by E J Kitchens
“And if the duke visited him, he would suggest Lucrezia as the bride.”
“Exactly.”
“But I’d always heard the Duke of Marblue was a very loyal man. I can’t imagine him endangering your father.”
“Marblue would give his right arm for the kingdom while strangling it with his left. He’s a harsh ruler to his own people, but a good adviser in some areas, and loyal, as you say. But from listening in on his conversations, he apparently believes he’s destined to have a king as a grandson. It was prophesied by a fairy at Lucrezia’s birth or something like that. Being very loyal as you say, he’s determined his grandson will be king of New Beaumont.”
Unconsciously, Belinda tightened her hold possessively around Beast, then blushed and loosened it when Beast responded, “Don’t worry. She will never be queen of New Beaumont.”
That she set off a host of different reactions, so it was not soon enough, to Belinda’s mind, that they reached the rough wood of the top hatch. Beast hauled them out onto the solid stone floor. Dust flew up in greeting, or in a warning to stay away. They were back in the chamber she’d stopped at on her way to Beast. Window, stairs under the man-sized cage, broken instruments of torture. It wasn’t an inviting room.
Belinda rolled off Beast’s back and pushed to her feet, her stomach not giving up its twists despite the solidness of rock under her feet.
“I’ll find the chains that close the trapdoors,” Beast said as he rose. “Maybe they’ll assume a good fairy spirited me away if they see no obvious exit. You get the bending potion for the window ready.”
Belinda pulled a rope with a three-pronged claw on one end from her satchel and eyed the window high above even the cage’s stairs. She jogged up the stairs until she was opposite the window. A fall of twenty feet or so loomed between the window and the chamber floor, a short distance compared to what lay between the window and the street. Her stomach cinched. She was not afraid of heights. Others might be, but not Belinda Lambton.
Swinging the grappling hook back and forth, testing its weight, she judged the distance to the window, then let the rope fly. Metal clanged against metal as the hook caught the window bars. She made her way gingerly back down the stairs and stood under the window, rope in sweaty hand. Her muscles felt like putty on fire just looking up to the window. Life at a castle was very bad for the muscles required for daring rescues.
She jumped at the deep, rumbly voice beside her. “May I take part in this rescue?” Beast snagged the rope from her grasp.
“You have already,” she rasped between unusually noticeable heartbeats. “You’re the cause of it.”
“All the more reason for you to hand over the potion.”
She was only too glad to do so, and to watch, by moonlight and rose glow, as Beast climbed agilely up the wall to the window. In that moment, she could understand him keeping his curse.
Crouching at the window ledge, he used his handkerchief to smear the bending potion over the bars and walls. “I smell Marigold down there, and Stargazer.”
“Naturally.” Not for the first time, Belinda felt the pockets of her guard’s uniform. No timepiece. How long did they have? “You didn’t think I planned to fly back to the castle, did you?”
“It wouldn’t be surpr—” He stilled, then sniffed the air again.
The chime of midnight vibrated through the tower stones into her heart. Remember, Belinda, spells are midnight things. What did that mean for a curse? For the potions she’d used?
Boots scraped against the stone floor beyond the chamber door.
Belinda’s heart leapt to her throat as Beast pushed off from the window, using the rope to swing onto the stairs. He bounded down them, almost flying down to her. He bent in front of her, and she climbed onto his back. With one step back, he leapt onto the wall and began to climb.
Belinda held tight, heart hammering, and blinked as her vision blurred.
The door crashed open against the wall. Torchlight assaulted the chamber’s darkness. She prayed that, for once, darkness would advance rather than light. Don’t look up.
“Belinda.” Beast’s voice was grave, hesitant, yet seemed strangely far away. She concentrated on steadying her breathing, unwilling to let fear steal her senses. “Is your silence spell still working?”
Focusing on her ears, she felt again a slight tingle there. “Yes.”
“Good. I—Belinda, it’s a new day now. … I’m sure you know that means I must ask you something.”
Her heart stuttered. “Yes, Beast.”
“I want you to ... not answer—not yet.”
