Beauty Within

by Emily L Goodman

  He sighed. God, let her at least be kind, he prayed silently, staring out into the night. It doesn’t matter if she’s a “beauty” or not. I don’t care what she looks like. He might have, once. It had mattered, in the beginning; and he was willing to admit that his younger self, before the curse, had preferred young ladies with a certain level of beauty. Now, though…no, now, he couldn’t care less what she looked like. As long as she’s kind. I can live with anything, God, if she’ll just show some kindness. That’s not too much to ask for, is it?

  He had no idea when she would choose to arrive the next day. He should have been clearer. A specific time would have let him know how long he could wait before putting the mask back on, before donning the uncomfortable clothing that made him look more like a man, before shoving his hands into gloves so tight that he was sure, some days, that they were going to cut off his circulation rather than actually offering him any real benefit. She could choose to arrive early, to get it over with, or she could let the day drag, spending as many hours with her family as she could before she stepped through the mirror to visit his castle.

  In her place, he had to admit, he would have chosen the latter. It wouldn’t be appropriate or mannerly to arrive late, to whisk straight away to her room and lie down for the night before she’d even had a chance to speak with him; but he hadn’t specified when she should arrive, and by now, he was sure that Erin had shared all the reasons why he wasn’t deserving of basic courtesy. After all, courtesy was reserved for people, and he wasn’t even a man, was he?

  No, he was a beast—and he would do well to remember it.

  Not to get lost in dreams of what it would be like to dance with a young lady who was unmoved by his outward appearance, to sit at a table with one who didn’t mind if he removed the mask. Not to imagine what it might be like to see one person who didn’t flinch whenever they looked at him, reminded of the most foolish mistake he had ever made every time their gaze touched his face.

  “God, I know I don’t deserve it.” Griffin bent his head to the banister of the balcony, clinging to sanity. “But I’m nearing the end of what I can stand. This curse—there’s no end in sight, and I’ve seen far too many girls over the past four years that—” His breath caught. He fought to keep it even, steady, but it was a losing battle. “I can’t do this anymore,” he whispered. “I want my life back, my body back. I don’t want to live like this anymore, constantly feeling the weight of what I’ve become. I don’t even like the man I’m becoming.” Bitter. Harsh. He had almost stopped believing that there would ever be an end to the curse—and he knew full well that when he stopped believing that it could end, he would no longer give the girls who came even the slightest chance.

  He wasn’t sure he was giving them a fair chance now.

  “Send me the one that’s right for me, God,” he prayed softly. “No more false starts, no more potential shattered. Don’t send me another girl that I think I can stand, only to discover that she can’t bear to look at me.” Or touch him. It had been a very, very long time since he’d been touched with kindness. It was such a little thing, but Griffin had never realized just how important touch was to him until he could no longer have even the small, fleeting contact that was considered appropriate at Court. “Send me someone who can—” He chuckled faintly. “See the beauty buried deep within, whatever that is.”

  Hidden beauty? He wouldn’t have called himself “beautiful” even before the curse, but if there was any trace of beauty in him, it was certainly hidden now.

  “Please, God.” He hadn’t realized that his voice would catch on a sob, that it would come out sounding like he was begging. “I can’t endure this anymore. Send me the right one—or if not the right one, then at least make it clear that the ones coming are absolutely the wrong ones. Please?”

  There was no answer in the darkness. Griffin wasn’t surprised. He’d stopped believing that God heard him a long time ago—had, in fact, started to suspect that the curse that cut him off from the rest of the world cut him off from God, as well. Somehow, however, he kept praying anyway, kept holding on to the impossible.

  Faith was, in so many ways, the only thing that had gotten him through so far. He had to hold on, had to keep believing that God still heard him.

  If he didn’t, he wasn’t going to survive.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Into the Castle

  Callista could hardly sleep that night for imagining what it would be like when she went through the mirror and entered the prince’s castle. Millie and Erin had spent an hour after dinner trying to prepare her, but she hadn’t been able to escape the fact that the more Erin talked, the more it was evident that her sister was trying to impress her own views upon her.

  Both of her sisters had been bored out of their minds in the castle, but neither, so far as Callista could tell, had bothered to explore it fully. They knew that there was a huge library, but couldn’t begin to tell her what was in it. They had appreciated the jewels and fripperies that the prince had sent their way, but they hadn’t even bothered to look to see what else might be in the castle—and clearly those items had come from somewhere within it, since there was little communication with the outside world, which meant that there had to be rooms that her sisters had never even seen.

  They had treated the prince as their captor—even Erin, who had been there for months. The more she listened to them, the more it became evident to Callista that, despite all their brave words about making the best of the situation, her sisters had in reality not bothered at all to try to make the best of things. In fact, as far as she could tell, they had resented every moment that they’d been trapped in the castle, unable to live the lives that they had chosen for themselves.

  She hadn’t wanted their opinions anymore; and in the end, telling them that she was going to enjoy her last night in her own bed, she had turned in.

