by Lucy Tempest
I squirmed, trying to no avail to make it put me down as I gasped, “He wouldn’t have been brought here in the first place if you didn’t require sacrifices from the people!”
“I will not be held accountable for your people’s stupid assumptions.” Its snarl struck me still and stiff as plaster, fearing it would finally end my annoyance by snapping me in half.
“I’m not from Arbore!” I pleaded. “I have no role in or knowledge of whatever has been happening in this place. I just want my father back!”
It ceased its threatening noises, head tilted up quizzically. “Where are you from?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
After a thoughtful pause, it lowered its arm and me along with it to the ground. “Do you know anything about Arbore at all?”
“Just that it exists. Why?”
The whispers from earlier suddenly returned, gripping its attention.
“Do you really think so?” it said to seemingly no one, looking behind me.
I followed its line of sight and found an obscure outline with what looked like horns sticking out from behind a suit of armor. The shape seemed to respond, if only from the Beast’s reaction. I could hear nothing but that whispering, as if it spoke in a pitch and volume not meant for human ears.
The Beast finally nodded at it. “I will spare him, but he will join your father in the cells.”
“No!” I cried out.
“Then what is it that you want? For me to set him free, so he returns with more hunters to attack me?” It kicked Castor with an exasperated growl, making me flinch. “If I release your father as well, then that gives the people more incentive to attack.”
I shook my head, confusion swirling in my deepening shock. “How?”
I could have sworn it rolled its eyes at me, a strangely human reaction from such a creature. “A man who was sacrificed to me resurfaces unharmed with his daughter, and so does a hunter who broke into my castle. Everyone would assume your boy fought me and not only lived but rescued you both, and he goes out urging people to help him finish what he started. Knowing that I didn’t kill either of them makes me less fearful, a possible target after I was an impossible one. Do you understand?”
I did, and I had so many other questions for it. But they were all my insatiable curiosity being roused at the worst of times. Our immediate situation didn’t call for them, neither would they be of any use to me right now.
“What if we all immediately left Rosemead?” I said. “Our disappearance would keep the people’s fear, wouldn’t it?”
“I’d sooner believe in benevolent fey than I would in this hunter abandoning his plan to slay me.”
“Then w-what do you want?”
“To be left alone!” Its bellow blasted around the hall, shaking the stone ground beneath my feet.
The whispers returned, faster, urgent, and I caught another glimpse of the horned entity before it disappeared.
“There has to be a way around this,” I wheezed, panic pounding my heart against my ribs until I felt it would bruise, or burst. “There has to be something I can do—something to exchange for his life, for my father’s freedom.”
“There is nothing you can give me.”
It was right. I didn’t have anything, had nothing to offer, to trade, nothing but…
Myself.
“What about me?” I blurted out.
It went totally still. “What about you?”
“Take me in their place.”
Its voice dipped deeper, becoming a wolf’s growl. “Why would I do that?” The whispers rose like wildfire, until its frustrated snarl doused them. “Let me think!”
It turned its attention back to me, prompting me to continue, and my teeth chattered until I had to clamp them shut and speak through them, already regretting my words, yet seeing no other solution. “When you let them go, Castor won’t tell anyone that you spared him or that he failed to save me. He’s too proud for that. While people will assume that you found my father insulting as a sacrifice, and took me as a replacement. Everyone will accept that since girls are always considered better sacrifices.”
Everything went unnervingly quiet, only my frenzied heartbeat drumming in my ears.
Then it bent over, bringing its face down to mine. “What is your name?”
In this lighting, I could see the outlines of its face, where its eyes, nose and mouth were. A configuration that seemed almost human.
“Bonnie...” My voice cracked. I cleared my bone-dry throat, tried again. “Bonnibel Fairborn.”
After a long, nerve-wracking moment, it finally said, “Miss Fairborn, I believe we have a deal.”
I only stood staring up at it, unable to utter another word.
It stepped over Castor and bellowed, “Ivy!”
