A Deal to Be Done

by Lucy Leven

  A Deal to Be Done

  A Tale of the Dark Forest

  Lucy Leven

  Contents

  A Moonlit Meeting

  A Beast’s Bargain

  To Wear a Green Gown

  The Library

  A Day of Lessons

  A Heart’s Desire

  The Heat of the Water

  The Beast’s Ball

  A Lesson to Be Learned

  A Morning Ride

  A Palace Awaits

  Tales of the Dark Forest

  About the Author

  A Moonlit Meeting

  They chained her to the stake, by her ankles and her wrists.

  Nicolette swore at them, and she spat at them. But little good it did. The menfolk only laughed at her, and tore her from her shift, forced her to her knees, left her bare.

  The stake was iron, well-forged, buried deep. The chains were iron. The shackles too. There was to be no escape, not from her bonds or from her fate.

  They had dragged her to the Dark Forest at sunset, but now night lay heavy all around. The middle-night, by the path of the moon. Though, in truth, she could hardly see that moon. Her hair tangled in the wild, cold wind, and it tangled before her face, the pale gold of it gone silver in the moonlight, offering but fractured glimpses of the world beyond.

  Harvest time had only just begun, but already the fierce bite of winter was sharp in the air. Nicolette shivered, and even then she could find no heat. Her fear wicked it away just as readily as the chilling wind.

  She was so scared and so, so cold.

  There was no awareness in her of the soundful night. No awareness until all the nighttime noises of the forest — all those quiet chitterings and shushings — died away on but a breath, sudden as a candle smothered at the wick.

  A whine escaped Nicolette, fear at its most primal. She did not need her eyes to see what she already knew.

  The Beast.

  The Beast had come for her.

  She could smell him, the rich, earthy musk of him. Hear his footsteps, surprisingly light. And she could feel his warmth, as he came close, as if a fire burned within him.

  Something touched her then. Not fingers. Hard. Unyielding.

  Claws.

  Her bonds were too tight. She could not flinch away. So her breath stuttered instead, her pulse a gallop in her ears. Her death was close at hand. Those claws would dig into her flesh and her bone, those claws would cleave her still-beating heart from her breast, those claws would—

  Do nothing more than draw back her hair, gently, so that she might see.

  And see she did.

  Nicolette gasped, a noise of horror catching in her throat. Golden eyes watched her from a face nightmare-born, great jagged antlers of intertwined horns atop it.

  Even crouched, the Beast stood taller than her. Thrice her height. Perhaps more. His muscle was hewn, no weight of summer upon him. The hair on his head was dark, the hair down his chest, like a pelt, was dark, on his legs the same, and at his groin…

  The prick that hung between his muscled thighs, even quiescent, was staggering to behold. And Nicolette had beheld her fair share of pricks. She was a tavern lass, after all.

  The Beast moved — but slowly, all the while watching her with his shimmering golden eyes. Magic in them. So much magic.

  Under his claws, under his powerful grip, the chains snapped like ice on a thawing morning. Her shackles bent and broke, and Nicolette was free.

  Run.

  A voice spoke from the long ago, as ancient as the forest, that part of her being that knew her still to be but prey. And it spoke clear and loud in her ears, in her bones, in her very marrow, but Nicolette — she heard the whispers all the same.

  Do not fear him, those whispers said, caught on the wind that chilled her, caught up from the Capital and from across the Windward Seas. The Beast will not be your undoing.

  And Nicolette had never believed the whispers. She was a young woman, true enough, but a scant score of years was still years enough to find some semblance of sense: the Beast was a beast. A young woman’s sacrifice kept the village safe. Behave, and it will never be you.

  But Nicolette had behaved. And now it was her.

  Her, freed from her shackles, holding company in a moonlit clearing with a living nightmare who watched her carefully and calmly, who showed her more courtesy in the space of a few thundering heartbeats than any man ever had. Her, whose heart still beat in her chest, whose breath still filled her lungs.

  Who lived still, whole and well…

  And all at once, Nicolette knew the strange whispers to be true. She nodded, though she did not know why. But the Beast understood. He held out to her one clawed hand, and Nicolette took it.

  Her own hand was dwarfed in his sharp grip, but his claws pierced her not — not even as he took her weight and urged her to her feet.

  And Nicolette tried to rise as he bid of her, and under her own strength at that. But her legs had cramped from the cold and the long, forced stillness of her body. They could not hold her. She could not stand.

  Nicolette cried out, a bloom of pain, and fell once more to her knees.

  But the Beast caught her before the ground could, and lifted her, held her tight to him, as though she weighed nothing, and nothing she did not weigh.

  He spoke then. And his voice was not of man, nor of the world of man. It had magic in it, and warmth, and something of a quiet soothing, so at odds with the guttural harshness of his utterance, with the monster that he was.

  “You are safe now, lass,” the Beast said.

  A Beast’s Bargain

  Moments passed, fractured.

  Perhaps those moments spanned but minutes. Perhaps hours. Nicolette did not know. Could not know.

  What she did know was this: the light of the moon became the light of a thousand candles, of torches in their sconces, and fires in their hearths.

