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And the woman who looked me in the eye and pronounced judgment upon me.

But I don’t particularly want to revisit any of that. Not tonight.

I was cursed.

April waits.

I wait.

She raises her eyebrows.

“That’s it?”

What more would you like to know?

“Oh, I don’t know. Who cursed you? Why? Was there a wicked witch involved? Did you piss off a fairy godmother? Were you mean to an old lady who turned out to be secretly magical?”

I remain silent.

Her eyes narrow.

“Oh, shit. It was the old lady, wasn’t it?”

It was not an old lady.

“But there was a lady.”

I regret saying anything. The details aren’t important.

“They seem pretty important to me.”

The curse transformed me into this creature and bound me to the house. I was condemned to remain here.

“Forever?”

Presumably.

She makes a face. “That’s harsh.”

The woman responsible believed it was appropriate.

“Well, she sounds like a bitch.”

If I could laugh, I would. Instead, something warm and unexpected moves through the part of me that still remembers having a chest.

April doesn’t know what I did. She doesn’t know who I was. Yet her first instinct is to take my side. I should correct her. Tell her that the curse wasn’t entirely undeserved.

That I was not a good man. That I was not kind or generous.

But I don’t. Not yet.

Instead, I focus on the one thing that matters.

You changed me.

April blinks. “Excuse me?”

When you touched me, I became human.