by Lucy Tempest
His lips twisted. “Oh, I’m counting on it.”
She sat back, wringing her hands. “He said she’s not to eat if she isn’t eating with him.”
“To the staff he did,” the satyr scoffed. “But I can share my meal with our guest if I want to. I’m not one of his servants.”
I swallowed my mouthful this time before asking, “So who are you?”
I made sure to say “who” since “what” in my question to Jessamine had upset her.
“Oh! Where are my manners?” He bowed his head to me, giving me a better view of the curve of his lethal-looking, bronze-ridged horns. “I am Lord Clarence Gestum.”
I gaped at him. “Lord? Lord of what? All cloven men and mad witches who dance with them in the woods?”
He choked on his food, doubling over to cough in between painful guffaws. “Life would be a lot more interesting if I was.”
Jessamine beat me to thumping him on the back, until his harsh coughs faded into whistling wheezes as he sat up, his eyes still twinkling with merriment. “Well, if we’re being specific then I am—or I was—the Duke of Briarfell. But do call me Clancy.”
Judging by how Jessamine stiffened up, neither of them was supposed to tell me any of that.
“You weren’t born like this?”
Timidly, she unfurled one huge wing, displaying the varying shades of crimson, vermillion and even ochre in her plumage. “None of us were.”
“Did you think we all holed up in Rosemead for a monster getaway?” he said cheekily.
“I haven’t given it much thought beyond what they told me about this place,” I admitted, ravenous appetite suddenly gone. “They said the King of the Beasts moved in here and slaughtered everyone in the castle.”
Jessamine nodded, fluttering the small feathers in her wings. “I at first thought they might think we’re held hostage, but when no one came for us, I knew this must be how they explained our disappearances.”
Clancy looked at her, his gaze kind and soft. “It’s better that they think we’re dead.”
The realization hit me like a punch in the head. People. These two, along with whatever else populated this place, used to be normal people. And that meant…
“You’re Sir Dale’s sister!”
She winced, leaning forward so she wouldn’t sit on her wings. “I’m sorry that his friends brought your father here. He should have stopped them.”
“He wasn’t around when they took my father, but I doubt he could have. Those Rob and Will seem to be very dangerous goons.”
She pursed her lips. “I would have given them a piece of my mind, but I couldn’t risk them seeing me.”
“Why not?” I looked back and forth between them, baffled. “Why can’t you tell them you’re alive? What happened to you all to begin with?”
Clancy brought one hoof down in a sharp thunk. “We can’t tell anyone, or show ourselves. They would kill us on the spot.”
To say I was horrified was an understatement. “But they’re her brothers!”
A bitter smile twisted his lips. “They’re also hunters and one has even been to war. They’re used to killing what they believe are threats. I bet their first reaction to a harpy wearing their sister’s face is to panic and shoot it down.”
So, that was what a harpy looked like? I’d only ever heard that term as an insult, usually from my father and other business-owners who complained about Lady Dufreyne. But Jessamine didn’t fit any of the traits usually ascribed to one, was wholly sweet and even-tempered. The idea that her own family would kill her on sight made me feel ill.
“What about you? If you’re a duke, how did you end up here?” I asked him. “Where is Briarfell, and while we’re at it, where is Rosemead exactly?”
Clancy attempted to adjust his pose, but the stiffness of his goat-legs kept him from crossing them. Frustrated, he grumbled something under his breath about fairies and rolled to the side, fully facing me. “Rosemead is in the northeast of the kingdom, Briarfell is between Rosemead and Arbore’s capital, Eglantine, which is a bit more south. I was here on a visit when I, along with the staff, got—transformed. I haven’t been able to leave since.”
“You were visiting the Beast?”
He coughed into his fist, sounding more like he was smothering a laugh. “Yes.”
“Why?”
He opened his mouth to answer, met Jessamine’s eyes, then shut it.
“What? Why won’t you tell me what happened to you?”