  Unfortunately, sleep hadn’t come so easily. Imagines of the monstrous beast Erin had described flitted through her mind. Erin had gone on at length about the fur, about the long fangs—but she’d noticed that, when asked, her sister hadn’t even been able to tell her the color of the prince’s eyes. She’d studied him at length, but she hadn’t studied the details that really mattered—and as a result, she was of little help.

  Callista didn’t care how much he looked like a beast. She wanted to know the other, more important things. What kind of ruler was he? Did his servants care for him?

  Wrapped in her isolation, determined to portray herself as a martyr who had come only to save her father, Erin hadn’t bothered to find out—and that bothered Callista, bothered her in ways that she couldn’t quite explain and wasn’t sure she would be able to put into words even if she tried. It was as though something was nagging at her heart, telling her to look deeper within and discover the truth.

  Is this from you, God? She prayed silently. Are you the one telling me that I need to look more closely at him? She took a deep breath. Is it possible that I could be the one he’s been waiting for all this time? That I could be the one he needs to break the curse?

  There was no answer, nothing that she could hold on to. Callista sighed. Send us something that will make it clear, God, she prayed. I’m not asking for love at first sight. Just…could I maybe see something more in him than Erin and Millie did?

  She might not have gotten a concrete response, but Callista did feel peace suffusing her—and she was more sure than ever that going to the castle was the right thing for her to do.

  At last, as dawn streaked across the sky, Callista slipped from her bed. She wasn’t sure if she had actually slept at all, though she was sure she had, at some point, managed to dream: dream of waltzing with a prince, of walking through the gardens with him, of talking to him over a table filled with all of her favorite dishes. The dreams, she knew, had been her mind’s way of trying to make the best of the situation, and she wasn’t sure how well it had worked: in her dreams, the prince had the face of a handsome man, and the
re was nothing beastly about him.

  Still, it filled her with hope, and as she bounded into the kitchen and filled a bowl full of porridge from Mrs. Fillmore’s pot, Callista decided that she was ready to meet her adventure with a smile.

  She was only a few bites into her bowl when Theodore sat down across from her.

  “Morning.” He didn’t look like he had slept any better than she had. In fact, if anything, he looked as though he had slept less.

  “Good morning.” Callista offered him a cheerful smile.

  “You’re way too chipper for it to be this early.” Theo stirred his own porridge as though he barely recognized it, looking down at it instead of up at her.

  She wondered if that helped—if it allowed him to pretend that things were different, that they weren’t about to say goodbye for who knew how long. Of all her siblings, it was Theo who was at home with her the most often. Theo who had spent he most time with her, allowed her the most opportunities to start to form, if not to follow, her dreams. “I’m going to miss you,” she burst out suddenly.

  “I’m going to miss you, too, Cally.” Theo cleared his throat. She could tell that he was trying to move the lump in it, trying to sound calmer than he really was.

  It wasn’t really working for him, but she wasn’t about to be the one to tell him that.

  “You be safe, okay?” Theo said seriously. “And if it gets too bad—if you can’t stand it anymore—then come home. Don’t feel guilty if you can’t. Promise me.”

  “It’s only a year, Theo,” she reminded him softly.

  “A year and a day,” he corrected. “And I—” He pressed his lips together in a thin line, returning his gaze to his porridge. “It’s not fair that you’ve had to take this on you,” he said firmly. “It’s not your fault. Yours, least of all. You—I know you didn’t even know that Papa had a gambling problem, and—”

  “It’s all right,” Cally told him quietly.

  “Is it?” He sighed. “You’re going to have to remember to act a proper lady,” he reminded her. “No dashing about without regards for your gender—you’ll have to remember to be ladylike, and take some care with your appearance—”

  “I don’t remember any of those things being in the terms of the deal,” Callista reminded him.

  “No, but—if you’re sent away—”

  “I’m not sure he can send me away,” she said slowly. “Not according to the terms as Erin and Millie saw them, anyway. I think it has to be my choice—or that for him to send me back, at this point, he’d have to declare our side fulfilled.”

  “Well, I suppose you can be as crazy as you like, then,” Theo informed her, ruffling her hair. “Get the monster to send you back and it’s all over, right?”

  “I suppose.” Callista took a deep breath. “Theo…I want to just go,” she admitted quietly.

  He frowned at her. “Just go? What do you—”

  “Everyone’s been weeping over me,” she reminded him. “Stasi wants to keep insisting that I remember to do my best and not let it get the best of me, because she’s terrified that she’ll have to go next; and Erin and Millie are feeling guilty; and I just…I’m ready to be off and get it done.”

  “There’s no turning back,” he reminded her worriedly. “Once you go through that mirror, you can’t come back until the year’s over.”

  “I know.” She looked down at her own bowl, playing nervously with the spoon. “But—well, the thing is—” She took a deep breath. “If I stay, I’m just going to get upset, and scared,” she told him. “I might have trouble holding on to the adventure of it all, or I might get worried about missing all of you—and I don’t want to do that. I want to just slip away while I can still be a little bit excited along with the fear, and I want to do it without having to go through all the tears and worries from the others.”

