminded more of how much she misses her friends and the simple closeness of human company than when Alya and Nino are right in front of her.

"Come in," Marinette says, with a smile on her face that feels strange, unfamiliar, and yet wholeheartedly and overwhelmingly happy. "I've got dinner waiting."

———

She's dressed up her usual rabbit stew with some wild fennel and thyme and the last of her dandelion greens, but the real prize is the bottle of white wine that Nino brings out from behind his back, like a magic trick. Bread is easy, at least for Marinette, and gladly she sacrifices the end of a honeycomb to round out the meal with a taste of something sweet.

In the light of the crackling fire and the candle on the table, Alya's eyes are bright as she passes on all the news she's heard in the last six months. There is the capital set, tales of the king and his dissolute court, of duels and affairs and a prince who is rumored to shed his clothes and turn into a wolf; but soon Alya runs out of those morsels, and starts to tell stories about people and places closer to home, ones that are significantly more valuable to Marinette. Certainly more useful, as well. A flood in a nearby village means that some may have lost their homes, but many more will have lost their food stores entirely, and going into winter is the worst time of all for that to happen.

It is unlikely that anyone from that village will come all the way to hers seeking help, but if they do, Marinette will give them as much bread as she can spare. And perhaps a little more.

The noble who claims this area as his own has been neglecting the roads, which Marinette could have told them from her own experience; the astrologers have been telling anyone who will listen that this winter will be mild, which is a thing that Marinette believes, since old man Galien has the weather sense and he told her the same thing last week when trading for bread; and Marinette looks remarkably well fed for someone who is now living alone.

"That is not news," Marinette says with a little twist of her mouth.

"It is to me," Alya says unrepentantly. "I expected to see you wasting away out here. How are you managing?"

This feels less like the probing questions they appear to be and more like love. Marinette smiles at Alya.

"The forest is good to me," she says, and nothing more, no matter how Alya asks.

Instead, Marinette turns around in her chair and reaches for the chest at the foot of her bed. The cottage is so small that nothing in it is very far away from anything else, and she can lift the top from here. She takes out the package wrapped in soft linen and offers it to Alya.

Nino takes the mug that Alya shoves into his chest while she accepts the cloth bundle as though it were liquid gold. "Is this…?"

"I finished it a few weeks ago," Marinette says, her fingers aching to touch it again, one last time before she has to let it go forever. "I think you'll like it."

"Of course I will," Alya says hotly, half outraged, half pretending at outrage to make everyone laugh. "I don't bring you – "

She's been unwrapping the cloth the whole time, but when she finally looks down at what's in her hands, Alya stops talking.

(For which Marinette makes a note to thank one of the saints. It is, after all, a minor miracle.)

Alya and Nino's cart is not large. It has to carry them, everything they need for the pony, food, and somehow fit enough material to trade in order to keep soul in body. Light material, soft and fine cloth, small, precious items, these are the things they deal in.

Such as: beads. Embroidery thread. Scraps of silk too small to be made into a garment, yet too precious to be cut down further into handkerchiefs or bum rags.

Marinette knows exactly what to do with every bit of that.

She's made a yoke for a lady's dress, a circular shape that drapes around the neck, and on it she's embroidered the sights she sees every day: young, green shrubbery and tiny flowers growing through it, birds with every feather laid out in exquisite detail, even the flash of a deer hiding behind a thin, young tree. The beads are there, too, in the flashing eye of a red-breasted robin, the heart of each and every flower, lining the edges with a sparkle so delicate it could be an illusion in this fire-lit room.

It's beautiful. Even Marinette can admit that, and she is her own harshest critic.

"Oh, Marinette," Alya sighs. She unfolds the yoke with hands almost as careful as Marinette could wish her to be to show Nino the entire scene. "Marinette, you outdo yourself, every time."

"I have little else with which to while away the evening hours," Marinette says, though she's smiling. "If I lose the sight in both eyes before the age of thirty, know it is in your service."

Nino looks up and frowns at her. "We can't bring you six months of candles at a time," he says warningly. "Take care of yourself. You're not to ruin yourself over this, understood? We would rather have you whole than all the finery in the world."

He is quieter than Alya, and usually just as cheerful, but in those rare occasions he feels driven to put his foot down, he can be as masterful as anyone would wish.

"Alya, take your husband in hand," Marinette says, a smile curving her mouth despite her hard words. "I'll not be spoken to like that, thank you."

"You assume I don't agree with him." Alya strokes light fingers over the embroidery again with a faint sigh before she tucks it away again. "Although, yes, if anyone's to intimidate you into taking care of yourself, it will be me. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, the both of you."

Nino laughs and drops a kiss into her curls. "Yes, love."

"Yes, love," Marinette echoes, half teasing, the other half a wistful ache in her heart, yearning for even a fraction of the tender affection that lies so obvious between her friends that they might as well be glowing. "Whatever you say."

The two of them stay the night, packed into Marinette's bed while she wraps herself in a thick blanket and sleeps before the fire; her dreams are smoke and whispers, restless in nature and aching, as though her very soul is crying out for something she doesn't understand, something she doesn't know how to find.

She waves Alya and Nino off in the morning, smiling after the cart as it disappears down the track that leads back to the road, and when she can no longer see them or hear them, she closes her eyes and waits for the forest to reassert itself around her.

Wind, through the branches; the faint swish-swish of something small and quiet trundling through the scrubby little plants that grow low to the ground; a very far-away bird soaring above the canopy and looking for its dinner; and above all:

Quiet.

Marinette is alone again.

Perhaps that is a relief.

———

The next months are crucial to surviving through the cold winter. Her days are full of long expeditions into the forest to forage for anything she can get her hands on, and at night, she sits by the light of her fire and works on her new piece – a long girdle, fit for a lady who holds the keys of her own demesne. She will give it to Alya and Nino when she sees them next, and they will continue to bring her as much fabric as they can fit in their cart. It is an arrangement that pleases her.

As always, the forest is good to her. Marinette manages to store enough preserves and food that if the winter is as mild as was foretold, she won't have to set a single foot out of the house all winter long. There's a chill in the air now when she wakes in the morning, and a wisp of something that smells like bonfires, or perhaps it is simply smoke from the monastery; it promises the deeper cold, the heart of winter, and Marinette knows that she hasn't much time to say goodbye to the forest.

Winter is the season when every animal puts their head down and begins to dig, and nest, and mate against the cold; even the plants withdraw, bracing themselves to survive the long cold by drawing their essence into their own heart, abandoning the outer reaches of their branches as acceptable losses. It is a silent walk that Marinette takes, and a solitary one, as is her custom now, but she does not feel truly alone in the way she expected to.

There is something...

Marinette pauses, her hand resting lightly on the bark of a young birch tree, and she listens.