Jessamine shivered, more feathers shaking along her wings. “It will upset the Master.”
“What she means is, it’s best that he tells you everything himself,” Clancy then added. “Over dinner.”
Dropping my fork with a clatter, I scowled at him. “You’ve been writing those notes, haven’t you?”
“Guilty.” He scratched his head awkwardly, one nail scraping against a horn. “How did you know?”
“You have human hands, he doesn’t. The script was too neat to be his.” I crossed my arms and legs, raising my chin defiantly. “Tell him that if he wants someone’s company so bad, he needs to ask for it himself.”
“He did the first day.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Ask nicely.”
“He’d sooner chase mammoths into the desert.” As soon as the joke was out of her mouth, Jessamine clapped her hands over it.
Clancy laughed, hard. He rocked in his seat, his fair face turning red. “Forgive me, it’s just the visual. The thought of Leander, on all fours, charging across the continent to herd mammoths down to Cahraman is just—” He broke into harsh guffaws.
Jessamine watched him in rapt attention, the corners of her mouth curling up behind her fingers, a rosy blush spreading beneath her shining eyes. It was as if she couldn’t believe she’d made him laugh. “Was it that funny?”
“Funniest thing I’ve heard in a while,” he huffed, wiping at his eyes. “In all honestly, Leander would go to such lengths to avoid something as simple as an apology.”
“Then he’s going to be dining on rejected invitations for a long time.” I dropped my chin into my palm, looking over the room. The beautiful cell I’d remain in, probably forever.
There had to be another way out of here, a way back to my father. I didn’t want to consider what the past few days had been like for him. Hopefully, Castor was taking care of him and planning to come back for me. With a better plan this time.
Suddenly, I got an idea. “Jessamine, how far can you fly?”
Her pleased smile faltered. “Um—why?”
I jerked my head towards the window. “There’s no point in me remaining here, and you can’t stay here forever, either. You can fly us out of here and to the Woodbines’ hunting lodge. I’ll tell your brothers everything so they’re prepared, then you come in and—”
Clancy let out a disturbing sound, a merge between a goat’s bleat and a man’s bellow. “No!”
I started, suddenly wary all over again. “Why not?”
He got up, running his fingers over his horns as he stomped towards the door. “You can’t leave, not yet.” Before he shut it behind him, he ordered Jessamine, “Don’t let her out of your sight, do you understand?”
The fading clomps of his hooves remained the only sound on the whole floor for stifling moments. But I couldn’t handle the vagueness, the amount of missing pieces in this puzzling place, couldn’t remain silent anymore.
I finally exhaled, looking entreatingly at her. “Jessie?”
“I’m sorry, Bonnie.” She rose to her feet, twisting her fingers together. “But I can’t do what you want, even if I wanted to.”
My disappointment was too overwhelming to hide, even for her sake. The last thing I wanted was to make her feel worse about her situation, get her in trouble with her brute of a master. But I couldn’t pretend her rejection was fine by me. She’d been my last way out of here.
She excused herself and left, and I sagged back, limp with the reinforced realization of my
helplessness.
After what felt like an eternity of lying there, a heavy rap shook the door.
I rushed to open it, hoping Clancy had changed his mind. All I found was a big, floral-printed box topped with a pearlescent bow.
Inside it was a luxurious yellow gown, a diamond tiara with a matching set of diamond-and-citrine-studded jewelry—teardrop earrings, two hard bracelets and a choker necklace, whose worth alone might buy half the town below. The accompanying note was covered in a shaky scrawl that said:
Dear Miss Fairborn,
I cordially invite you to dine with me tonight.
Please wear these precious items I gift to you. I will await you in the dining room.
Respectfully,
Leander.
I kicked the box, spilling its contents. Before I slammed the door shut, I tore up the note and let it rain over the mess.
Chapter Eight
“What’s a mammoth?” I yawned, bleary gaze unfocused on the canopy above me.
