The last thing I’d expected to happen was to wake up in the Beast’s castle, unharmed, and find myself to be the creature’s guest.
Chapter 9
But in Vain
BELLE
I t wasn’t until dusk that the old woman came for me again.
After limping out on one leg of the bathroom, I’d fallen back into the strange bed and sleep had taken me easily for a few hours. When I startled awake, disoriented again, I was sorer than I’d been after the bath, but not before, so I took that as some kind of victory.
I’d thought about going outside my room, to see what was beyond it, but I realized that, by the time I started to put on the dress I was supposed to wear—which would likely take an eternity on its own—it would be time to meet the Beast.
Now, I stared sightlessly into the empty fireplace, perched on the edge of the extravagant bed. Piled on top of the down mattress were black silk sheets and a thick comforter that I thought was made from the fur of forest wolves. I ran my fingers through it restlessly, dressed in the emerald ball gown that the old woman had left out for me. My bandaged arm looked out of place in such finery.
I hated myself for caving into the Beast’s request to wear this ridiculous dress. But what else could I do? I needed to gain the Beast’s trust before daring to search for the ring, and if this was the only way, then I had no choice. Maybe he’d trust me enough to wear it around me and I could trick it out of him. Or take it from him, whichever worked.
In my head, I made it sound so easy. But it couldn’t be. And I was getting ahead of myself.
If only I had more time to come up with a real plan; I started wringing my hands nervously before I could stop myself and winced at the aching pressure the gesture put on my forearm. A month had seemed so long when Thomas had stipulated it, but now I wasn’t so sure.
Finally, there was a knock at the door. At least the old woman had the decency not to come bursting in like she had before.
“Yes,” I croaked.
“It’s time,” she said when she cracked open the double doors, the soft light of the torches in the hall spilling in around her.
I smiled to be polite, but didn’t know what to say in reply as I stood awkwardly from the bed. She came to stand beside me and took my arm opposite the broken leg. Leaving the door ajar behind us, I limped as best I could in my matching green slippers into the corridor outside the room. I noticed that, besides the doors that I got a glance of across from mine, here were no other rooms along this hallway, and the faceless walls unnerved me.
It was too quiet.
I was so used to hearing my sisters’ constant noise, and the overwhelming sounds of town outside Alinder’s shop, that I felt as if the silent stone walls were closing in on me.
Looking down, rich Persian rugs covered the floor, giving the empty, stone-gray walls some color and muffling my footsteps. Swallowing, I focused on Sophie as I avoided looking at the flickering torches, the walls continuing to press in.
The silence between us became awkward as we turned down another, better-lit corridor, and I cleared my throat.
“May I inquire your name?” I asked politely. It seemed only fair that I should know that about her, since she’d seen me completely naked not hours before.
The old woman peered at me in surprise and her steps faltered before she turned forward again. After a moment, she answered me: “My name is Sophia.” She looked over, a small smile on her lips. “But you can call me Sophie.”
It was a pretty name, but I wondered at the last time she’d actually heard it. It seemed like the Beast wouldn’t be one to remember names when he didn’t even use his own anymore.
“Is that what he calls you?” I asked.
At that, her jaw clenched and her back straightened—I must’ve struck a chord. I was about to question her further, when the corridor ended and we entered a large room with impossibly high ceilings. Long red velvet drapes were strung up along the rafters, and there was an unreasonably long dinner table that could’ve fit at least fifty people.
And at that table, a man in a hooded cloak sat with his back to us, most of his figure distorted by a massive, high-backed chair.
“Please,” his voice rang out without him turning. He spoke in a deep, imposing rumble. “Sit.”
Sophie helped me to the only other chair and table setting, opposite from who I had to assume was the Beast.
I was very aware of how I looked now: the dress he’d given me to wear fit surprisingly well and the skirts rustled around my ankles elegantly. Yet I felt myself sweating. I knew that all I needed to do was get what I came her for and then get out with the least amount of damage I could manage. But all of the stories I’d heard about the Beast suddenly surfaced in my mind, and I found my hands shaking as Sophie lowered me into a red plush high-back chair, much smaller than the one he sat in.
I shot a final glance at Sophie, but she only gave me a small, strained smile and walked back from where we’d come. I stared after her for a moment, willing her to come back, my heart beating hard inside my chest. But when the corridor remained empty, I dropped my head, staring intently at my hands.
Get ahold of yourself. Gripping the golden arm rests with both hands to calm my nerves, I ignored the pain in my right arm from the motion, and finally looked up at the Beast.
He was swathed in shadow. His black cloak consumed his entire body, except for a dark pit that the hood created around his face, and his large paw-like hands, which were gloved in black leather. He was so still that I almost wondered if he was real. Then he reached for a glass of amber liquid in front of him, and his hood bobbed forward, keeping his face hidden. I looked at my own glass, willing my hand to steady as I reached for it. The condensation on the outside cooled me when it touched my fingers and palm, but it wasn’t enough. I tipped it towards him in silent recognition, then brought it to my lips, taking a long pull of the bitter, stifling liquid so that half of it was gone by the time I set it down again. It burned as it went down my throat and warmed my belly, the sensation a reprieve from the torturous silence.