A village girl can never answer. Not truly answer.
“And I don’t mean refuse through silence. You will answer, won’t you, when I ask you to?”
Belinda nodded against his back.
“Belinda Lambton, will you marry me?”
Belinda buried her face against his back and said nothing. Rather, she listened to the shouts below, to the clamor of men and the commands of a woman as they neared.
“See how the shadows change!”
“Up there!”
Beast stopped climbing. She opened her eyes to meet the window’s moonlit gaze.
“Can you reach the rope?” Beast clutched the stones framing the window, the rock gently bending under his weight.
Shaking her head to clear her vision, she cautiously reached out with one hand. As her fist secured the rope, she slipped off Beast, caught herself on the rope, and planted her feet against the wall. She, and the rope, and the wall all dipped. Beast held his arm protectively beneath her. Biting her lip, she focused on her grip on the rope. She hadn’t really considered that angle of the bending potion. When the potion-lathered wall came to rest on an unbending portion, she planted her feet against the wall, and Beast shifted back to the window.
Crouching on its frame, he pulled on the rusted iron bars, bending them like licorice until they touched the stone walls, which gave way to let them bend even more.
“This is the part,” he said, his tone half jesting and half tense, “where you’re supposed to clasp your hands over your heart and bat your eyelashes and exclaim how strong I am.”
At least that’s what she thought he said. It was difficult to hear anything over the pounding of her heart and the wind howling outside the window. And she was so tired.
Beast stuck his head out the window, his shoulders filling the opening. “It’s too far. The rope will never reach.” The words carried back in on the frigid breeze, one that made her vision blur again, though cold air usually woke her.
“Beast! Come down!” Lucrezia didn’t need to yell. The command was clear even to Belinda’s tired mind. “My guards are already surrounding the tower. You can’t escape.”
“Climb out after me and be quick. You’ll have to hold on to me,” Beast hissed. “We’ll go over the rooftops.” He squirmed between the bars and disappeared.
Belinda tried to follow. One sluggish hand moved over the other, once, twice. She shook her head as she grabbed the stone ledge framing the window. Why was she so tired? She had to follow Beast out.
Out.
One sharp message shot through the fog in her mind as her vision blurred. Beast was going out to the village in the early morning. Spells were midnight things. The curse thought it was Beast’s daily jaunt.
It thought it was time for her to dream.
An image of Beast back in the tower, kneeling for Belinda to climb onto his back blurred the starry, rooftop-silhouetted sky beyond the window.
“Bea—!” Belinda went limp.
Chapter 17
“Beast!” Belinda’s dream self finished the cry.
But the Beast she saw wouldn’t understand. He thought Belinda safe on his back as he climbed up the wall, the window in view. Blasted time delay! Would she be late for her own death?
“I want you to ... not answer—not yet,” Beast told her.
Could she answer him at all now? Lyndon said she talked in her dre
am-filled sleep, but when? In her time or the dream’s delayed time?
As Beast squeezed through the window, Belinda’s dream self caught the light of torches crossing the room. Lucrezia and seven guards, one with an elegant air about his unusually tall and lithe form, ran for the window. They reached the wall under it as a scream assaulted the air.
She watched in horror as her sleeping form plummeted toward guards with raised swords, all quickly backing away to uncover solid stone.
Lucrezia stood watching, as frozen as Belinda, one hand covering her mouth, the other clutching her stomach. For one brief moment, Belinda thought that maybe, just maybe, the duke’s daughter had some unselfish instincts.
Beast shot back through the window, his paws touching the wall once, using it as a spring board to dive for her. He caught her cloak and yanked her to him. He pushed off the wall again, twisting his body under hers as they fell. He smashed into an old table beyond the soldiers. It collapsed under him, and he lost his grip on her. She rolled away to the trapdoor. Her feet lay on the stone floor, but the rest of her sprawled across groaning wood.
Six guards, swords drawn, surrounded Beast as he struggled to his knees, swaying as if dazed. The tallest guard bowed slightly to Lucrezia, his gaze seeming to bore into hers. He gestured to Beast. “Your prisoner, my lady.”