It was my fourth day here, and what I now recognized as mid-morning light around here centered on the bed, with me on my back and Jessamine on her belly, stretching her wings.
“It’s a big, wooly elephant,” she mumbled into the duvet, face squished against it. “It lives in the northeast of the Folkshore, usually in Opona and the Mjallands. Some islands have pygmy sorts as well.”
“What’s an elephant?”
Her eyes widened, seemingly stunned again at how much I didn’t know about this Folkshore. “It’s this huge animal with large floppy ears, curved tusks and a long trunk for a nose. I’ve never actually seen one, but the Master has some foreign sculptures shaped like them. He can show them to you.”
As if summoned, a series of heavy thumps assailed my door. The very sound of entitlement and impatience. It was a wonder he hadn’t splintered the wood by now.
I rolled off the bed with a frustrated growl and marched to the door. I wrenched it open to find not another box, but the Beast himself.
“Yes?” I demanded venomously.
Leander’s fist was still up, poised to knock again, and his thick brows were raised in chagrin or confusion, or both. “Why do you keep rejecting my gifts?”
I stuck my fists at my side. “Why do you keep giving them to me? What do you expect me to do with them?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I don’t know what women usually do with the things they expect or demand. But I’ve never met a lady who snubs the most expensive clothes and jewelry. If that does not please you, then what will?”
“My freedom!”
His eyebrows descended ominously, almost obscuring his eyes. “I can’t give you that. I’ll give you anything but that.”
“Then I want nothing from you.” I slammed the door in his face.
I stood facing it, shaking, unable to believe I’d done that. It seemed he didn’t either as a moment of total silence passed. Then he ripped out a harrowing howl.
“If you don’t come out I’ll break the door down and drag you out!”
“Do it!” I dared recklessly, too desperate to care if I was provoking on my own doom. “Do it and see where that gets you.”
No one like me, tiny and useless, ought to be antagonizing anyone, let alone a giant barbarian like him. But I couldn’t bear giving in to others’ demands anymore. Or always feeling trapped. Now I literally was, and helpless to find or help my family. And that was all his fault!
He slammed himself against the door with a rattling crash that blasted through me, sending me spiraling down a conflicting mixture of dread and defiance.
“Break down the door, do any harm to me, and you’ll live up to the name ‘Beast!’” I shouted, frantic and incensed.
“I told you not to call me that!” He rammed to door again, making the hinges squeal and the wood moan. I knew it would soon give.
“But that’s what you are!” I shook from head to toe as I shrieked back. “You not only look like a beast but you behave like one!”
Abruptly, he stopped.
I waited, breath shuddering out of me, to see if he would resume his tantrum or if he’d stepped back to charge the door and knock it down. But he did neither.
“Did he leave?” I whispered to Jessamine.
A stilted grumble from behind the door answered. “What. Do. You. Want?”
Irritation replaced all other feelings. “I told you what I want.”
“AND I TOLD YOU—” He stopped, heaving in a loud breath before letting it out a long, noisy exhalation. “And I told you I can’t give you that. Anything but that.”
I approached the door, cautiously peeking through the keyhole. “If you’re not going to let me go, you can at least tell me why.”
He was pacing before my room, like a beast in a cage. “I don’t know if I can.”
“What? You think I’m too stupid to understand?”
“It’s not about whether you can, it’s about what it can change.”
“If you think anything will make me hate you more than I already do, then you underestimate my feelings for you.”
He shook his head with a dismissive snort, the tips of his angular ears wiggling. “I was hoping to change your mind about being here before telling you.”
“Good luck convincing me to enjoy my stay with your attitude.”
“You’re very disagreeable,” he grunted. “Very loud, too.”
“You’re one to talk,” I scoffed.
He stopped his pacing, shot an exasperated look in my direction. “Do you have to answer back to everything I say?”
“Would you rather I go back to ignoring you?” I taunted, something I’d never done.