A low noise that sounded like a laugh came from the Beast. Then he did the same with his glass.
I suddenly wondered if he was the one who’d rescued me from the forest. But that didn’t make sense with what I knew about him. He was supposed to be cruel and arrogant and—
My thoughts were broken off when Sophie appeared from a different corridor, but where I might have expected there to be a tray of food in her hands, there was nothing. I looked at her expectantly, then at the Beast, suddenly wondering if he was going to feed me at all, or make me watch him eat and let me starve.
Or…if I was the meal.
“I don’t want to frighten you,” he began in that same rumbling voice. “Many things about this place will frighten you, myself especially. But this castle is filled with magic, most of it my own doing. The kitchen items are…” he paused thoughtfully, “much more vivacious than you would expect normally inanimate objects to be. So, don’t be alarmed when you see them move on their own accord.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, until I heard a clanging from the doorway Sophie had just come from, and watched a two-tiered tray rolled itself out to us. I couldn’t help the surprise on my face; I knew that magic—black magic—had changed the king into the Beast, but seeing this magic for myself was another thing entirely.
The tray clattered against the uneven floor and stopped beside me, and I couldn’t help flinching away from it. One of the plates, which contained some of the most delicious-looking food I’d ever seen, began to spin itself slowly in a circle and inch forward off the tray and onto the intricate golden placemat. A knife and two forks, one small and one normal, hobbled onto the napkin that had floated up from the bottom tier and placed itself next to the plate. They were followed by another napkin that found its way onto my lap.
When it was finished, the tray zoomed over to the Beast and did the same thing over again. I looked at the Beast—
Bastian, I remembered—and even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I knew he was watching me. But his attention didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would, despite feeling completely out of place in his castle.
In fact, if the Beast was always this attentive, tricking him out of his ring might be simpler than I thought.
We ate in silence. Despite my nearly-unbearable need to get back to my sisters as quickly as possible, my last hope firmly in my possession, I couldn’t help being curious about the Beast. He may have been a tyrant at one time, but I saw none of that in him now. He’d been nothing but polite to me, and he’d allowed me to eat his food. And if he had been the one to save me from those wolves, then I’d completely misjudged him. The story of the Beast that the townspeople of Briar knew seemed to grow farther and farther away from the truth.
The food was delicious, from the arugula salad doused lightly in oil and vinegar to the marinated chick and potatoes. But after my first few bites, it began to churn in my stomach. I couldn’t believe I was thinking kindly about the king who’d so easily forgotten about his kingdom and his people. We’d suffered for years because of his vanity, and my sisters and I were in this terrible situation because the Beast had refused to rule.
“You’re staring,” the Beast’s voice boomed and I jerked involuntarily, averting my gaze. I couldn’t let my guard down around him, or lose focus.
“What should I call you?” I asked after a moment.
The Beast sat back in his chair, as if he was shocked by my question. “It’s been so long since I’ve had a guest…” he trailed off thoughtfully, then his voice grew hard and brittle. “Beast is adequate.”
He pushed his chair back abruptly and stormed towards another part of the castle, his cloak billowing gracefully behind him despite his heavy and purposeful footfalls. I watched him turn a corner, out of sight, and something unfamiliar tugged at my heart.
Chapter 10
A Great Effort
BASTIAN
B reathing hard, I slammed the door to my chambers. Could I have been any more stupid? What she must think of me now…
I could see her staring at me, like she could see something there, like she knew me. And then her gaze hardened and I could imagine where her thoughts had turned to. She’d remembered that I was a monster—one that had abandoned his own people because he was selfish and vain. How could I prove to her that she was wrong when she already thought she knew me? Then again, maybe I was still that man; a beast outside and in—
When I heard a knock at the door, my thoughts broke off, my heart stuttering at the foolish hope that it was Belle. But when I opened the door, it was just Sophie. I should’ve been disappointed, but I actually felt relieved it wasn’t the girl.
My hood had fallen back in my anger and Sophie could see my entire grotesque face, but it didn’t matter. She knew what I looked like: a few years ago, she’d needed to tend to me because I was so badly injured from a hunt that it couldn’t be avoided. She never brought it up, and I didn’t provoke her. It had actually been a weight lifted off me, not needing to hide my appearance from her anymore.
But I didn’t want to see her right now, or anyone for that matter.
“What do you want?” I growled.
She stared at me for a moment and my anger grew.
“This one’s different,” she said finally, and I felt myself deflate, the guilt I carried with me returning with a vengeance.
When I’d first realized that I couldn’t reverse the curse with another spell, I’d played within the witch’s rules and taken girls near enough to my own age that had wandered too far into the forest to my castle, and tried to make them love me. I hated myself for it, and they’d often ran away in the middle of the night, where the forest consumed them. The third and final girl ran away only a day after I’d taken her—that was when I’d decided that I needed to stop. That I had truly become the beast that the witch had cursed me to be.
That was almost three years ago now. Thought it sickened me to think about it, I was lucky that I’d never actually fallen in love with any of those girls. In a twist of irony, part of the witch’s curse stipulated that, if I were to fall in love with a girl and she with me, but then she left me whether by her own will or mine, I’d lose all of the magic I’d come to possess. And with it, my life force—I’d be dead within a day.
