Beast of Rosemead: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast (Fairytales of Folkshore Book 4)

by Lucy Tempest

  “I just wanted to get to know everyone else here,” I said absently, still admiring the windows. From the way Rosmerta and the Horned God were positioned, I could almost see them becoming animated, see him stalking her, ready to pluck her from her fields and off to his dark lair beneath the earth.

  If my experience with a half-man, half-beast had been this tumultuous, what would it be like for a girl to be carried off by Death Himself?

  A muffled slam pulled me out of my thoughts, making me nearly tip my chair back.

  I threw my weight forwards, facing Leander in disapproval. “What was that?”

  “You weren’t listening to me,” he said gruffly.

  “I didn’t hear you to begin with.”

  He made an irritated noise, a low, internal growl like a defensive dog. “It figures that when you tell me to lower my voice you don’t hear it at all.”

  “So, it’s either you’re louder than a temple bell or you’re quieter than a mouse, there’s no in-between?”

  “Can you two please not start?” Clancy begged, pouring himself a glass of water. “Can we talk about something else? Like the change in the menu this morning?”

  Leander finally looked away, quirking an eyebrow at the food displayed. “What’s all this?”

  “Finger food, mostly, so we can dig in without making too much of a mess and sickening Clancy.” I slid the basket of muffins forwards, proud of myself. “I helped make these.”

  “Did you now?” There was something unreadable in his eyes, but slowly, the corners of his fanged mouth curled up. Rather than taking a bite of one muffin, he stuffed two whole ones in his mouth. I supposed that counted as a “bite” when you had a jaw that extendable. “Did you remember the recipe from a cookbook you found in an ancient, haunted house or whatever else you have on your weird, forgotten island?”

  “Yes, it was buried in the midpoint between our exorcism parlor and our cemetery, A Witch’s Guide to Frightful Food. An exquisite find! Full of the most inventive recipes on incorporating every bit of the human body! But since I had no children to bake into gingerbread, I had to settle for hair and toenails, so if you feel anything crunch...”

  Leander gagged, choking on his chewed up food, spraying still-dry crumbs onto his plate.

  I watched him as he pounded his chest and his eyes watered, thinking it would end in some kind of wrathful reaction. Instead, in between barking coughs, he broke out in raucous laughter.

  “You—” he wheezed, still laughing. “—had me for a second there.”

  I hadn’t expected he’d appreciate my goading humor. But he did, and the sound of his big, rumbling laughter infected Clancy, who snickered politely into his teacup, and spawned a fit of giggles I at first covered with my hand before abandoning the attempt and letting go in all–out cackles.

  Leander watched me, eyes in a squint as his chest and shoulders shook with fading laughter. He looked younger, more human now, with such a carefree expression. It loosened the tension I’d been feeling pulling on my heartstrings since I’d arrived here. In its place, a tentative warmth spread.

  “What other macabre recipes did this book have?” he asked in mock-curiosity, picking a bunch of eggs.

  “Oh, plenty your bloodthirsty, beastly self should enjoy.” I put some fruit slices in my oatmeal, mixing it up so the sugar and cinnamon aroma rose with the released steam. “The next human they sacrifice to you will suffice for all thirteen dishes.”

  “Any blood soup? I had Orestian pig’s blood soup while visiting Lower Campania. It was to die for.”

  “Yes, there are even some gelatinous desserts we can use that for, and once we’ve used up all the meat and organs, we can make a bone broth with the skeleton.”

  “I reiterate—you’re both disgusting—and ghoulish!” Though Clancy sounded appalled, the excitement dancing in his blue eyes said otherwise.

  Leander ignored him, still focused on me. “What if I acquire a taste for it? What will we do then?”

  “You can eat Castor then, like you did his father.”

  That sucked the humor from his eyes, rendering him tense. “You know I didn’t eat him.”

  I groaned inwardly. Some things you just didn’t joke about. But since I’d already put my two feet in my mouth, there was another thing I wanted an answer for. “But you killed him?”