Winter changes even the sound of the wind through the branches, for the leaves have fallen to their final rest, and the branches from which they grow are often thinner than their spring selves, but Marinette would swear that even the wind itself is different, in this descent toward the dead days; it feels harder, colder, as though it reaches for her in ways it would never dream of doing in the summer, when all it wants is to play with her hair.

The whistle of it, the bare branches clacking against each other and the echoes: every part of that sound is just the same as the thousands of times she's heard it in other years.

But underneath...

Is that a shuffling just at the edge of her hearing? Fallen leaves whispering against themselves?

Such a faint noise is hard to track, but Marinette thinks that it's coming from her right, deeper into the forest. She turns her head to look –

And meets a pair of tawny amber eyes glowing from the hollow of a fallen log.

Marinette has been alone for so long. Perhaps too long. Screaming at the unexpected is a natural human instinct. And yet, if she screams, who would answer? There is no one to hear it.

There is no one at all.

She is stillness itself. That is her only defense. Her heart pounds itself so hard that she can feel her pulse frantically skittering in her forehead and her lips and the place between her legs, all of the soft and tender places a predator might like to sink its teeth in and bite.

But not if she is still. Not if she is quiet, and still, and calm...

The eyes are set too closely together to be a bear or wild boar. They are too large to belong to a lynx or one of the small red foxes that live nearby. That leaves only one option.

Wolf.

Marinette has seen a wolf before, once, long ago when she was but a child. It seemed massive to her then, when she was so small, but even though a child must have seemed like easy prey, the wolf only looked at her, its thoughtful eyes gauging something deep inside of her soul, and then turned and loped away as though she was nothing to fear.

"Wolves will attack when they are hungry, when they are desperate, much like any animal," her mother told her that night, the fire murmuring low behind her; her face was in shadow... "You did not panic; that was wise, and I am proud of you. If it should happen again, remember this: all creatures wish only to survive. All creatures. Even humans."

She is barely breathing. The wolf has not moved even an iota since she spotted it.

The log is not a large one; the wolf must be crouching to fit... Could it be injured? It is tempting to think that would make it less likely to hurt her, but an injured animal might have lain there for hours, or days, without water or food. If it is hungry...

But it hasn't attacked her yet.

They watch each other, girl and wolf, wolf and girl; slowly, slowly, she feels like she's starting to dream, as though her mind is sinking backward into a deep, cool pond, surrounded only by water and weight, seeing nothing, nothing, except those golden eyes...

They are calling something out of her, like a secret, a part of her soul she didn't know was there.

Is there a wolf hiding inside her heart?

Marinette takes a sharp breath, feeling the chill in her chest and lungs. It breaks the spell between them; the eyes blink closed, and then there's only the darkness of the fallen log, and nothing else.

As though the wolf was never there, except in her mind.

She backs away for several yards, and when that produces no predator lunging at her from the darkness, she turns and walks home to her cottage at a brisk pace, neither running too fast nor creeping too slow.

But even when the door to her cottage is shut behind her, she doesn't feel like she's escaped.

———

Sleep eludes her, and when the next morning dawns cool and clear and lovely, Marinette is still sitting in her bed, staring at the door that separates her from the rest of the world.

She is thinking of the wolf.

Yesterday, fear had her in its grasp, and she ran, in the way a child runs from its nightmares; but in the cold light of day, there is quite another part of Marinette that cannot stop thinking of the wolf in her forest, which is perhaps injured, perhaps hungry, perhaps starving.

The thing she ran from was not the wolf. Not truly. In the end, she ran from naught but her own imagination, her own terrors. The wolf did nothing to her. It didn't even growl. And the forest has been good to her for many, many years; does she not owe it something in return?

She only has a vague idea of what wolves eat, but surely any sort of animal flesh will do. She has a brace of coneys smoking, for the traps were full yesterday, and she picks two of the fattest and makes her way back to the fallen log, stepping on every twig and branch she can find on the way.

Those eyes are already watching her as she picks her way through the brush. They are not human eyes, and there is no mistaking that, but it would also be a mistake to dismiss it as a mere animal. There is intelligence in those eyes, a wary sort of caution, far more than she would have expected from a beast of the wilds. It makes her slow down, choosing each footstep with care.

"Hello," Marinette says in an determinedly cheerful voice. Of course it doesn't understand her, but she's run out of twigs. "I'm not going to hurt you. Here."

She tosses the coneys into the darkness inside the log one at a time. The eyes blink and retreat from the bodies like a startled deer, though Marinette can hear it sniffing around to see what she's brought.

On the balance, she thinks she would rather not listen to it eat.

"Enjoy," she says with a faint smile. She hums to herself the whole way back to the cottage, flush with the thrill of being able to do something to help. It is a small thing, all told, but to the wolf, it may well be the difference between life and death – and viewed in that light, perhaps it was the most important act in the whole world.

And she didn't get eaten for her trouble.

Perhaps her parents are watching over her still.

———

The next morning, Marinette opens the door to her cottage to find a huge pheasant laid across her mantle, freshly dead. There are teeth marks in one wing and a few feathers missing from the long tail, but as far as Marinette can tell, it died of a broken neck. Neat. Painless, for the most part.

Not a manner of thinking she would ever ascribe to a wild animal.

But who else could have done this?

Marinette rises from crouching over the dead bird and scans the edge of the forest, slow and thorough, using all of her senses and not just her eyes; but no matter how hard she looks, how hard she listens, there is simply nothing there but trees and brush. No stalking wolf. No tramp. No Alya and Nino, turned away from the monastery and come to complain about it, though that is wishful thinking and Marinette knows it.

She is alone.

The forest is good to me, she reminds herself.

But for the first time, the thought doesn't reassure her.

She takes the pheasant and carries it around back to clean and hang the carcass. When she's done, she has a pile of organs and viscera; almost all of them are edible, given some effort on her part, but she also knows that the parts of the pheasant she is keeping will feed her for two weeks or more, and the feathers and down are a significant gift on their own.

It might not have been the wolf. But then again, the other options are far more unsettling.

Marinette gathers up the viscera in a sack and retraces her steps to the fallen log. There is no sign of her wolf today, and she hopes that means it's on the mend, or even better, that it's left this place entirely and is on the way back to its pack.

Still, she leaves the organs and entrails in a pile just in front of the log. Like an offering. Or a gift.

It takes Marinette all day to deal with the unexpected bounty of the pheasant, between properly setting up the meat to cure and cleaning the hide in order to harvest the feathers and down. Today is usually the day she gets the majority of her baking done for the market, and she knows that means tomorrow will be very, very busy.

Which is why when Marinette opens her door, she looks down at the very, very freshly killed deer laid out over her front steps and swears.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" she shouts at the still, silent forest. "I can't even lift it!"