The heavy slithering noise from earlier approached, dragging up the stairs until something slammed onto the ground beside us and sprouted upwards to the Beast’s eye-level.
At first, I thought it was an abnormally tall woman. But when the rest of her silhouette became clear, I realized that she had no legs.
From the waist down, she was a giant serpent!
I didn’t scream at the horrific sight. I couldn’t. I must be beyond exhausted, my capacity for shock depleted.
“Take the two men away. Make sure no one sees you.”
The snake-woman bowed her head at the Beast’s terse instructions. “Yes, Master.”
Mind-bogglingly fast for something that size, she slithered past me and shot up the tower. In a minute, she came back down with my father wrapped in her tail and scooped up Castor in her arms.
My father ceased his struggle to reach out to me, gasping, “Bonnie—what did you do?”
I winced as I met his stricken gaze, croaked, “What I had to do to set you free.”
Ashen-faced, he resumed his struggle against Ivy’s inescapable hold. “No! I told you to leave, to save yourself! Why didn’t you listen to me?”
“I couldn’t leave you up there! But I can explain—wait…” I chased after them, barreling down the stairs. “Wait! Slow down!”
Ivy ignored me, continuing to wind down the staircases like a worm through an apple.
As she reached the entrance hall, I leaped down the last stairs, no longer caring if I broke something, landing with a slam that shot up every bone and snapped my teeth over my tongue.
Pain screaming in every nerve ending, I ran, arm outstretched to meet my father’s reaching hand as I tried to tell him it was going to be fine, that I had chosen this. But my lungs felt filled with broken glass and I could only wheeze incoherently. Then the door slammed shut in my face.
For a stunned moment, I stared at the soaring barrier. Then a wave of panic overcame me as I desperately pulled on the handle. But it wouldn’t budge.
I staggered to the nearest window in time to see Ivy slithering out of the gates. I could hear my father’s anguished shouts for me echoing up to the castle as they swung shut, a final barrier between us. I doubted they’d ever open again.
The deal with the Beast had been settled far faster than I could have processed. Now the reality of it sank in. And its dreadful implications.
My father had no one else but me. Neither did Adelaide. By striking that deal to separate us forever, I hadn’t fixed anything.
I’d only ruined all our lives in a different way.
Chapter Six
Hopelessness felt like an anchor that dragged me down to the bottom of crushing despair.
I’d stayed there with my face pressed to the window, my hands clutching its iron bars, numbly watching the shadow of the gates shift with the eerily muted sunlight until the day died.
Now it was pitch dark outside with nothing but a chilling glow from the gates illuminating the castle grounds, and I still waited. I didn’t know what I was waiting for. The monster that had carried my father and Castor to freedom wasn’t going to come back for me. She only obeyed her master. And he was never letting m
e go.
I was stuck in here, with no way back to my father. He was just as stuck as I was away from home. And Adelaide? Now I’d never know what had happened to her.
I sank deeper in self-recrimination with every passing second. There had to have been a better way to resolve this, one that wasn’t a rash decision with terrible and permanent consequences. But I’d never had to talk my way out of a bad situation, let alone survive a risky ordeal. I’d never been exposed to danger of any sort. My father had made sure of it. Then had come Adelaide, and they’d both joined forces in coddling me, creating an impenetrable shield of love and protection around me.
If only they hadn’t. It might have saved us all if I were more like her, experienced, resourceful, able to bargain, to lie, to struggle. But I wouldn’t have needed to be, if we’d remained as we’d been, blissfully unaware of this old, forgotten world.
None of this would have happened if I hadn’t insisted on going into the Hornswoods.
Now we were torn apart, each lost and alone forever. And it was all my fault.
“Miss Fairborn.”
The Beast’s voice rumbled in the ground beneath me, buzzed in my bones. I paid it no mind, continued watching the faintly glowing gates, as if my focus alone would force them open.
