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    Winterbloom: Never Afters, #6
    Winterbloom: Never Afters, #6
    Winterbloom: Never Afters, #6
    Ebook54 pages40 minutes

    Winterbloom: Never Afters, #6

    By Kirstyn McDermott

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    About this ebook

    Winterbloom is a heart-breaking and fey re-imagining of a classic story from the award-winning Kirstyn McDermott. Ideal for fans of Sarah J. Maas, Kate Bernheimer, and Danielle Wood.

    Several years into their marriage, Beauty and her once beastly husband are at a crossroads. Though they still love each other, they have not been able to have children nor talk about the problems that have beset them since the fairy curse was lifted. Instead, she devotes herself to the roses in their garden while he composes music to charm the most discerning Parisian audiences.

    But Beauty secretly longs for the Beast with whom she fell in love, and her husband fears he's no longer the creature she most desires. When Peregrine, Beauty's enigmatic fey sister-in-law, comes to visit, she sparks off a chain of events that will either heal the marriage or leave it in irretrievable tatters.


    Winterbloom is the sixth novella in Kirstyn McDermott's Never Afters series. Dark, powerful, and brimming with magic, these tales weave a reimagined world in which fairy-tale girls grow up to find both love and heartbreak, family and friendship, loss, and forgiveness.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrain Jar Press
    Release dateNov 29, 2022
    ISBN9781922479488
    Winterbloom: Never Afters, #6

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      Book preview

      Winterbloom - Kirstyn McDermott

      Winterbloom

      THE NEVER AFTERS

      Burnt Sugar

      The New Wife

      After Midnight

      Braid

      By The Moon’s Good Grace

      Winterbloom

      WINTERBLOOM

      A NEVER AFTERS TALE

      KIRSTYN MCDERMOTT

      Brain Jar Press

      CONTENTS

      Winterbloom

      About the Author

      Also by Kirstyn McDermott

      Thank You For Buying This Brain Jar Press Ebook

      WINTERBLOOM

      Some nights, entwined together in the spice-scented darkness of our bedroom, my husband sighs and strokes the soft curve of my throat and says:

      Sometimes, I wish I were still the Beast.

      I run my hand over his skin, so smooth and sweat-slick, curl my fingers through the coarse hair that too sparsely covers his chest, and remember the velvet warmth of the pelt that once clothed him from snout to claw-sheathed paw. Then I say:

      I’m glad you are not.

      Time cannot be spun backwards; curses cannot be respelled. There is no profit but melancholy in yearning for what has passed, and so I will never admit to my husband that I often share in his wish.

      I love the man I have married, but it was the Beast that I fell for first.

      My sisters have all but finished their latest bloom. Grace has scattered her bright pink petals all over the drive, while Patience hoards hers close, those once-crimson flowers shrivelling brown and resentful among her thorns. I always wear soft leather gloves for pruning; Patience, in particular, seems to go out of her way to draw blood. For the first two years, I dared not touch them at all, imagining such savagery akin to the shearing of fingers and toes, but my husband persuaded me otherwise.

      They are rose bushes now, love. Treat them as you would any other.

      Indeed, they looked so miserable after a while, their canes knotting and twisting like unkempt hair, their last yellowing leaves hanging listless through winter. Grace sent forth a blushing profusion from the start, but I didn’t know the colour of Patience until her third summer when two dark buds finally emerged, sullen and haughty, and then took more than a month to unfurl.

      My eldest sister cultivates spite like fine wine.

      Nail parings and hair, I tell myself now, snipping off the deadheads and thinning the canes. I don’t know if that’s precisely true, but both look healthier these days and bloom from late spring until the first winter frost. It’s more than most of the roses in the gardens can manage, although the two Chinese bushes my husband brought me from his Parisian sojourn last year are constantly in flower during the warmer months. Quite the little wonders, especially as one of them is yellow! I intend to cross them this season with several of my more stalwart roses to see if their abundance might be drawn across, if not their most unusual hue.

      A thorn stabs through my glove, piercing the tender web between finger and thumb, and I draw a pained breath. Stretched out nearby, Jules lifts his wolfish head and whines. After reassuring the hound, I peel down the leather cuff and suck at blood beading from my newest wound. Patience, I scold my sister. Will you never yield?

      It seems highly unlikely.

      The voice is light and lilting and comes from over my left shoulder. Startled, I turn to find a tall, beautiful woman standing outside the front gate, her turquoise silk robe patterned all over with golden flowers and trim to match, the panniers beneath more ostentatious than any I’d seen even in Paris. Her hair is piled high atop her head, and she holds a parasol even higher, keeping the touch of the sun from her painted face.

      No—not paint. Her skin is bare but unnaturally smooth and pale, tinged the same silvery blue I sometimes glimpse on my husband’s body when moonlight spills through our window

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