The silence is her answer. There isn't even a bird singing, or a passing breeze – there's nothing at all for Marinette to take her temper out on, not a single trace of her unseen benefactor. She stomps her foot and makes a frustrated sound at the back of her throat.

The sound of masculine laughter coming from the forest brings Marinette's head around.

"Sorry," the man says, a little sheepish. "I wasn't thinking about how heavy it would be."

His voice is light, rather than the deep rumble of a large man, and smooth; he speaks with a touch of an accent, too, something cultured that Marinette doesn't recognize.

"Who are you?" she asks, her heart beating quickly. Her eyes are skittering across the familiar trees suddenly turned threatening and strange, but there's no sign of anyone in the treeline. "Come out so that I can see you."

There's a silence that drapes itself over the clearing like a thick blanket; after a long, reluctant pause, the voice says, "One or the other. Not both. Not now."

Marinette bites her lip, wrapping her arms around her stomach as she considers. He could lie to her with his words, but a man's face is a man's face, she decides. "If I must choose, then come out."

"All right." He sounds resigned. "Just don't scream. I don't mean you any harm."

And on that ominous statement, Marinette notices the brush twisting at the edge of the forest to the east, and she watches with her hand over her mouth as out comes –

The wolf.

Its eyes are unmistakable. Even if she wanted to persuade herself that this is not her wolf, Marinette knows it would be folly.

It comes toward her for a moment or two, perhaps three lengths of its body, and then it sits on its haunches and flips its tail around its feet to look at her with grave eyes. "Thank you," it says.

It is the most curious thing. Its jaw opens, as a person's might, but there is no movement of tongue or teeth or lips to create the sounds. He opens his mouth and speech pours out, as if it were water from a jug.

This smells uncomfortably of magic.

"For what?" Marinette asks cautiously.

"For not screaming, of course," he says at once.

"What would be the point?" Marinette demands. "There is no-one for miles, except you. And I would not give you the satisfaction."

"It would not give me satisfaction," he says, cocking his head to the side. He sounds sad. "I don't want to frighten you. I am trying, in some small way, to thank you. I don't know why you've been offering me food, but it was most welcome, and appreciated."

Some small part of her discomfort and irritation fades, like so much candle smoke, to reveal the fear that was driving it all along. There are a hundred stories of animals being able to talk. Fantasy, most of them, fairy tales to scare children into behaving, or stories dreamed up by the inhabitants of a bottle, or the mad. They are not real.

He is real.

He's possibly the most real thing she's ever seen.

The wolf sits quietly, his golden eyes resting on her with a strange sort of weight, as though his focus is physical, something she could touch, something she could hold in the palms of her hands and feel brushing over her skin like fur.

"I thought you were injured," Marinette admits self-consciously, making a little face at herself – why does she feel shy, of all things? And why now?

There's a smile in his voice when he answers. "You are kind, then. Even to beasts of the wild. Does that not deserve a reward?"

Marinette looks down at the deer at her feet and sighs. It's obviously a male, and she thinks that it's one of the older bucks in the herd that wanders her forest. Its antlers are on the smaller side. It probably wouldn't have survived the winter, even if the wolf hadn't delivered it to her like a package. "I would likely feel different about this if I could lift the body," she admits. "It is a princely gift."

She aims a tight smile at the wolf, but he is turning his face away from her as she does, looking into the trees behind her cottage. Marinette frowns.

What has she said?

"If we can drag it to one of those trees, perhaps together we can hoist it over a sturdy branch," the wolf offers. "Then you can dress and butcher it as you wish. Assuming you have a bit of rope, that is. I don't want to ruin the hide with my teeth any more than I already have."

What kind of wild animal thinks in this way? Like a man, with reason and foresight – is that not the domain of humanity?

But she can only have one of her questions answered, and she chose to see him, not to know him; for some reason, Marinette feels herself bound to that bargain, perhaps because the wolf has just brought her enough food to keep soul in body for months, if properly salted and dried. She gives a moment's fleeting thought to sharing the largesse with a few families from the village, but she has no one to run the message, and she would rather not share the tale of how she came by such a large animal.

Marinette also has the vague idea that there is something illegal about a commoner killing a deer. The last thing she needs is to be taken up for poaching.

She sighs, her shoulders relaxing a touch. "I'll get the washing line."

Between that and a piece of waxed canvas Marinette keeps under the washing tub, they fashion a reasonably helpful makeshift sled. While she's still dusting her hands off on her skirt, the wolf ducks his head under the loops of the rope and puts himself into harness without a word of complaint, even when the rope rubs him raw in a line over his shoulders and chest.

This is no wild animal. Only reason can force a body to work through pain in this way.

Once she throws the line over the most solid tree branch she can find, it takes both Marinette and the wolf to haul the deer off the ground, and in the process, the end of her washing line is shredded to pieces by his teeth.

"Again, my apologies," he says ruefully, nudging the rope with his paw. "Teeth are no substitute for hands."

"I can get more at the market if I have something to trade," Marinette says, brushing her finger down the deer's hide. "Michel will take the hide, but I have never skinned a deer. I haven't the first idea where to start."

The wolf gazes at her for a while, and then he cranes his head to look up at the deer with an assessing eye that makes Marinette feel ever more certain of her conclusions. "Winter is coming," he says. "One can feel it on the air. The vermin will not bother you overmuch, not today, and not tonight. It's too cold for them. Let the blood drain. You will find it much easier to work with tomorrow."

"And how do you know that?" she asks with narrowed eyes.

The wolf turns his eyes back on her. Now, they are full of laughter. "It seems self-evident to me. Why don't you?"

With that, the wolf stands up, shakes himself all over, and trots away into the forest. He is swallowed by tree trunks and thin brush within thirty feet, and Marinette cannot hear a single trace of his passing, not even in the startled birds he must surely be disturbing.

If not for the deer and the shredded cord, she would think she's taken leave of her senses entirely.

Perhaps some of the stories are true, after all.

Marinette shakes her head and turns back to the cottage to wash and begin her baking.

———

The next morning, Marinette has to leave before dawn to make it to the market before it opens. On her way to the thin path that takes her to the village, she passes the tree where they'd hung the deer.

It is not the way she left it.

The body has been skinned and the viscera and organs taken away. The waxed canvas they had used as a sled the day before is now on the ground beneath the tree, wrapped around something large; Marinette prods it open with her toe to confirm what she already suspects. The hide is inside, bound up like a gift. It's been skilfully skinned with a very sharp blade and then scraped clean in such a thorough, professional way that she instantly knows whoever did this has done it many, many times before.

Whoever did this, she mocks herself, awkwardly stooping down to pick up the hide while balancing four ungainly sacks of bread slung over her shoulders. Why is she pretending?

She already knows who did this.