A huge shadow engulfed me. I listlessly sank to the ground and tipped my head back, saw the Beast standing over me, holding an oil lamp.
From this perspective, I could have seen its face more clearly. But I didn’t care to. My curiosity, once a furnace fire, was now a dying candle’s flame.
It offered me a hand. It was only then I registered that it wasn’t some grizzly, clawed paw, but a large, hairy man’s hand with long, sharp nails. “Come with me.”
I sniffled loudly, wiped at my sore, swollen eyes, tears sticking my lashes together. “Why?”
“Do you plan on staying here forever?”
“This is as close to the outside as I’ll ever get again, isn’t it?”
“That was your decision. Now get up.” Its order was harsher this time.
Ignoring its hand, I stood up, every muscle trembling, every bone aching. He moved the lamp as I looked up—and I saw it.
Saw him.
At first, I’d thought him one of the talking beasts in children’s stories. But he wasn’t an animal with human attributes. He was a man with beastly traits.
In a loose white shirt that failed to obscure a massive torso and shoulders and fitting navy pants that hitched up thick, muscular legs, he stood upright, if with a slight hunch. And that was the extent of his civilized getup, as he wore no belt or other accessories, and no socks or shoes on his huge, fuzzy feet. He also couldn’t properly grip the gas lamp, thanks to his overgrown nails, and abnormally large, hairy fingers.
Reluctant yet fascinated, my weary gaze traveled up his thick, veiny neck to a broad, bearded face, housing an unsettling merge of features, all framed by his rioting, chest-length, wavy brown hair. He had a protruding lower jaw, a wide mouth full of sharp incisors and long canines that pushed his full lips forwards. Above that was a large, slashed nose with loose skin along the bridge that crinkled with his every heavy breath. Two big, angular ears stuck out of his hair. In his entirety, he was the closest thing to the wolfman I’d read about in many a folktale.
There was only one thing that was fully human about him. A pair of thick-lashed, blue-green eyes that shone under his thick, sinisterly arching brows like polished turquoises.
And those eyes were drilling into mine in a searing glare.
Hunching further, yet still towering two feet above me, he snapped, “Are you done staring?”
Lurching back, I nodded, a painful flush of embarrassment surging to my face. He immediately turned and shuffled stiffly away, leading me back upstairs.
Several torches had been lit around the castle where there’d been darkness before, showing me more of the interior, solidifying my earlier observation that it wasn’t as macabre around here as I’d expected coming in. After all, this had been some nobleman’s castle before the Beast had seized it. What was chilling were the sounds of slithering bodies, fluttering wings, and stomping hooves that accompanied us as we ascended. The unseen horrors must be the Beast’s underlings that had supplanted the castle’s original staff.
Sir Dale’s sister tragic story flared in my memory. It seemed I was to suffer her fate now.
Too numb to panic at the thought, my sore eyes roved around, taking everything in. I could now see the carpet covering the stairs was red velvet bordered with floral patterns of gold thread, and that up to a certain level, the walls were marble, like the stairs. Above that, beveled plaster of interlocking loops of thorns took over, contained in panels between the flat spaces. A look below as we got higher revealed the entrance floor pattern that I’d failed to see at ground level. A spiraling mosaic of a massive pink rose with a couple of fallen petals.
The second floor looked like the museums I’d read about, if like an abandoned one. In every corner, rusting suits of armor stood holding lances, axes or swords. On every silver-and-gold-wallpapered wall hung dusty paintings of natural panoramas or historical scenes. And by every column stood mahogany tables or marble pedestals displaying an array of exquisite ornaments covered in cobwebs.
Whoever the original residents of this castle had been, they could have probably answered my questions about my ancestors. But all that was left of them were these neglected treasures, their legacy desecrated by whatever creatures now roamed their spaces.
The Beast stopped before a whitewood door with a curling, golden handle.
“I had this prepared for you,” he said as he opened the door.
