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“You told everyone that?”

“What was I supposed to tell them, Boone?” His voice drops. “That I traded my son to the Beast on the mountain?”

The words hurt more than I expect, and I look away.

“He told me that if I came looking for you, he’d kill you.”

My attention snaps back to him. My father’s mouth pulls tight as his eyes drift toward the mountain rising in the distance.

“There wasn’t a day that passed when I didn’t think about climbing up there after you. Sometimes I’d get as far as saddling the horse, then I’d remember what he said.” His fingers curl around the edge of the workbench. “I didn’t know whether he meant it, and I couldn’t risk finding out.”

“Dad…”

“So I stayed.” His voice grows rough. “I stayed here every damn day and prayed that eventually I’d hear your horse coming down that road.”

I struggle to swallow.

He reaches for me and squeezes my shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.” He palms my face, wiping away tears. “You came home. I never imagined that monster would let you go.”

I should leave it there. Instead, one word slips out.

“Rhys.”

My father frowns. “What?”

“His name is Rhys.”

The name feels different here. At the castle, it belongs everywhere. It belongs in the stone corridors and beside the fireplace. It belongs under the glass roof of the greenhouse and among the roses he wouldn’t let me touch.

Here, surrounded by everything that belonged to me long before him, saying his name feels too intimate.

“Rhys Villeneuve,” I say quietly.

My father goes still, and his hand slowly falls from my cheek.

“Villeneuve?”

I nod.

He turns his head toward the mountain. When he looks back at me, some of the warmth has disappeared from his face.

“Boone…” His eyes search mine. “Do you understand who that is?”

Images come faster than I can stop them. Rhys kneeling at my feet while I tell him the fairy tale. The scars crossing his chest. His face when I asked about his father. His hand holding a cherry out to me. The terror in his voice when he found me half frozen on the mountain. The open door this morning. Rhys riding away after finally giving me the one thing I’d begged him for since the day I entered his castle.

Freedom.

My gaze drifts toward the empty road.

“Yes,” I whisper.

I’m still looking for him, even though I know he’s gone.

“I think I finally do.”