One of the hunters is willing to trade without asking too many questions about where Marinette got such a beautiful hide, and she comes away from the market with extra oil and honey and a bag of sour hawthorn berries which she snacks on as she makes her way back to her little cottage. Dusk is already falling when she gets home, but that doesn't stop her from dropping her things by the door and immediately turning around again.

She finds her way back to the fallen log. The clearing is quiet, serene; when she puts her head in the log, there's nothing but darkness, not even the sound of breathing. As far as she can tell, he's not there.

Hmm.

Marinette sits next to the log, tucks her knees against her chest, and leans against it. The stories say that wolves can track anything anywhere, and especially their enemies, that their noses are far superior to that of a human. It's likely he already knows she's here. She only has to wait.

The days are short at this time of year, and night brings a heavy chill with it, something wet and forbidding that smells like snow. Marinette is wearing her heavy skirts and a thick knitted shawl, but these clothes are meant to keep her warm on the walk to the village, not when she is sitting motionless on damp earth as the sun goes to sleep. She shivers, huddling in on herself.

"You'll catch your death that way," he says.

His voice is coming from the other side of the clearing – not from the direction of her house, but the side that leads deeper, into the wilder woods. The moon is new, and it is very, very dark. She can't see him except perhaps as a darker shadow against the trees.

"Come closer," Marinette says carefully.

The wolf sighs, and then the shadow moves. He comes to her on soft feet and sits before her, cocking his head to the side. "I expected to see you this morning," the wolf says, a hint of amusement in his voice.

She's smaller than he is, seated this way; Marinette is forced to tilt her head back to look into the wolf's eyes. "Today is market day," she tells him. "I have to eat. That is more important than you are."

His laughter is a sharp bark. "Put in my place very neatly, thank you." His tail flicks, just once.

"What are you?" The question bursts out of her like an explosion, the kind that every baker fears the most, the kind her father warned her about over and over again when she was small: the slightest spark turns into overwhelming pressure that she can no more contain within herself than she can flap her arms and learn to fly.

"Not a threat," the wolf says, very gently.

"That does not explain how you cleaned the deer and scraped its hide!" Marinette leans forward, insistent, desperate for some sort of answer. "I know it was you. No one else comes to this part of the woods. No one else comes to my cottage."

He looks away and into the woods, but not fast enough; Marinette catches the sadness that comes into his eyes.

After a long silence, and hesitantly, the wolf says, "Have I frightened you?" He is not looking at her, but at least he is facing her once more.

"No," Marinette says, taken aback.

"Do you fear that I would harm you? Or bring others here to harm you?"

"No, of course not," Marinette says, her eyebrows beginning to pull together in confusion. "I would not be sitting here if I did. What – "

"I am a wolf. I know what humans think of wolves. Vicious, cruel. Animals, and nothing more. I do not understand why you do not fear me," he says flatly, his eyes coming back to her face at last. There is a savage anger in them. But she thinks that it is not aimed at her.

Slowly, she says, "My mother told me once... Wolves will attack when they are hungry, when they are desperate, just like every other animal. Even humans will commit the worst of crimes in the name of survival. We are not so very different from you, in the end. You have never tried to harm me, and you repay my every attempt at kindness with your own. What is there to be afraid of?"

"My teeth, some might say," the wolf says, but his voice is softening again. "Your mother sounds like a philosopher."

Marinette smiles sadly, her eyes drifting toward the copse where her parents are buried. "She was."

The wolf follows her eyeline into the trees. There is no possible way that he could know what she's looking at, but still, he says, "Ah."

In that one word is all of the understanding and compassion that Marinette could ever have asked for. That kind of knowledge, that kind of sympathy, it only comes from someone who understands. Intimately. Marinette has talked about this with Alya, but she has not yet lost anyone in her family; Marinette has to explain how she is feeling and reacting from the ground up.

It was not like this.

There is something shameful in how much of a relief it is to know that she is not alone in this torment of memory.

"Who was it?" Marinette asks, her voice carefully gentle.

"My mother," he answers. Then he shakes his head. "Long ago. I was quite young. It might as well have been a different world entirely."

"So you have a mother," she says thoughtfully. "And a father?"

He looks at her, his eyes narrowing, and yet there's a glint of laughter in them. Marinette is almost certain she is not imagining it. "You are persistent," he says, and then sighs. "I am not ready to tell you my story. If you believe I don't mean to hurt you, will you trust me that far?"

Marinette bites her lip as she thinks it over. At this point, she is merely curious, she knows. And he has the right to his secrets. Still... "You will tell me someday?" she asks, looking up at him with wide, pleading eyes. "You promise?"

"Little witch," he says, though good-naturedly. "Where did you learn to beg with your eyes like that? Yes, I will tell you one day. You have my word. Now. It is getting to be very cold, and you have no fur to keep you warm."

Grumbling, but not totally displeased, Marinette allows him to bully her into getting up and starting the walk back to her cottage. He goes with her, padding quietly alongside her, matching his pace to hers. He does not speak, and so she remains silent, too; but his company is unexpectedly soothing. There is peace in the silence.

She is not alone.

The wolf halts on the edge of the clearing that holds her cottage. Marinette looks back at him over her shoulder. There is a very, very faint gleam of reflected starlight in his eyes. "Sleep well," he says gravely, and turns to go back the way they came.

There is such a note of finality in those words that Marinette finds herself spinning around without consciously deciding to do it. "Wait," she gasps.

The wolf pauses, the shadow of one paw still in the air, hesitating as though he might ignore her and disappear into the forest again. Instead, he turns in a semi-circle to look at her. "Yes?"

"Stay," Marinette says, her fingers tangled in her skirt. "Here. With me. It's so cold out there. Stay for the winter. I hate to think of you shivering in that damp rotting log while I have a perfectly good fire and a roof over my head, both of which I am happy to share."

There's a long silence that ripples with shades of hesitation and doubt – and longing. Something is preventing him from saying yes. That much is perfectly clear. But there is also something that is preventing him from saying no.

Marinette crushes her skirts between aching fingers.

There is reason to hope.

The wolf sighs, sits, flicks his tail around his paws as though he means to stay there for a while. "I appreciate your charity, little witch. But wolves do not need four walls and a roof over their heads. I am quite content in my fur, I assure you." His voice is rough – deeper now, and inexpressibly weary.

How would she know if he was lying to her? So many of the cues she relies on are human: human eyes, human mouth, human patterns of speech and breath. How does a wolf lie? Is it in the twitch of his tail? Or is it in the way that he says I am quite content, as though each syllable is an enemy to be fought?

"It is not charity," Marinette protests. "Or pity. Perhaps I am asking you to take pity on me." She tries on a smile. It feels like a poor fit. "My parents died a year ago. I begin to grow very tired of the sound of my own voice."