A shiver passed over Lucrezia, and she pressed her hand over a locket. Her stance changed, as if that shiver were a transformation from a caring woman into the Lucrezia Belinda knew.
Lucrezia brushed past the soldier. “I told you I’d be back in the morning, Beast. How rude of you not to wait for me.” She smiled her saccharine smile at Beast, but her elegant gown whisked over dusty stone toward Belinda. She stopped several feet back, a look of horror on her face as she reached out a hand toward Belinda, but she quickly drew back, her posture stiffening. The regal guard sauntered past her and toed Belinda in the shoulder. The trapdoor dipped under the pressure. With a look at him, Lucrezia spun away and strolled, her pace one of contained speed, to the guards surrounding the still-dazed Beast. She lifted her chin. “And to try running away with that.”
Belinda wondered if it were possible to haunt in her dream form. It would almost make dying separate from her body worth it. Almost.
Wake up, Belinda! Wake up!
But she couldn’t so much as make her sleeping self blink.
Beast’s swaying stilled, his head swiveling toward Lucrezia’s voice, then away. His gaze snapped to Belinda, and he bolted to his feet. The burly guards shoved him down. He slipped on splinters of the busted table and crashed to the floor again.
“For pity’s sake, Lucrezia, help her!” Beast yelled. “Get her away from there!” Six blades pressed into his filthy velvet suit as he tried to stand. “Please, Lucrezia.” Hands raised, he slowly pushed himself up. “What’s happened to you?”
Lucrezia paled, and she tugged on the locket hanging about her neck. “Beast, I—”
Cocking his head to study Belinda, the guard toed her again. “She’s tied to your curse, isn’t she? Like my lady.”
Beast’s shocked look at the insolent guard ended in a narrow-eyed glare. “Not by my choice.” He focused on Lucrezia again. “Get her away from there, please, Lucrezia. Tell your men to leave her alone.”
Lucrezia smiled, her lips faltering once before sticking to their place. Had the twisted woman any natural, genuine smiles left in her? “No.”
“She’s more useful as she is.” The tall guard rattled the trapdoor with his polished black boot, a placid smile stretching his thin lips as he raised an eyebrow in challenge to Beast.
With a growl, Beast lunged at the gap between his guards, but six swords refused him passage. One guard kicked him in the knees, throwing him off balance as he tried to steady himself on the table debris.
“You can’t help her if you’re impaled, Beast dear.” Lucrezia gave him a cunning look. “Strategically impaled so you’ll be recovered by our wedding.”
Beast stilled.
“Oh yes. I know all about your curse,” Lucrezia said, an edge of acerbity in her voice. “All about its healing properties, its rules and its quirks, its rose and its end. How no other spell can touch you. I read the spell’s entire entry, which is probably more than you or that imbecile Lady Violetta can say.”
Beast’s gaze shot down to his left hand, then to the rose in Belinda’s open satchel. A spark of hope flickered across his face. He lowered his hands. “You can’t force me to propose, Lucrezia. Not anymore.”
Her smile faltered, confusion tugging at it. She looked to that elegant guard, walking so calmly and stately around the chamber, trying the different chains, watching the trapdoor as he did. “You must,” she said. “It’s part of the curse.”
Beast shook his head.
“But the rose’s petals will drop if you disobey it.” Her eyes caught on the red glow leaking from the leather satchel to give Belinda an eerie halo.
“Curses have rules—and a sense of honor.” Beast lifted his left hand. A flash of red and green and gold twined about his ring finger, flaring once before settling into his fur to rest against his skin. A similar band encircled Belinda’s finger. “I asked Belinda to marry me, because I had to”—he looked past Lucrezia to Belinda lying still on the wood and smiled that hideous, beautiful smile of his—“because I wanted to.”
Crossing her arms, Lucrezia stepped between them, blocking Beast’s view.
His glare at her softened into an expression almost pitying. “I meant the question, Lucrezia. I asked, but she hasn’t answered yet. I can’t ask you or anyone else until she does. She won’t wake until I’ve returned to the castle. You’ve no reason to keep us. After she answers, just as now, you’ve no hope of me proposing to you, or anyone else, ever again. She will say yes.”