  At length, though still startling in its suddenness, the arms that held her were beastly no more. They were the arms of a strong man, built of hard, unyielding muscle, and of warm, smooth skin.

  Nicolette’s head lolled back against his shoulder upon the shift in his bearing, and she looked up to a fine-boned, handsome face. Nothing of the old nightmare in it, but his eyes were the same. Golden and aflame.

  She closed her own eyes. They were so heavy. So tired.

  Then — the pad of feet across flagstones, the press of changing air as a door swung closed on its mighty hinges, all but silent.

  “Lass,” the Beast said.

  Her eyes flickered open again. A low-roofed chamber rose before her, where a fire burned high in the hearth. A grand bedstead stood, half-cloaked in shadow. Before the fire a great copper trough for bathing lay, the water steaming with its heat. It was to there the Beast trod, and lowered her gently into the warmth.

  Nicolette passed from one warm embrace to another, and all she longed for was sleep, but the Beast would give her no peace.

  He held a cup to her lips so that she might drink. The water there cooled her and refreshed her from within even as it heated her from without — warmed her bones, brought her skin flushing back to its rosy pinkness.

  And still the Beast tormented her. He would not let her rest. He knelt beside the trough and held a strong arm around her middle, under the soft, bountiful curves of her breasts, so that, she realised suddenly, groggily, her exhaustion would not drag her down into the welcoming warmth.

  And so it was that Nicolette came back to herself, one moment after the other, as the Beast washed her scraped and bloodied skin, as he washed her hair, combed his fingers through its tangled length. And all the while his hands were gentle, no liberty taken, no prize demanded.

  After, he helped her
from the water and dressed her in a fine white shift of softest linen. He set her down to sit on the great bed, amid all its furs and silks, and rubbed soothing salve into the rawness at her wrists. To her ankles he did the same. Then he bound her wounds with clean cloth and a kind touch.

  A small, barred window carved a slat of deeper darkness high upon the wall, a shadow within the shadows. But through it cleaved a slant of silvered light, a startling contrast to the fiery caste of the room: the night sky, the sharp curve of the waning harvest moon, the faintest glimmer of stars. No waypoint to guide her, no landmark to place her.

  “Where— where am I?” Nicolette asked, finding her voice from somewhere deep within, a dreaming, sleeping sound.

  “My castle, lass,” the Beast told her, his voice a quiet rumble as he knelt before her. “In the heart of the Dark Forest.”

  Nicolette had lived in the shade of that same forest all her life, and she knew well that no one was fool enough to enter the Dark Forest unless they had to, least of all fool enough to stay and build a home.

  “There is no castle in the Dark Forest,” she said.

  The Beast smiled. It was a small thing. Guileful. Sly and shifting. “No castle that can be seen from without. Not save intention, in any case.”

  “A thing of magic then?” Nicolette asked.

  “Born of it,” the Beast said, “and built upon it.”

  Perhaps that magic explained the strange watchfulness of the shadows all around, and the sense of safety that settled over Nicolette like the softest of silks.

  Her head felt her own again, her legs strong, her hands steady.

  And so Nicolette knew what she must do.

  She was a tavern lass; the Beast was a thing of magic, as his castle was a thing of magic. He would know what she was. Know all that she was good for. Know the prize he wished in payment for his benevolent aid.

  So she stood, pulled her shift over her drying hair, and dropped it to the floor beside her.

  The Beast raised an eyebrow but did not rise from his knees. “Lass?”

  She gestured to her curls, to her quim. “You shall want to dip your wick, shall you not?”

  “Shall I?” The Beast said on the cocking of his head. “Why, I wonder?”

  Nicolette managed to quell the rolling of her eyes, but it was an accomplishment hard won. “In bargain for your kindness, my lord,” she said, all practiced sweetness, “and for your kind favour.”

  She bit her teeth to her lower lip, coy and teasing. Pulled back her shoulders so that her posture might call his attention to her breasts — though, truly, they needed no attention called. Only a blind man could miss them.

  And the Beast was not blind. His gaze drifted over her, so hot as to burn. And Nicolette’s breath hitched, oddly, for she had not often enjoyed the feeling of men’s eyes upon her, but she found, then, that she did like for the Beast to look at her.

  So she let her eyes drift over the Beast in turn, drift over his cut muscle and sculpted form, down and down and down…

  He was a big one, that was certain. Even as a man, he was big. Bigger than any she had ever taken. A stretcher, she was sure. And well-made at that. She should not much mind a ride upon him. She had ridden far less pretty, after all, for far less.

  Nicolette pushed her hips towards him but a little, let her legs part but a little more, tempting him, drawing him in, for still he knelt, so close now that she could feel his breath upon her soft stomach.

  Men — they were such predictable creatures. She could play them as prettily as a lutist might pluck strings. He would have her on her back in but a moment, give her a bed-pressing that she would soon enough forget, and then she might steal away and—

  The Beast stood, an unfurling of power. He stood so tall and so close that suddenly he towered over her. Though not for long. He bent low, his head to hers, and his breath was hot across her ear. The feel of it, inexplicably, made her shiver. And it was not a shiver of fear, nor of revulsion, as she might have thought. Instead, of excitement, perhaps. Of anticipation.