  He said nothing, which sounded like a confirmation that created a lump in my throat, like I’d failed to swallow one of those boiled eggs.

  Clancy picked up his plate, stood up and tried to slip out of the room, but being quiet was impossible with his hooves. He muttered, “I’ll go ask Bryony if I can have fried eggs instead.”

  When the door shut, I set down my spoon, facing Leander. “So—what happened?”

  “What do you think happened?” He wasn’t being sarcastic, or cranky, he was earnest, and dare I say, anxious.

  So what did I think? I had at first thought that his beast had taken over and he’d killed the man in a fit of rage. But my view of him had changed drastically since the night I’d crushed his rose and cut short his very life. Instead of hurting me, he’d risked his life to save me. I no longer believed him capable of losing control to that extent.

  Swallowing, I vocalized my deductions. “I think Lord Woodbine was stalking you, maybe injured you, almost trapped you and you lashed out and mauled him, by accident?”

  He watched me with an intense stare, pupils dilated, irises a thin, bluish ring around them. “Not exactly.”

  “Please, tell me.”

  “What if you don’t believe me? I don’t want to erase whatever progress we’ve made, have you look at me the way you did before.”

  I reached a tentative hand, hovering it over his arm. “I have no reason to doubt you anymore. Just don’t leave out any details, unless you want me to nag you to the end of time.”

  His lips twitched. “But that would keep you around for that long.”

  “Leander!”

  He raised a hand as he pushed up, almost tipping the table then began that trapped pacing in front of me. “That day was supposed to be the day my sister would be shipped off to Cahraman to marry their crown prince, before he had the gall to ask her to compete for his hand among fifty others instead. I knew that once she left, it was unlikely I would ever see her again. I wanted to say goodbye, not with a letter, but in person.”

  “I didn’t think you two would be so…”

  “So what?”

  Attached? Affectionate? Considerate? “Close, I suppose.”

  He faced me as he turned back. “With our father always preoccupied, and our mother seeing us as already dead—‘doomed investments’ as she’d once said, to the point she’d convinced our father to have two more children to replace us in case the curses came true—and with no other relatives at court but one overgrown, destructive brat of an uncle, Fairuza and I had only each other as family. It was my job since childhood to be there for her. We were also the only ones who could understand each other’s situation, being cursed by the same vile, vicious, pointy-eared harpy of a—”

  He threw his hands down, as if shaking off water, body tight, vibe anxious. “Anyway, that day I needed to see her, hug her one last time and wish her luck in breaking her curse. But I only got so far before Amos Woodbine and his hunting party spotted me. He’d made it his mission to be the hero of Rosemead, to rid it of its resident monster that minds its own business up in its castle. His son shot me with an arrow to slow me down, and though I was in great pain, I still managed to run. They chased me towards a trap they’d set for me, as I discovered a bit later, when I barely escaped it. I stopped a couple of feet from it, to catch my breath, and Woodbine descended on me with an axe.”

  A full-body shudder had me wrapping my arms around myself, rubbing the painful goosebumps. “What happened next?”

  “I grabbed the handle at the last moment before the axe lodged in my chest. I tried to reason with him, even told him who I was. But he was so insistent on kil
ling me, he refused to listen.” A clawed hand pressed to his side, as if talking about it sparked the old pain of his injury. “He ripped out the arrow from my flesh to distract me, and once he did, he pulled the axe out of my grip so violently, he slammed the blade into his own skull.”

  I squeezed my eyes and tried to visualize anything but a man smashing his own skull.

  Argh! I just visualized it. The horrifying mental image made me nearly dunk my face into the oatmeal.

  He returned to his seat, stood stiffly beside it. “He stumbled back into his own trap and fell there, dead. I took the axe out of his face—I don’t know why, but I couldn’t bear that sight, even if he’d just tried to kill me. It was then the rest showed up, and what they saw was the man dead at my feet in the trap they’d set for me, with his head cleaved almost in two, looking like I’d brutally mauled him. Knowing it was pointless to try to explain, and that they lost me my chance of seeing my sister one last time, I could only run back to the castle. I never left it again.”

