“No. I don’t believe he was enchanted,” Aurora said. “I saw him torture her. He had become the monster he let people believe that she was. And yet she would not have killed him. No matter what people believe of her, I know who she really is.”

Alain was quiet, leading his horse on.

“She is kind,” Aurora said. “More than kind. She loved me, despite my being Stefan’s daughter. I don’t know what I would have become without that love.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe I would have made the same mistakes my father made,” said Aurora. “Love teaches us how to love.”

Count Alain was silent again for a long moment, as though he was contemplating that. “Although, in that tale, love brought her little but grief.”

Aurora frowned. “You’re right. But that was his fault, not hers. How could she have known? She did nothing wrong.”

Suddenly, the raven sprang from her shoulder into the sky, cawing.

The pine trees had thinned out, and a worn road cut through the terrain. “What is it, Diaval? Are we here?”

But as she looked around, she neither saw nor heard anything unusual.

The raven cawed, landing and pecking at the earth.

Aurora swung down from her horse’s back and walked to the spot where Diaval stood. The raven cawed again, scratching his claws against the soil.

“Where is she?” Aurora asked him. “I don’t understand! Oh, Diaval, if you would just turn back into a man and tell me.”

But that just made the raven jump around more frantically.

Count Alain let out a massive sigh. “We’ve followed this bird for a night and a day. I am afraid it doesn’t know where its mistress is.”

“He knows,” Aurora said, certain. “But perhaps he can’t tell us.”

“Well, if he can’t, then he’s little use.” Count Alain jumped down from his horse.

Aurora paced around the spot, then stomped with one booted foot. “Hello!” she shouted. “Is anyone there?”

Only silence greeted her call.

“Maybe there will be more to see in the morning. Let’s make camp,” Count Alain suggested once more. “I will get up a fire. There was a stream not too far back for the horses to drink from. And we can have a meal and rest a little.”

Aurora wanted to keep going, keep looking, but she had no idea how. Perhaps Count Alain was right. Maybe things would make more sense in the morning. Things often did.

“I’ll gather up some firewood,” Aurora said, glad of a chance to walk after riding for so long.

It was a familiar task, one she’d done often as a child. Along the way, she found a few mushrooms. But as she filled the pockets of her borrowed dress, she thought of the foraged mushrooms she’d eaten in the Moors at the banquet with Prince Phillip.