This silence is even longer, and perhaps cruel, but it is a silence that carries weight; he is not ignoring her. There are calculations being made in his mind, scenarios imagined and discarded or accepted, or some that must be planned for. She can see it, even in this darkness. One makes his eyes narrow slightly before he shakes his head and dismisses it. Another forces all his muscles to tense, as though he's ready to fight.

It is not out of the realm of possibility that something is chasing him, Marinette realizes. That perhaps he does not want to be found. A creature with the seeming of an animal, but one that can talk – yes, she could believe it.

And yet she doesn't take the offer back.

It would be cruel, but that is not what stays her hand; it is simply him. He has done everything in his power to be kind and considerate toward her, with no thought of repayment. Such people deserve the same in return.

"Very well," he says at last. "I will stay. For the winter, at least."

"And afterward?" Marinette asks, raising her eyebrows.

He laughs. "We'll see about that when we get there, little witch. You realize that you may hate it."

"I won't," Marinette says with finality. And with a grin a touch too bright to be anything less than triumphant, she adds, "And my name is Marinette."

He laughs again – it's a really nice laugh. Marinette enjoys it. And then he follows her across the clearing and into her cottage without hesitation.

Her cottage is large enough for two people to exist comfortably. It was more than a little cramped with three, when her parents were alive, but alone, Marinette has had the feeling that she's rattling around in it like the last bean in a jar. There are two rooms, one with a sort of annex or extension of the main room that holds the ancient ovens her family has been using for generations of baking, and the other is a cramped space that holds her mattress and a shabby tub, and not much more. The doorway is nothing more than a blanket strung across the large empty space in the wall. She can touch her bed from the table. It is not grand or spacious, but it is hers, and she loves it.

Marinette stokes the fire as the wolf arranges himself in front of it, every bit like a cat who has decided that this space is his, and very shortly thereafter the cottage is ripe with the scent of wet dog.

For my sins, she thinks wryly, and goes back out with a torch to deal with the rest of the deer.

———

The cottage seems smaller with the wolf inhabiting more than his fair share of it, but contrary to his expectations, Marinette doesn't dislike it at all. His presence is not overbearing, or irritating. She finds him soothing. He is willing enough to talk about anything she wishes to, but he does not feel the need to fill the silence, either, in the way that Alya sometimes does; instead, he seems content to simply exist with her, lying before the fire or racing around the clearing on the few clear, sunny days before the snow comes simply to feel the strength in his legs.

He is no trouble, either, despite his protests. He comes and goes on his own errands during the daytime, especially after she fashions a bit of cord into a handle for the door that he can grasp with teeth or paw, but when evening comes, he is always to be found somewhere in the clearing. He patrols the edge of the forest every night, circling the edge with controlled tension in the lines of his body and his seeking eyes, looking for something in the depths of the forest.

What he is looking for, Marinette does not know. He will not speak of it, and she tries not to ask, for she knows how irritating it is to be badgered for the secrets one wishes to hide. He promised to tell her when he is ready, and she wants to abide by that agreement. She will.

Oh, if only she were not so curious!

Other than the ghost of his secrets that lingers in the forest, the wolf is the ideal companion. Marinette has never felt as safe as she does now, with a wolf living in her home. He knows things about far-off, distant places that she's never heard of before, and he's willing to tell her nearly anything about them just for the asking. He knows poetry, and stories, ones that are brand new to her ears. He knows when her bread is done by the smell. He teases her to make her laugh. He even allows her to tuck her toes under his stomach while he's lying lazily before the fire in a boneless heap of fur while she's embroidering in the evening. Marinette's never been so warm and toasty in the depths of winter.

But more than that, he's a friend. Alya is her dearest friend, someone she will love forever, but Alya always has one eye on the horizon, on the next stop on her journey, and after two or three days of idleness, she is positively itching to get back on the road and head somewhere else. It hardly seems to matter where she goes, as long as it is different from where she is. The nomadic life suits her.

Marinette could not abide it herself. She is tied to this life, to this house, to the forest. She needs to be here. She knows that with such a bone-deep certainty that no one will ever be able to convince her otherwise.

All she wants is someone who will stay.

The wolf cannot be that person. Marinette knows that. For one, he is not a person at all, and of course she had to badger him into agreeing in the first place. Even Marinette cannot fool herself into thinking he will wish to continue on with this life when spring comes. Perhaps he will consent to visiting in the same way Alya and Nino do, once or twice a year looping back to her cottage so that she knows he's all right.

He is a wild animal, no matter what secrets he hides beneath his fur. There is no world in which Marinette can keep him.

All she can do is enjoy their time together – and try not to think about how it will end.

———

Winter loosens its grip on the forest in slow and careful degrees. The snow retreats from the sun into the shade, and then even from those places, until it is merely a skirt around the north side of the tree roots. The ermines stick their heads out of their tunnels to test the temperature. The wolf tells her that he can hear rabbits cavorting in their warrens under the ground. She'll take his word for it.

The chill retreats from the air, too, until Marinette can no longer smell that characteristic combination of ice and woodsmoke that defines winter here.

"I'm going to start shedding soon," the wolf tells her glumly, stretching long and lean before the fire.

"Lovely," she says without looking up from her embroidery. "I'm already picking your fur out of my dough. Maybe I can make a cloak out of you, after all."

The wolf snorts and lays his head down on his paws, closing his eyes. "I would prefer that to you skinning me for my hide," he says mildly. "Though there are easier ways to keep warm."

Marinette wiggles her toes to remind him they're there, and in answer he rolls over to trap both of her feet beneath his warm body. The wolf looks up at her with his golden eyes only slits, as though he's on the verge of falling asleep, though there is amusement there, too. The peculiar way in which he holds his forelegs makes her feel curiously protective; they seem so thin from this perspective, as though they might snap if he put his full weight on them. "Have you considered that your toes are very like small, fleshy worms?"

Outraged, she leans down and digs her fingers into a ticklish place on his side. He snaps at her, missing by a mile, and Marinette squeaks and scrambles out of her chair, lunging for the other side of the cottage. Her wolf follows her, of course, and they chase each other around the room, all the while giggling like mad and greedily soaking up his barks of laughter, so unlike her own and yet so dear to her...

That night, Marinette closes her eyes and wishes and wishes and wishes, on every star and eyelash and flock of birds, that spring will never come.

———

But spring is life, and life cannot be stopped or turned aside by anyone, whether they be mortal or prince or god. Sometimes it is waylaid, like a kitten distracted by a ball of string, but afterward it rushes in with greater strength, as if it wishes to make up for its error.

And spring is coming.

(It is not alone.)

———

If Marinette has scowled at every green bud and new blade of grass pushing up from the soil on her walk home, then no one will ever know but her. The wolf accompanies her on her market journeys, but he is always at a distance, ranging for miles and miles on either side of her path instead of marking her steps. He would hear anything that wished to harm her, he says, and Marinette knows that to be true. So she does feel safer.