He looked at Belinda, his mouth forming silent words. Her ears tingled, and Beast’s mouth began to move again with sound. She heard him, but she didn’t. He’d called for her silencing spell. “I know she will,” he said to her alone. “No foolish, pride-based definition of what a suitable match is will stop her. She’s too wise and too brave for that.” He took a step toward her. “Please, Belinda. Say yes. I love you.”
The guards tightened their circle around him, watching him warily.
“Leave now,” he said aloud to them all. “If Robert heals with no ill effects, I won’t even seek justice against you and your father. If you leave us now.”
The guards twitched their blades at him, giving one another looks of wariness, and possibly self-protecting murder. They might not be included in that pardon, they knew.
Lucrezia opened her mouth, then shut it, and clutched at her locket again. “Father had nothing to do with this,” she spat. “You wouldn’t cooperate, so I did what was necessary. It was prophesied I’d bear a king, so both you and the curse can forgot about your village twit—and your stupid honor. I had to!” Her color rising, she yanked at the locket’s chain so hard Belinda was sure it’d snap, but it didn’t. She threw her hand away from it in a manner fit for a tantrum, her glare momentarily searing into the placid face of the wandering guard. He patted his pocket, then reached to test another rusted chain. She spun back around to a bewildered Beast.
“I’m not the only prince in the world,” Beast said.
“You’re the prince of New Beaumont. Why would I want to be queen of anywhere else? This is my home and my people. My fate. To defy fate would be to destroy the kingdom! Do you want that?” She flicked her gaze toward Belinda and the guard. She stepped closer, her voice lowering. “If you care, you’ll cease this foolishness and ask me.” Her eyes went deadly serious. “Quickly, Rupert.”
Beast’s jaw went slack as he looked between her and the unearthly, elegant guard. “What have you done, Lucrezia?”
“There’s no rush, my lady.” The guard wrapped long, thin fingers around a chain stretching up to a mechanism set into the wall. He tugged the chain and released it. Belinda’s sleeping form bounce
d as the trapdoor dipped and snapped shut again. He smiled. “We’ve plenty of time.”
Beast went down in a tangle of guards before Belinda’s dream self even saw him move. “Wake up, Belinda! Wake up!” His shout went silent to all but her as he fought the guards.
Lucrezia stared about her as if the world had gone mad. She backed away as Beast launched one guard, his sword bloody, from the circle. A matching line of red ran down Beast’s side. She stared at it. “Please, Rupert! Say you’ll marry me and relinquish the curse. For the kingdom, if not for me—we were always friends.” She yanked again at the golden chain about her neck. “I was raised to be queen,” she cried, her voice growing hysterical. “Our fathers expect us to marry. We have to! Please ask and no one will be hurt. Everyone—even Robert—will be well.”
From the tangle of guards, Beast cried, “Wake up, Belinda! Answer me now! You promised to answer!”
“Oh, but you can’t rely on that,” said the tall guard with a sinister smoothness to his voice. “Can you, my lady?” He grasped the chain with both hands and jerked it as dream Belinda cried out her answer, all her heart in it.
But the Belinda Beast saw was silent.
He burst through the wall of guards and sprinted for her. “Wake up, Belinda! Answer! Will you marry me—Prince Rupert of New Beaumont? I take back my crown!”
The trapdoor slammed into the tunnel wall. Without its support, Belinda crumpled and fell into the shaft.
“I relinquish my curse! Say yes, Belinda, and wake!” Beast dove for the tunnel.
Dream Belinda stilled, then screamed as the pull of gravity yanked her down and air rushed through her hair. Her vision split and sped. Half as if from her sleeping self and half from her dream self, each set of images moving too quickly for life: Beast dove. The tall guard snapped his fingers. Beast collapsed with a roar of pain, then disappeared in a burst of violet. It exploded through the room, flattening the soldiers and Lucrezia, slamming the tall guard against the wall.