I sighed, my anger dropping from my shoulders like a heavy weight, making me feel raw. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.
I ran my claw-like fingers through the fur atop my head as if it were my golden locks from when I’d still been human. Some habits still hadn’t abandoned me, no matter how much I’d changed.
“She can never love me.”
Sophie smiled knowingly. “I think you’re wrong, Bastian. She came here on her own—for the most part. And you did save her life. I’m sure she’s figured that out by now.” She placed her small hand on my wide shoulder and looked at me with concern. “You used to have such confidence.”
I scoffed. “I was a first-rate bastard, Soph—there’s a difference. That witch gave me exactly what I deserved and now I have to live with it.” I shook my head. “I don’t deserve her, after all that I’ve done.”
She patted my face hard once—she was the only one that could ever get away with that—and pinned me with her gaze. “Don’t you ever think that you’re not good enough for someone. You’ve more than proved yourself worthy of love, Bastian. Now you just have to show her that you’re worthy of hers.”
I bowed my head and bit the inside of my mouth hard with my sharp fangs until I could taste blood. Having said her piece, she took the hint and left, shutting the door quietly on her way out.
I collapsed onto my bed, staring up at the ceiling. I didn’t believe Sophie—not really—but at the same time I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. Maybe if I kept my features hidden beneath my hood, Belle would never have to truly see me until she decided that she wanted to. Until she’d decided that I was more than just a beast, and that she didn’t care what I looked like. I would do everything on her terms—I wouldn’t even question why she’d ventured into the Black Forest alone in the middle of the night in the first place.
I just had to figure out a way to make her stay.
Chapter 11
The Boldest Heart
BELLE
A fter the Beast stormed out, I turned to Sophie, bewildered. Her gaze followed him worriedly until he was out of sight.
She turned to me distractedly, “You can retire to your room after you’ve finished eating, but cannot, under any circumstances, follow me. Bastian’s part of the castle is forbidden.”
My last bite had turned to ash in my mouth anyway, and as soon as she hurried after him, I bolted up from the table and limped as best as I could back to my room. Once the door was closed, I slumped against it and choked on a sob. All of this at once was overwhelming, and I found it difficult to breathe.
Taking refuge on the bed, traitorous tears spilled down my cheeks and I wiped them away angrily. I can do this. As much as he’d hurt his people, as much as I wanted to blame him for my family’s misfortune, I was the one that had to make it right somehow.
Make it right… I thought despairingly. He was a recluse, an absent king, but he wasn’t at all like the monster in the story. I remembered again how kind he’d been to me at dinner, how much he’d taken me into consideration. Perhaps he really had changed.
Then, an odd thought hit me: maybe I had the chance to do more than just save my sisters.
Was it possible that I could bring Bastian back to life, to make him see that his kingdom needed him? The Regime would have to leave at Bastian’s request or risk open war, an act that would tarnish the Emperor’s reputation. And…
I wouldn’t have to marry Thomas.
It was a petty, selfish thought, but I couldn’t help it. With Bastian ruling Briar again, I wouldn’t be forced to marry anyone. Not even Sean Ager.
But I didn’t know if I could do it. I
’d barely spoke a word to him; I hadn’t even seen his face yet, and I didn’t want to. I was sure he was hideous in some way, but that wasn’t it. Once I saw his face—especially his eyes, the windows to his soul—I’d feel like I knew him. I didn’t know if I could steal from someone I knew. And, by then, I’d be too far in and there’d be no going back on the plan. Was I strong-willed enough to hurt this stranger, to take his ring from him, no matter the consequences he might suffer because of it, and pretend like I’d never come to his castle at all?
I sat awkwardly in the middle of the extravagant bed, worrying over what to do next. I just kept thinking about my sisters, wondering if they were alright. And father, if he was taking care of them, or if he’d already left them to go on his next bender.
These thoughts filled my head longer than I realized, because, by the time I looked around the room, it was dark. And I was still alone.
~
Later that night, when the far-reaching arms of sleep continued to evade me, there was a knock at my door.
Having finally noticed that the dress I was wearing was digging into my ribs, I’d decided to change into loose pants that didn’t tighten around my cast, and a white tunic I’d found in the back of the armoire that was much closer to my size than the black one I’d first woken up in. I’d also started a fire, so at least there was some light and heat in the room.
Keeping the pressure off my broken leg, I peeked out the door, fearing that it would be the Beast, but saw that it was only Sophie. I opened the door fully and invited her in, but she declined.
“I’m simply here to relay a message,” she explained, and I plopped back down on the edge of my enormous bed, exhausted but somehow still wide awake. “The king will be gone for a couple days of days, hunting,” she continued. “He sends his deepest apologies, but he feels he must get away.”
At first, we both remained still, staring at each other, while anger and desperation simmered beneath my skin. I wanted her to tell me why the Beast would take a hunting trip at such an odd time. I needed to spend time with him to gain his trust, and I couldn’t do that if he was gone.
A Curse of Thorns Page 6