Not that anyone or anything has ever attacked her on her travels.

But if it makes her wolf feel better to play guard dog, then Marinette is happy to let him.

The walk home is both easier and harder than way there. She's tired from a long market day, and all she really wants is to sit down in front of the fire and put her feet up, but at least she's not juggling an awkward pile of bread rounds in sacks, or worrying about whether anyone will be able to afford to trade with her. She came away with salt and oil and apples and potatoes, which, combined with the hunting her wolf does daily and the traps which Marinette is now stringing through the forest, will keep them going for more than the next week.

She pulls the bag higher on her back and turns her face up to the sun, trusting her feet to keep her on the path she's walked twice a week since she learned how to walk.

Oh, it is lovely to see the sun again.

It is too soon. Marinette glances off to her left, where somewhere her wolf ranges through the forest, following his nose and his whims. He still refuses to tell her what he's running from. The longer he refuses and puts it off, the more Marinette worries. It must be something terrible. What if there's nothing she can do to help him? What will they do then?

This is a well-worn pattern of thought, and for all of the time she's spent thinking it, Marinette still has no answers. Only more questions.

She sighs.

Home is just within reach. She can see the arrangement of trees that marks the edge of her clearing, if she strains her eyes even a little, and the relief that surges inside of her is so welcome.

But just then, a dog barks, sharp and loud and very, very clear. Marinette stops dead in her tracks.

It's coming from ahead of her, from her clearing. From her home.

The first bark is answered by more than a few barks from other dogs, as though a whole pack is gamboling around her cottage. Then a quieter sound, but deeper, and even though it's hard to hear it because of the dogs, Marinette thinks that it's a man's voice – that someone is giving an order. The dogs are quieting now, in any case, and surely a pack of wild dogs would not stop barking until the thing causing their alert is dealt with?

There is at least one man in her clearing, with a pack of dogs which he controls. There is only one conclusion she can draw from this.

"Stay away," she says in a strong, clear voice. Not loud enough for a human to hear it from the clearing, but if her wolf is anywhere near, if he is listening as he said he would, he must hear her. He must. "Stay away, for pity's sake. I will deal with them."

Marinette drops her sacks at the bottom of a tree and starts for the house, terror lending her new energy. After a few steps, she stops again. "Please," she says, quieter, but no less urgent. "Stay away. I could not bear it if they caught you."

Then she picks up her skirts and runs for the house. She bursts through the edge of the clearing, her eyes widening as she takes in not just the man and the hounds she already knew were there, but six more men in livery and shining armor on horses larger than she is. Two of the horses take objection to her sudden appearance and dance in place, making their equipage clash with a horrible sound of metal on metal, and one of the men shouts. The dogs begin to bark again. It is a cacophony of noise that hits her almost as a physical blow might, and Marinette falters, her breathing hard, as she looks between the riders.

They are all armed. Several of their swords flash colors that are more than metal. Horses, armor, livery, jeweled swords – Who are these men? What has she gotten herself into?

She stumbles to a stop some three yards from the cottage, between the depleted woodpile and a derelict hut that once housed chickens. The men – are they knights? Marinette hasn't the least idea how to tell the difference – are tending to their horses or to the dogs. Only two of them are looking at her. One, a gnarled older man with an outsized jaw and tiny, beaded eyes, is controlling his horse with only his knees while he watches her as though she's a snake in the grass. The other is a tall and thin man, perhaps her father's age, wearing finery rich beyond anything Marinette's ever seen before. His eyes are pale and hard, and he wears a thin circlet of gold on his head.

He is the one who addresses her. "Is this your hovel, girl?"

She swallows down the indignation and insult to be felt later, when it's safe. "It is, milord."

His mouth thins as he surveys the clearing that holds cottage and woodpile, ovens and washing line, the round-bellied ovens bulging out from the cottage wall like fat stone trolls, the patch of turned earth which Marinette will plant when the earth is no longer in danger of freezing if another cold snap comes around.

It's not refined or beautiful. It is hard work, and it is the comfort of familiarity, and every inch of it is a separate memory, and it is hers. This is her place. Marinette belongs here, and she always will.

She lets that knowledge stiffen her spine, so that when the noble turns back to her with disdain in his eyes, it does not matter, not even a little. So what if he does not see the value in it? So much the better. He will not try to ruin it if he thinks it is no better than a pigsty already.

"Do you have much trouble with wolves in these parts?"

The question is polite enough, but it sets all of her nerves to tingling.

"There hasn't been a wolf in this forest since I was very, very small," she says cautiously.

Marinette closes her mouth against the impulse to keep talking. She will betray them both if she can't control her tongue, and she knows she's too nervous to trust herself at the moment. She does not need to volunteer information. It will only serve to make her seem more guilty than she already is.

"And where is your man?" he asks curtly.

Despite herself, Marinette's fingers clutch her skirt tighter. Perhaps she's imagining them wrapped around his throat. "I live alone. I have no husband."

The lord raises a thin, silver eyebrow. "Indeed?"

She can no longer see all of the knights. The huge one is still just out of arm's reach watching her, and one other man is hanging back to hold the horses and corral a few of the dogs, but the other three have spread out around the clearing in a manner that seems casual and unhurried.

Marinette cannot shake the feeling that they're searching for something.

It was a mild winter, as foretold, but even a mild winter in these parts freezes the ground for several months. Surely there are no footprints for them to track. What other sign could there be of the wolf's passing? The fur that he shed in her cottage and all over her dresses? The cord handle Marinette fixed up so he could go in and out on his own? On their own, those mean nothing. Even if the riders somehow divine that they do have meaning, how could they know those signs belong to her wolf?

But the dogs.

But the dogs.

Her eyes flick toward the pack of restless animals with their thin, whippy tails going at a frantic pace as they loop around and around each other, their noses to the ground and sniffing hard, looking for their trail.

Those are not just indifferently bred village dogs. Those are hounds. And they have his scent. How, she does not know, and it does not matter. If they have his scent, it will be obvious to everyone in this clearing that the trail winds back on itself over and over again, in every instance leading inexorably back to its start. Here. To their home.

Run, she begs, hoping that by some grace he can hear her. Please. Run, and don't look back.

The man with pale eyes follows her gaze across the clearing. "Ahh," he says, a satisfied noise, almost a sigh. "I see. Perhaps you require some assistance in learning to tell the truth? Placide will help you."

The huge one grunts without words, though it must be agreement, because he swings his leg over his horse and crashes to the ground in a loud rattling of metal plates. Marinette swallows, and despite herself and every drop of pride in her veins, she takes two small steps back. She's breathing fast, and there's a cold, hard knot in her stomach.