  Theodore studied her for a long moment. She let him think—knew that he needed at least a minute to get himself together and decide whether he was going to help her or not. Finally he nodded once, decisively. “All right,” he informed her. “But I hope you know you’re leaving me with the hard part.”

  “I know.” She flashed him her brightest smile. “Give the others my love, won’t you?”

  “You carry all of our love with you.” Theo hugged her tightly for a long moment. She could see that his eyes were watery when he let her go, but he didn’t comment on it, so neither did she. Instead, he simply pulled her trunk out of her room and carried it over to the mirror. One hand on her chin, he made her look up at him. “Be brave,” he told her. “But know that you take your own heart along with you—and I know that means you’ll be safe.”

  Blinking back her own tears, Callista nodded without speaking. She rested one hand on her trunk, the other on the mirror, and murmured the phrase Erin had given her the night before. Erin, she realized slowly, had known what she would do—that she would be eager to get on her way as soon as possible, instead of lingering over the deed.

  The world swirled around her. When it cleared, Callista found herself standing in the entryway of a shining castle.

  She stared around, transfixed. There was a great crystal chandelier above her—in the entrance hall! Who needed chandeliers in the entrance hall? That was the moment, she supposed, when she really did realize that it was a castle and that she was going to have plenty to explore while she was here.

  “Hello?” she called softly.

  There was no answer. Leaving her trunk where it was—it wasn’t as though she could carry it alone!—Callista walked slowly forward, looking around her in awe. Her sisters’ descriptions had not done the place justice. In fact, listening to them, she’d assumed that the castle was rather dank, with that air of disuse that often persists in buildings that are simply too empty for the number of people within them.

  That was simply not the case. The entrance hall was incredibly clean, with a faint scent of orange rising from the wooden furniture and the paneling on the walls. Each fixture gleamed as though someone had carefully taken the time to polish them. Callista stopped before a sweeping landscape that seemed to have perfectly captured a view of a mountain lake, so crisp that for a moment, she was sure that she could dive straight into the water. In fact, she had raised one hand to touch it, just to be sure that it wasn’t really water, before a soft sound made her turn around.

  “Oh!” A man dressed in a butler’s uniform took a quick step back, surprise widening his eyes. “That is, I—are you Callista?”

  She nodded, her mouth suddenly gone so dry that speaking was difficult.

  “Well! I, ah—welcome. Welcome. We weren’t expecting you until later.”

  “Oh.” Callista ducked her head. “I’m sorry. I just thought—well, it seemed prudent to, ah, be getting on with things, doesn’t it?”

  “Of course, of course.” He waved a hand dismissively, as though he had decided that his own prior ideas were foolish. “I simply—well, we thought it would take you longer to, ah, get things in order.”

  “You thought I would stall until the last possible moment,” Callista corrected discerningly.

  “We—well, we—” The butler sighed. “May I begin again, miss?” he asked cautiously.

  “Certainly.” She smiled, just a little bit. It was obvious that he was at least trying to make a good first impression on her and that he felt that he had failed miserably as a result of her early arrival. “Hello. I am Callista Ramsay, come to spend a year and a day with the prince.”

  “It is wonderful to make your acquaintance, milady.” He bowed, perhaps a little bit deeper than was absolutely necessary. “Thank you for coming. My name is Hemsworth. I’m His Majesty’s butler, one of the three servants who has been able to stay with him throughout this trial.”

  “Only three?” Callista looked around at the well-kept entrance hall again. The way her sisters had talked, she had thought that there were at least a few more servants than that.

  “Only three, milady.” Hemsworth sighed
, looking worn around the edges. “I’ll introduce you to Mrs. Picard and Mrs. Martel as soon as may be.”

  Callista considered him. “Is there a Mr. Picard and a Mr. Martel?” she wanted to know, forgetting for a moment that it wasn’t good manners to inquire such a thing about women she had yet to meet.

  “There is no Mr. Picard, milady,” Hemsworth told her without batting an eye. Perhaps he was used to impertinent questions—or maybe, Callista thought, he was used to the manners of a beast, and so hers didn’t matter to him even a little bit. “Mr. Martel is in the stables—goes by Martel, he does, and looks after the prince’s horses until such a time as the master is able to hire more help. Keeping stable boys is a bit of a problem.”

  “Are there stable boys?” Callista frowned harder, still thinking, trying to make sense of the place in which she had landed herself.

  “Sometimes, milady.” Hemsworth studied her. “They aren’t able to come up to the castle without a personal invitation, however, so the odds that you’ll meet any of them is fairly low.”

  “Of course.” She forced a smile to her face in spite of the fact that her stomach was jumping nervously. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bombard you with questions. It’s just—” She waved a hand. “My sisters didn’t do this place justice.”

  “No, milady?” he asked courteously, inclining his head just so, as though he was listening carefully to whatever she had to say. Callista got the impression, however, that he was mostly humoring her, which didn’t make her feel any better about the fact that she was nervously babbling pretty much any question that jumped into her head.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter, does it?” she wanted to know. “I’m here now, and that means I can make my own opinions about the place.”