  After a long moment of oppressive silence, I let out a shaking exhalation. “But you left it and risked being attacked again to come after me.”

  “They’d already attacked me on my own turf that night.”

  “Yes, on your own turf with your fearful ‘monsters’—which, come to think of it ought to have intimidated anyone with half a brain.”

  “From what I’ve seen, the Woodbines did split one brain amongst themselves,” he grumbled.

  I snorted a terribly inappropriate laugh, considering he’d just told me Lord Woodbine had split his own brain. I pursed my lips, quashing the gruesome humor. “Still. It was one thing to fight here, and another to do it alone out in the woods, with hunters, redcaps and who knows what else…”

  I stopped, stared up at him. What I’d accepted at face value before, suddenly made no sense now.

  I shook my head in confusion. “I’d just crushed your rose and cost you most of what remained of your life. You must have given up on me being the answer to breaking the curse at that point, so much so you told me to get out. And when I did, I ran off with your enemy. So why did you come after me?”

  His hands curled into fists only for the long nails to dig into his palms. He unfurled them with a grimace. “Because whatever you did, I knew you didn’t mean to harm me. And even if you did, I wasn’t letting you get eaten by the redcaps.”

  I shook my head, bewilderment deepening. “But when I left, you had every reason to believe I’d go back to Rosemead with Castor. How did you know I was in the woods and that there were redcaps who were about to eat me?”

  He rolled his shoulders, clearly uncomfortable telling me those details. “Unknown to me, Ivy went after you, to try to convince you to come back. It seemed they thought she was pursuing them, because she saw your group veer into the woods to escape her. She came rushing back to tell me and I came after you then, because I knew these woods have a fairy path infested by redcaps. I only hoped I wasn’t too late.” His gaze went down to his bare, hairy feet in a gloomy frown. “Not that I did you much good. It was Robin who saved us both in the end.”

  I gaped at him. Not only wasn’t he taking credit for saving me, he considered he’d failed me.

  I burst up to my feet. “You risked your life for mine, after everything I’d done! But instead of running, and letting you run after me, I foolishly stayed around, thinking I could help, costing you your escape window, until we were both overpowered. It was I who spoiled your rescue. As far as I’m concerned, you did save me. Then Robin saved me again, and you, from the consequences of my actions.”

  He stared at me, looking flabbergasted.

  He finally tore his gaze from mine, looked at his feet again, tapping a nervous rhythm on the back of his chair. “Regardless, that’s what happened that day I killed Lord Woodbine.”

  “You didn’t kill him!” I bobbed my head into his line of vision, trying to catch his gaze. “Leander. Leander, look at me. It wasn’t your fault!”

  He exhaled, more awkward than ever. “I was expecting you to say it was, that it was his right to hunt me down, that maybe I deserve to be on their wall.”

  I threw my hands up in frustration. “Why would I say any of that?”

  “Because you said I deserved this!” He motioned his hand over his entire body.

  “That was before I knew the curse would get worse then kill you. I certainly never meant you should die, not even for killing Lord Woodbine, even before I thought it was an accident, since they were hunting you. But it wasn’t even an accident. He chose to pursue you, hound you. He put killing you over his own self-preservation and ended up killing himself. It’s abundantly clear you didn’t do anything.”

  His eyebrows descended until they almost covered his eyes. “You probably don’t have the experience to judge such situations.”

  “Being fair doesn’t need experience, it only needs an open mind and all the details.”

  Neither of which I’d had until now.

  Even after pledging to help him, because he’d helped me, and because I’d worsened his curse and everyone else’s, I’d retained a degree of my earlier opinion of him.

  But now, any lingering belief in his savagery had been erased. Now I knew him to be someone who’d shouldered the burden of his curse since childhood, and now seemed to care more about his sister’s, whom he loved, and everyone else’s, whom he felt responsible for.

  It seemed that half of Leander’s curse had been having a spoiled rotten shell at odds with its caring if confused core. Now all that was needed was to wrench open the giant clam to get to the gem it had formed under pressure.