Begging will get her nowhere. She knows that already. She can run, but she is no faster than the dogs, and the horses, too; but these woods are hers, and she knows them better than anyone else could. Perhaps. If she is rabbit-quick and smart – and lucky –

Perhaps.

Marinette swallows, her fingers tightening and pulling her skirts up another two inches. Placide starts toward her. His footsteps are heavy, threatening.

"No," she says, taking another step backward without meaning to.

She hears it coming before she sees anything. A whistle pierces the air to her right, growing louder every moment, coming toward them, like a stone that's been thrown as hard as one can – But there's nothing there. What –

A blurred grey something flows past her.

Marinette understands instinctively that it's her wolf.

"No!" she cries, but there's no stopping him; her wolf flies through the air like a loosed arrow, slamming into Placide with the weight of his whole body and all the speed he could muster. Placide goes over onto his side, crashing hard. The wolf tumbles over Placide's body and rolls over again on his own before he staggers to his feet and over to Marinette. He puts himself before Marinette, between her and the other retainers, and snarls, the sound thick, heavy, from the back of his throat. The threat is unmistakable.

"If you touch her, I will kill you," the wolf snaps. There's a growl under his voice he's not bothering to hide. Marinette sucks in a shaky breath.

"There you are," the lord says softly. "I've been looking for you."

"I don't care," the wolf says in a rumbling voice. Marinette's never heard him sound so angry before. "Go home. While you still can."

Placide stirs, groaning, and moves to get up; but the wolf's growl grows louder, and the one in charge makes a small gesture to keep Placide where he is. His grey eyes never leave the wolf.

"I will not leave you here," the lord says, his voice dripping with disdain. "This is hardly a proper place for you, my son."

His son?

Marinette stares at the man on the horse, who is as human as she is, and then she looks at the wolf, who is bent low to the ground, his body a taut and powerful curve braced and ready to attack.

His son?

"You did not want me when I was there. You have no right to drag me back when I am finally happy," the wolf snaps.

His father – his father – sighs and passes a weary hand over his face. Without bothering to turn, he raises his voice, clearly speaking to the other men. "Have you – "

Before he can finish the sentence, one of the men who was poking around near the chicken coop stumps over and tosses an armful of clothes on the ground between the cold man on the horse and her wolf: tunic and doublet and hose, with embroidery on the doublet in colors she's never seen before and didn't know existed. Even from here, Marinette can see they're made of smooth, soft wool with a hint of a sheen to it, even in this light. It's the very finest sort of wool. The kind only rich men can afford.

"Do not force me to treat you as an animal," his father warns him. Marinette may as well have ceased to exist as far as he is concerned. "You know what that will mean."

Marinette grinds her teeth together with a force that hurts her jaw, her fingers twisted in her skirts, fighting every muscle in her body that wants to go to her wolf and protect him. To her shame, there is nothing she can do – she cannot put her sad human body between her wolf and these men, because she has no defense against their swords and their fists. At the moment, she is little more than dead weight.

There is value in a surprise, though, or at least she thinks there must be. So she will wait for the opportune moment.

Patience does not come easily to Marinette. But for him, she'll try.

The wolf growls again, but then he gives a sharp huff and edges forward to the pile of clothes. He paws at them until the tunic is on top and facing him, which lets him push his long and narrow nose inside of the tunic; the rest of him follows, squirming into the shirt as if he means to put it over his head, as a man might.

What in God's name –

The moment his nose broaches through the neck-hole, his body blurs, twisting into other dimensions, as though parts of him exist outside of the physical world she can see: he is real and solid in one moment and terrifyingly stretched in the next, over and over again, until there is no wolf, no body or joyful laughter, nothing of the comforting presence she's come to rely on. He has been her constant companion these last four months, but now –

What is he? Is this magic? Or something more awful yet?

The worst of it is that she feels parts of him reaching out to other places, ones which are not left or right or behind, but somehow in, somehow through –

But through what? In where?

The sight is nauseating. Marinette swallows over and over again against the sickening gorge rising in her throat. He is now nothing more than a formless shape contained only by the tunic he wears, a cloud of possibilities, of potential –

Until it breaks, like a cloudburst deigning to disgorge its accumulated rain, and he forms into corporeality again.

But he's not her wolf anymore.

Before her, lying in the bare soil, lies a man. He is tall and thickly muscled with a shaggy head of blond hair. He's entirely nude except for the tunic carelessly shrugged on over his upper body. He only lays there for the span of a breath; in the next, he's pushing himself up and onto his knees, reaching for the hose in the pile of clothes. She politely averts her eyes from the pale, round moon of his ass until he's something like dressed.

"There," the freshly dressed man says, nearly spitting the words. "If you're quite satisfied?"

The voice, that's familiar; if Marinette closes her eyes, it's her wolf speaking. There is no question about it. But...

Can this really be?

Marinette crosses her arms over her chest, holding herself together with the slightly desperate strength of a woman confronting a new version of reality. No one else in the clearing seems to be anything like shocked. They all knew, she realizes, glancing at the hirelings, at the burly bodyguard.

"Adrien, be reasonable," the man says on a slight sigh, as though they've had this conversation more than a few times. "You cannot live as a beast for the rest of your life. Even if you could, you would never be accepted as king."

Against her will, Marinette's gaze drifts back to her wolf – to Adrien. She mouths the name to herself. It doesn't seem to be a bad fit, but she is not used to the name, and it lies clumsily on her tongue.

"You are a prince?" she asks quietly, with eyes only for his broad back. She can hear a touch of hysteria in the pitch of her voice. Whether it truly exists, she cannot tell; there is a numb, hollow, aching sensation inside of her that precludes feeling much of anything, whether hysteria, betrayal, or fear.

She knew he had his secrets. That much he told her, and it was also obvious that he was being hunted, in the way he kept checking for danger every chance he got.

But she never imagined anything like this.

Adrien turns sharply to take her elbows in his big hands and look her in the eyes. His are such a rich green she feels as though she's being hypnotized by their color alone: they remind her of the forest's new life, of spring's coming. "I never wanted to be king," he says to her, desperately. "I ran as much from that life as from everything else."

"You are my son, Adrien," the lord says – Oh, Marinette thinks, her breath catching. If Adrien is a prince, does that make his father a king? Is that what the circlet means?

Adrien's jaw goes tight, and he turns his head a little to speak over his shoulder. "If I was your son, then perhaps you should have treated me that way," he bites out. "Rather than feed me every poison you could find in the hopes that it would cure me. Rather than submit me to torture in the hopes that you could drive the wolf out of my body."

He did that? To his own son?

Marinette frees an arm so that she can lay a gentle hand against his cheek. The very instant she does, Adrien's eyes flutter half-closed in outrageous pleasure, and he all but melts into her hand; she thinks he's leaning down, too, so she can reach more of him.