I peeked inside, expecting to find a torture chamber or a blood-splattered area reminiscent of a butcher shop, but it was a bedroom. Neat and clearly recently cleaned, the spacious room had a queen-sized bed, with gossamer drapes bound to its four posters like sails, and a massive, ornately-carved wardrobe with alternating mirrored doors.
Apprehension kept me in my place. “I don’t understand.”
He gestured impatiently. “This is your room.”
“Why won’t you put me in the tower?”
His frown created ridges along his forehead and united his brows, hitching his top lip up and baring his fangs. “Because you did nothing wrong.”
I turned away. I couldn’t look at him without imagining those teeth disemboweling me.
He made a gruff noise and shoved me inside. “Enter.”
Though I didn’t think he meant to be forceful, he was so strong, and I was so tiny compared to him, I stumbled all the way to the bed, landing on my side on the decorative champagne duvet. I struggled up on it, and my feet dangled above the floor.
I nervously ran my hands over the cotton-filled satin bedding, drying my sweating palms. “A-are you going to eat me now?”
He looked taken aback before he snorted what I felt was a laugh. “There’s not much of you to eat.”
“Don’t you eat your sacrifices?”
“Do you believe everything you hear?”
“They weren’t wrong about you being a beast.”
His nose wrinkled like a wolf as he snarled like one, chilling me to the bone. “Don’t call me that!”
All previous numbness evaporating, I hiccupped. “W—what do I call you then?”
He turned his head away as if to an invisible presence, angrily mumbling, “Why should I give her my name? What if she’s heard?” He stopped, listened, then snapped, “She can’t truly know nothing about the kingdom…” He stopped again before growling, “Fine!”
Turning back to me, he reluctantly grumbled, “Leander. My name is Leander.”
Leander? While I didn’t know if it meant anything, it didn’t sound like a name I would have associated with him. But then I hadn’t expected something like him to have a name at all.
I nodded slowly, eyeing him warily. “What are you going to do with me?”
“I’m not sure yet.” He
turned away, starting to close the door. “For now, you will freshen up and join me for dinner.”
The blurted out “No!” was out my mouth before I could think.
He turned back, an angry eye staring at me through the door’s crack. “What was that?”
I gulped my heart down, but had to answer. “N-no, I won’t join you for dinner.”
The door rattled in his grip as if it would rip out of its frame. I slid further into the bed, quaking, and heard another voice. Not a whisper this time, but a hushed shout.
What sounded liked a heated if subdued exchange followed, the he finally mumbled, “I’ll give you some time to relax. Then you will attend dinner.”
He didn’t give me an opportunity to object before slamming the door shut.
I drew my shaking knees against my chest, stared at the door. Unable to admire its carved design of a blooming bouquet, I dreaded his heavy, retreating footsteps would reverse, and he’d come force me to “freshen up” then drag me to dinner himself.
But he continued receding, along with that clomping noise. Once the floor grew quiet, the feeling returned to my limbs enough to roll myself off the bed.
I gave the room one more sweeping glance. It was the size of our home’s entire top floor, was spread in opulent furniture I’d never seen the likes of even in storybooks. The upholstered, pale pink sofa, matching chairs and white marble table all stood on gilded legs and the carved hairdresser and a giant wardrobe looked like works of art by the open double-door that led into an adjoining bathroom.
It was a strangely exquisite cage for a monster’s prisoner. I couldn’t begin to think why he’d put me here.
And I didn’t want to. I could only think of getting out. And now was my only chance.
I rushed to the window on unsteady feet. Despite the room’s size, there was only one. But it was proportionately large, with a painted wooden frame and curtains that matched the bedspread, if covered in a pattern of pink roses. To my relief, it wasn’t fitted glass and mortar, but opened inwards, letting cool air rush in, biting at my heated face.
Beyond the unnatural darkness cloaking the castle, the city below was languishing under what looked like the last traces of dusk. I could also see that the distance to the ground was far higher than I’d hoped. This second floor was three times the height of our two-story house in Aubenaire.