  Maybe that was where loving him as a friend came, what would be the key to undoing the curse for them all. Because that was what he needed. What he deserved.

  I tried again. “Whatever you are, Leander, you’re not a killer. And whatever you did, you don’t deserve that extreme punishment.”

  Still avoiding my gaze, he let out a trapped breath. “I’m thankful you think so.”

  He didn’t sound too convinced that I did. But I decided to let it go. “Now, I have another question for you.” I saw him tense up again, and quickly added, “What was that slam earlier?”

  “It was this.” He picked something off his chair and dropped it on the table, recreating the thud. “I was offering it to you, but you found the windows far more interesting.”

  I peered over the belted tome with a stiff painted cover of a badly-rendered forest with even worse-drawn monks in brown robes, set beneath an uneven, golden, black-lettered title: Apothecairie’s Gyde to Banes and Remedys.

  I unfastened the book, checking the browned, bumpy pages beneath its heavy binding, flipping through the crude drawings. There were illustrations of people with ailments from morning sickness to gangrene, and poisons, from flora like hemlock and mushrooms, to fauna like black widows and salamanders. All came with recommended cures.

  It was also written in the worst spelling I’d ever seen outside a primary education classroom. Or maybe it was just that old. Reading this would be a challenge.

  I loved it nonetheless. Back home, I’d lived in hope of finding something like this. A puzzle to occupy my constantly buzzing mind. And I was excited to begin.

  I told him so, and he seemed equally incapable of accepting my thanks as he had my rejection.

  I chuckled at his reaction, and at the abundance of y’s and archaic letters. “Where did you find this?”

  “I can show you.” As my eyes widened in expectation, excitement seeped into his as he jerked his head towards the door. “Follow me.”

  Chapter Twenty

  On our way past the entrance, we spotted Clancy and Jessamine walking ahead.

  Their bashful tiptoeing around each other was apparent even from that distance, as Clancy delicately stroked her feathers, checking her injured wing. They were so engrossed in each other they didn’t notice us coming up behind them.

  Leander slowed his pace so we wouldn�
��t overtake them as we heard Jessamine insisting, “It’s a flesh wound. The arrow hit any vital structure. I should be flying again by next week.”

  “I should hope not,” Clancy said, alarmed. “Not so soon. And then, the hunters might be lying in wait outside, and they’ll stop at nothing to kill as many of us as they can.”

  “No one can shoot an arrow from over the wall!”

  “Arrows no, but they might bring in catapults.”

  “Catapults?” she squeaked. “Where would they get those? And why would they use them now if they do get them, when we’ve been here for three years?”

  “For the same reason they dared such a direct attack,” Clancy said. “They now know it’s survivable. The Woodbine boy must have told them he survived his encounter with the Beast after all, when he came to rescue one of his fair maidens and avenge the other.”

  “I was never his,” Jessamine said urgently. “Neither was Bonnie.”

  I could feel Leander getting stiffer with each word.

  Clancy sighed. “I have a feeling it’s not the last we’ve seen of them. And as if that’s not enough trouble to look forward to, I feel myself getting worse. My body is stiffening, and my horns are getting so long I can’t lie in my bed.”

  “Can’t you bend your legs?” she asked tentatively.

  He snorted humorlessly. “Goat legs have kneeling or standing positions, no adjustments.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think I’ll have knees soon.”

  “Of course, it doesn’t! Even if it didn’t mean we’re all doomed.”

  Leander chose that moment to let them know we were behind them. “Lord Gestum, Miss Quill, if you need us we’ll be through there.”

  As if they had been burned, Clancy and Jessamine jumped apart.

  “Right behind you,” Clancy said.

  Avoiding each other’s eyes, they followed us, Clancy on Leander’s side and Jessamine on mine, piquing my frustration. If they had mutual feelings for each other, then what was the problem?

  I wanted to ask them every “what” and “why” that crossed my mind, but they seemed uncomfortable enough, with us ruining their moment.