“I could sing for you.”
“You sing?”
“No,” he said.
She grinned. He dipped her backward. I’m happy here because of Bear, she thought. She glimpsed the golden light, and a tear welled in her eye. He pulled her upright. “Sun,” she said quickly to explain the tear.
“It is the last of the light,” Bear said.
Startled, she stumbled over her feet. He steadied her. How could she have stayed here for so long? What did Dad think had happened to her? And Gram? And her mother. She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about her mother right now, not during the end of the light. She always loved the last glimpse of the sun’s rays before the long polar night.
“Come with me,” Bear said. He dropped down onto all fours and trotted out of the ballroom.
“Don’t you want to watch?” she called after him.
“Don’t you want a better view?” he called back.
Grinning, Cassie chased after him. She had only been up in the spires a few times. Bear disliked the narrow stairs. One of his predecessors had designed them for humans, not bears, and it embarrassed him, he’d told her, to waddle up them. She’d teased him about that for days, but she didn’t tease him now. Today felt different somehow. Maybe it was the loss of light. Maybe it was the dancing.
Bear squeezed into the stairwell and climbed up the spiral stairs. Emerging onto a balcony, Cassie walked to the delicate bowed railing. “Careful,” Bear said.
She ignored him and leaned over the ice railing. “Look at that,” she breathed.
The Arctic sprawled before her. Gold and silver, it looked like vast riches. The sky, enormous, glowed blue. Streaks of rose clouds faded into deepening blue, staining the ice azure.
“Do not turn around,” he said—it was a human voice, softer and thinner. She may have heard it only once, but still she recognized it instantly. Her back straightened, tingling. He put his arms around her waist. It felt perfectly natural to lay her hands on his. She did it without even thinking about it. Both facing the horizon, they watched the last drop of gold melt into blueness, and then he released her. When she turned around, he was a bear again.
“Bear…,” she began. Her back felt cold now. Wind blew her hair into her face. She brushed it away from her eyes.
“I look forward to tomorrow,” he said. It was the same phrase he said every night before he left her.
Where did he sleep? She’d never asked. Maybe he went onto the ice or out into the gardens or into one of the other glittering rooms. He’d told her once that she slept in his room. “Stay with me,” she said.
He looked at her. Cassie saw the twilight sky reflected in his black bear eyes. She felt her face blush. Tonight was… different. She just didn’t want it to end. That was all. “I mean, you don’t have to leave,” she said. “It’s okay. I trust you. You can sleep in your room again.” She added quickly, “Just sleep.”
He regarded her silently for a moment longer. She shifted from foot to foot and began to wish she could swallow the words back out of the air. Maybe she should have thought first before she’d made the offer. It would change things, if he stayed. She knew that instinctively, but she shied away from thinking about how they’d change.
“As you wish,” he said.
He waited for her to lead the way. She brushed past him as she left the balcony, and she laid her hand on his back, intertwining her fingers in his fur. She’d touched his fur a thousand times before, but this time she pulled her hand away. He wasn’t just a bear. She remembered his human arms around her waist and his breath on her neck. This was the first time since that first night that he’d turned human.
Outside the bedroom, she had him wait in the corridor while she changed into her flannels—and then changed again into the silken nightshirt that she’d found on her first night in the castle. She told herself she was just being polite. The nightshirt had been a gift. She climbed under the covers. “All right. I’m decent now.”
The polar bear padded softly into the room.
Cassie tucked the sheets around her body as he approached the bedside table. She could still change her mind, she knew. If she asked him to leave, he would. But that felt… cowardly. This was Bear, after all. And she’d only invited him here as a friend. Friends could share a bed.
She wished she’d stuck with the flannel.
He breathed on the candle. It flickered and died with the scent of waxy smoke. Now the room was so black that it looked thick. Bear (now human, she guessed from the sinking of the mattress) climbed into the bed beside her. She remembered the last time he’d climbed into bed with her—on their wedding night. “Touch me and it’s back to the axe,” she said.
She heard him sigh. “I would never hurt you, not intentionally, not ever. You should know that by now.”
“I don’t taste as good as a seal.”
“You do not have enough blubber,” he agreed.
She felt the mattress shift as he settled into his pillows. Flat on her back, she lay as rigid as ice. “Don’t snore.”
“Your wish is my command.”
She snorted. “Cute.”
“Good night, Cassie.”
“Night.” Clutching the sheets to her chin, she listened to him breathe. It sounded like a gentle wave. Gradually, his breathing slowed. Could he be going to sleep? She prodded him. “You awake?”
“I am now.” He rolled over, and she felt the mattress dip down toward him. He was facing her, she guessed. Her skin felt hyperaware. At least a thirteen-foot polar bear did not make a thirteen-foot man, she told herself. He was, at most, seven feet tall.
“Talk to me,” she said. “Tell me a story.”
“As you wish,” he said. “Once upon a time, there was a little wallaby…”
She smiled. “Wallaby?”
“Yes, wallaby. And this wallaby lived…”
She was smothering in sheets. Cassie kicked. Her foot contacted something solid. She heard a grunt. Bleary, she blinked awake. Walls did not grunt. “Bear, that you?”
“Hmm.”
She kicked harder.
“Ow!”
Served him right. He was sleeping in the middle of the bed. She yanked the covers back and curled with them on the pillows.
“Thief,” he said. He tugged on the sheets.
She grunted at him.
“Was I snoring?” he asked.
“You don’t snore,” she told him. It was a definite plus.
“You do,” he said. “It is like a cat purring.”
She kicked the covers away. “Too hot,” she said. “Is it morning?” Crawling out of bed, she found her flashlight. She turned it on.
She saw a sudden flurry of sheets. Bear rolled off the bed in a tangle of white. “Stop the light!” he said.
Cassie pointed the flashlight at the white lump. “Hey, I’m the one who hates mornings,” she said lightly, but he continued to conceal himself. “Bear? What’s wrong?”
“You cannot see me.”
She’d never seen him, she realized. The two times he’d transformed—last night and her first night here—she hadn’t seen him. With the flashlight, Cassie climbed over the bed. He was buried on the floor under the covers. Not an inch of skin was visible. “Come on,” she said. “I promise I won’t laugh.”
“You cannot!” There was a blur of sheets as he stood up. He looked like he was wearing a bad ghost costume. He knocked the flashlight out of her hands. It rolled under the bed. “You must never see my human face,” he said. “Promise me you will not try.”
“Why not?”
“Promise me.”
He sounded serious, even desperate. She didn’t think she’d ever heard that in his voice before. “You certainly have your quirks,” Cassie said lightly. “Turning into a giant bear wasn’t unique enough?” He didn’t laugh.
Bear begged her, “Please, beloved. If you care about me at all, do not look.”