  And how long it had been since a man had made her shiver so.

  “When you have your pleasure from me, lass,” the Beast said, in his awful, wonderful rumble of a voice, “it will be for the sake of that pleasure and that hot pleasure alone. Not in recompense for some imagined debt.” He pulled away then, took his warmth with him. “Sleep well,” the Beast told her, closed the door fast behind him on his leaving, and tumbled nothing but the latch.

  To Wear a Green Gown

  Nicolette did not sleep well, so hot was her indignation. How dare he! For she had offered the Beast a ruddling, and he had turned her down.

  Her! Nicolette!

  Back in the village, there were scores of men who would have spent their very last coin with the thought to tumble her. Men who had spent their last coin. Men who had spent no coin and had tumbled her all the same.

  Men who had treated her like a thing to be bought or bartered, like a cup of ale, a bushel of wheat, like a fine-uddered cow.

  Nicolette’s lip curled at the thought of them, and at the thought of the horrid old man to whom the taverner had sold her. He had died in their wedding bed on their wedding night, and may the gods spit upon his corpse.

  Blast him! And blast the Beast!

  She did not need his beastly attentions.

  The castle, Nicolette found, was a living thing, of watchful eyes and clever hands.

  It was those eyes that found her a chamber, bright and airy, in the lower castle, where the shade of the forest never seemed to fall and the village was always out of sight.

  It was those hands that dressed her on a morn, in gowns and robes of such finery, the silks watered and rosy, the embroidery golden and delicate.

  And it was those clever hands that would touch her still — and more. So many of them, and so well. If she asked it of them, they would slip over her skin, brush pleasure across her every nerve, touch her as she touched herself. And in that touch, Nicolette found a soft knowing — and knowing enough to know that, magic or not, they were not the hands of men, for they knew her frustration and they knew the remedy.

  So Nicolette let them touch her, let them bring her to release again and again as she lay on her silks, on her high, soft bed, and she did not think about the Beast’s hands upon her.

  No, not at all.

  Her first weeks in the castle were weeks spent exploring. There was so much to see, and find, and know.

  In caves beneath the castle she wandered, where great marble baths seemed carved out of the very bedrock, where steaming waters flowed freely, and where Nicolette stewed herself like a pot of poached pears.

  Through a grand ballroom she skipped, where she imagined herself as some fine lady, spinning a dance unknowable, dressed in a gown of unimaginable splendour, dipped in gold and draped in jewels.

  A vaulted passageway led her to a library of stone walls and high bookshelves. So tall were those shelves, and so many in number, and so dark of wood, that they disappeared into the forbidding shadows that lay thick and deep despite the high windows and the sharp autumn light.

  The library, however magnificent, unsettled her, and she did not tarry there long: to the gardens she went.

  Once, she spent a day tangling in a maze of high, dense hedges with the thought that she would find the centre of that puzzle, and never did — nor the egress again. Not until the Beast, chuckling with infuriating amusement, came to her rescue, and she glowered at him for the doing of it.

  But despite the maze’s trickery, of all the wonders the castle offered, Nicolette liked the gardens best of all. She liked the freshness of the air and the open skies above her head, so different from the fetid, smokey mire of the tavern.

  For her alone, it often seemed, the orchards and the follies spread out a glorious riot of gold and russet and red. And Nicolette felt at home there, amidst the ivies and the mosses and the leaves, for she, too, was a creature of autumn, with her golden hair and her rudd
y cheeks.

  But she knew of one place in the gardens where autumn had yet to even venture. With its high walls and verdant greenery, with its spoils of flowers, summer reigned still in the castle’s little rose garden. The roses there bloomed a pale and dusky pink, so beautiful to behold, every petal a drop of such perfect summer pink.

  She plucked a bloom and tucked it behind her ear, caught up in her hair, then to her chamber she went, where she had thought to see if the castle’s clever hands might like to take a tumble with her.

  On her way, she strode by the Beast where he stood, watching a thunderous fire roaring in the hearth of the Great Hall.

  Nicolette tipped up her nose as she passed him by, haughty.

  But the Beast only smiled at her. His voice was as warm as his eyes when he said, “You have found the rose garden, I see.”

  There was something…

  Something to the rose garden. Something that called to her. Something in it, perhaps, or of it. Something more, mayhaps, than simply its lush beauty. Nicolette could not say. But whatever unknowable enticement spurred her fascination, it drew her back, time and time again, to sit on the stone bench at the garden’s heart, or to press her nose to the most beautiful of the roses, to take their sweet and heady scent.

  It drew her back until the garden itself seemed to live within her dreams, as it lived within the castle.

  Sometimes in those dreams, in her garden of imagination, she tumbled with the Beast. Most often, in truth, she tumbled with him, and he gave her such pleasure in his every touch, in his every caress, so easy and sure, that she resented him anew.

  But it was not always the Beast who touched her so — instead, on a time or two, a man formed of shadows, dressed all in black, tumbled her long and well, strength in his every practiced movement, so careful and studied.