“I would rather that you’d do as you’re told, like all young women of polite society ought to. I would like for you to accept my gifts graciously, to dine with me, to possibly get to know me, as I am your host.”
“You’re not my host, you’re my jailer. I’m your hostage.”
“Would you stop?” His shouted last word echoed down the hall like a crack of thunder through a night sky. “I’ll have you know that if you spoke like that to anyone else you’d be punished severely.”
“Oh, dearie me, what punishment could possibly surpass captivity by a monster? Being speared by a unicorn?”
“How did you know they did that?”
My heated annoyance went up in a puff of steam. “What do you mean?”
“That unicorns use their horns to impale threats or adversaries.”
I was instantly gripped with a sense of childlike wonder. “Unicorns exist?”
“Of course, they do.” He gave a mirthless huff. “Most may think them peaceful creatures, beings of pure light and beauty, but I learned about their tempers the hard way with my sister’s mare.”
In that instant, despite seeing no change in him through the keyhole, his image somehow shifted, became more human, reminding me that this Leander creature used to be a man at some point, like Lord Clancy, though it was much harder to believe with him.
But the way he spoke, his mention of a sister…
Perhaps if I did speak with him on less hostile terms, I could finally get some answers about this madness, maybe negotiate my release.
But when I opened my mouth, I found myself saying, “Your sister has a unicorn?”
He seemed surprised by my questions, coming closer until I saw nothing but his ill-fitting pants. I felt him touching the door, and I straightened, leaned against it, too, listening to the vibrations of his deep voice through the wood.
“Yes, she got it as a gift when she was seven. I, on the other hand, got an ordinary horse. You’d think people would like to keep things fair among siblings. If she got a unicorn, I ought to have been gifted a pegasus.”
Joking. He was joking, the humor so subtle but so strange, even shocking coming from him.
I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat. “What’s a pegasus? Is that the horse that is half-fish?”
“You’re thinking of a hip
pocampus.” He sounded significantly calmer as he huffed again. “Though I can’t believe you know about those but not pegasi. Where did you say you were from again?”
“I didn’t. Say where, I mean.”
Neither of us said anything for a while, lingering on either side of the door. I had to assume he was waiting for me to speak again first.
“I can show you a painting of a pegasus,” he finally said when I didn’t, uncharacteristically quiet. “It’s on the ground floor, in the main sitting area.”
Jessamine piped up, startling me. “You could have afternoon tea there!”
His corroborating rumble was instantaneous. “Yes, we could.”
Uncertainty filled me, along with lingering anger, a stubborn insistence for me not to leave my room, to give in to his demands.
But afternoon tea hadn’t been a part of his plan. It was a random stop on this odd path the conversation had taken.
Giving myself no chance to overthink this, I unlocked the door.
He gaped at me when I peeked out, as if taken aback. It seemed he hadn’t expected I’d relent. I hadn’t either.
I looked way up at him, trying not to fidget. “Tea would be nice, I guess.”
He gave an awkward nod, letting out a loud exhalation, the sound of deflating frustration.
Either I’d forgotten how beastly his appearance was or he’d further morphed since I’d last seen him. His lower fangs were bigger than I remembered, jutting his jaw further forward, and his beard had migrated further up his cheeks. His body had grown more bowed, arms bigger and longer. He was closer to the snake-woman than to half-human Clancy and Jessamine—a confused merge of man and animal, though I wasn’t sure which one. Lion? Wolf? Both?
“Wouldn’t you like to get changed first?” Jessamine pulled me back before I stepped out, sounding excited. “I can set out a nice tea gown for you. There’s this periwinkle one that would go with your eyes.”
“He doesn’t deserve the trouble of putting on a nice dress,” I said between my teeth.
She looked crestfallen for a second, before nodding and heading to the open window. Jumping on the edge, she looked back at me. “Can’t say I haven’t tried doing my job.” And with that, she spread her wings and dove down in an effortless glide.