The wolf liked being pet, as well. She wonders if that's what this is, if it crosses over between man and wolf.

When his eyes open again, Adrien is looking at her with genuine upset. "I never wanted to lie to you," he murmurs.

"But you didn't, did you?" Marinette gives him a slightly rueful smile. "I knew you had secrets. You told me so yourself. I just didn't know they were quite this significant."

He rubs his thumb over her elbow comfortingly, but absent-mindedly, too, like he's forgotten he's holding her. "Surprise?" he offers with a sheepish grin.

"Adrien," the king says, sounding very tired, indeed. Marinette peers past Adrien's shoulder to see that his father is pinching his nose. "Come, now. You know as well as I that you belong in Poitiers. That is your home. With me. You are my son, Adrien," he says, his voice softer now. Adrien's shoulders are growing stiff as he listens. "Come home. That is all I want for you."

Adrien sighs, squeezing Marinette's elbow before he lets his hand drop and turns around to face his father again. She does not fail to notice that Adrien keeps his body between her and the other men the entire time. "Your son?" he says scathingly. "You have never acted as a father ought. You have never understood how much I can hear in my other skin. I know what your next plan was! You were going to send me here, to the monastery not ten miles from this spot, and you were going to allow them to flagellate the flesh from my bones in the hopes that God might take my curse along with it."

His father is visibly growing more impatient with the conversation. "I have only ever done what is best for you. You cannot be king with such a stain on your soul, Adrien."

"I don't care!" Adrien takes a half-step toward his father before he brings himself up short, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "I do not want the crown, Father. I have never wanted it. All I have ever wanted in this life is to please you, in some small way, so that you might for once look at me as though I mattered to you. But there is nothing I can do, is there? The only way you will ever be satisfied is if you kill me trying to find a cure that does not exist. It is not some weakness of the flesh, Father. I am not cursed. There is nothing to cure. The thing you hate is who I am."

The king has long since gone even paler than before. "Adrien," he says, reaching out with an appealing hand.

But Adrien is no longer in the mood to listen.

"I am done with you," he says, a darkness in his voice that is not unlike the wolf's growl. "I am never going back to Poitiers, with you or anyone else. That is not home anymore. I am staying here, Father, and I do not care if you agree or not. It would grieve me to fight Placide, but if you force me to it, I will do what I must; these other knights I do not know, and I have far less concern for their fate."

The king pauses, a horrible dismay in his eyes, and then he retrieves his hand and clenches it into a fist. "You would abandon me, your people, your entire life?" he asks, pain under every word. His eyes flick toward Marinette and harden. "For her?"

"That is the least of what I would do for her," Adrien says instantly. "I would stay for her; I would kill for her; I would die for her."

Marinette's heart quite literally skips a beat. Nervous, frenetic energy is caught and trapped in every limb; she wants to laugh, to dance, to leap on Adrien's back and hug him and never stop.

No one has ever cared for her like this.

But Adrien is not finished. "I did not leave for her, Father. I left for me. I am more than the beast you would have made of me. Do not blame her for the consequences of your own actions."

His father looks away, the seam of his mouth pressing together so tightly that his lips are white. "If you do this, you will no longer be any son of mine," he warns Adrien in a low voice.

Adrien laughs. "Was I ever?"

It is not bitter, not the way Marinette thinks it could have been. Instead, Adrien sounds wry, resigned, as though this is a situation he has already grown accustomed to, as though he never really thought that his father would wish for the kind of relationship he did.

It makes her heart ache for him, but Marinette thinks that as an attitude, it must be healthier than bitterness or black rage.

The king looks at Adrien for a long time, memorizing his face, before he gives one sharp nod and takes up the reins of his horse. "With me," he calls to the knights over his shoulder, gives Adrien a tight nod, and wheels his horse around and out of the clearing with no more ceremony than that.

Two of the riders corral the pack of dogs and get them moving, and Adrien helps Placide back onto his horse – they exchange a few soft words that Marinette cannot quite make out from her position – and they leave as a group, following the king with dignified haste.

And then her home is quiet again. Hers again.

Marinette has not moved in the last ten minutes. Instead, she has watched as Adrien handled his father, the knights and retainers, the dogs, and even Placide, the giant. Now, Adrien stands in the middle of the clearing, his hands at his sides; he is watching her. His face is almost entirely blank. But... if Marinette looks closely, there is perhaps a touch of uncertainty around his eyebrows and the turn of his mouth.

She lets the silence do her work for her. Eventually, Adrien breaks.

"It occurs to me that I may have presumed a welcome you no longer wish to offer me," he says carefully.

Marinette is not angry. She is not even hurt, not much; as she told him, she knew he had his secrets, and if they were not what she expected, then perhaps it is her own fault for assuming that she knew what she was getting herself into when a talking beast came into her life.

But there is one thing she must know. Now.

"Would you ever have told me?" she asks, crossing her arms over her stomach.

"Yes," Adrien says instantly, taking three large strides across the dirt toward her, though he stops just out of arm's reach. "Marinette, yes. You have no idea how I ached to tell you... everything, not just about him, but I could not risk it. I knew he would come for me, and I did not know if I could disguise my trail well enough. If I had to disappear from your life, I told myself, I would do my best to make sure my impact was slight, that you would not miss me when I was gone."

"I would have missed you," Marinette says angrily. "How dare you?"

"But how could I have ever expected you?" Adrien asks, a slow, sweet smile spreading over his face. "Little witch, you are a wonder. Brilliant and clever, and stubborn, and beautiful. I loved you when you swore at me over the deer, you know, and I have been in agonies ever since."

"I did not swear at you," Marinette points out, though she can't hide the irrepressible smile on her face.

"Perhaps that was only in your eyes, then," Adrien says with a grin of his own. "So? May I? Stay, that is. You would have every right to boot me out. Though I hope you won't."

Marinette takes a breath. "If you stay, it will have to be here, forever," she warns. "Fifteen generations of my family were born here. I am made of this forest, every part of me, and I do not think I can ever leave it. I have had dreams about it, dreams in which I sickened and died if ever I went beyond its borders."

He comes to her then and snatches up her hands, looking so worried she shakes him free and lays a hand on his face again to comfort him. "That seems like a threat to me," he says, his eyebrows creasing.

"Oh, no," Marinette says, smiling up at him. "It was only a warning. The forest has always been good to me. It brought me you, did it not?"

Adrien closes his eyes, looking pained, while his mouth trembles in some excess of emotion; he turns his face into her hand and lays a soft kiss on her palm. "Then, yes, of course, always," he says after a moment, and clears his throat. He opens his eyes again to smile at her, sun-drenched, the forest in his eyes – and his whole heart, too. "Home is where you are, little witch. Don't ever doubt it."