Beast of Rosemead: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast (Fairytales of Folkshore Book 4)
Page 19
Leander led us beneath a massive skylight and up one of the two slopes framing an extensive hallway. After passing through many consecutive doorways, we entered a space paved with bluish-white marble leading up to a set of half-moon stairs.
I linked my arm through Jessamine’s as we climbed up. “So, what was that you two were saying about your knees?”
She ducked her head, blushing fiercely, seeming more concerned about me mentioning Clancy than the further transformation of her body. “It was a mutual concern. After the initial curse hit us, we changed slowly, but our conditions seems to be escalating lately.”
A deep chill settled over me. “Is…is this because of me?”
“No!” Her protest echoed faintly as she hopped onto each step rather than climb them like the rest of us. “It started a bit before you arrived. It was scary actually, that’s why your arrival was such a godsend, like the Fates were finally showing us some mercy.”
That awful guilt stabbed me in the pit of my stomach again.
A godsend. That’s how she saw me. That was why she’d been devastated when Leander and I had gotten off on the wrong foot, why she’d risked herself to stop me from leaving.
If only I could control how I felt for all their sakes.
But if things were getting worse for them all so quickly, after years of gradual changes, then maybe they didn’t even have three months before the curse reached its full effect. And even if the escalation had started before I’d arrived, crushing that rose could have only made things worse.
The thought made me feel sick.
“Are you feeling well?”
“I’m so sorry,” I blurted out, feeling even worse at her concern. “I hate that you’ve all been subjected to this. I want to release you all from this, but what if I can’t? What if we don’t have time?”
Her yellow eyes watched me unblinkingly. They looked a little bigger than before, her lashes uncomfortably longer, and her delicate nose was harder, pointier, taking up more space. Almost like it was making way for a beak sometime soon.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” she whispered, looking at Clancy’s and Leander’s backs. “I hate to put this pressure on you, but you truly are our last hope. But we still have some time.”
“We’re here!” Leander announced, ending our distressing conversation, pushing open a set of tall white doors, their edges decorated with a pastel design of curling vines, thorny stems and blooming blossoms.
A few steps into the room and I forgot how to breathe.
Between a ceiling the height of two of the castle floors, and a vast, ornate green-marble floor, gigantic bookcases soared. Mezzanines split their enormous sections between towering windows into levels, and spiral ladders connected them and framed their ends.
A massive, extensive library. A place out of my wildest dreams.
Books of every size and color crowded every shelf, all baring their spines to me, beckoning. And I ran to answer their siren call.
The endless variety made my head spin, the excitement getting too much to be contained in my small body. Everything was labeled by genre or subject then by alphabetical order in an ingenious system. Everything from storybooks to compendiums filled the chamber that was twenty times as big as my house. A fathomless selection of knowledge and entertainment that would take decades to go through, and that was not accounting for rereads.
I found Leander beside me, and I turned to him, wide-eyed and speechless. He was looking down at me, smiling as gently as his brutal mouth would allow.
When he met my eyes, he snapped out of it, comically serious as he pointed to the wall behind me. “The apothecary texts are that way.”
I laughed. “Is that the only section I’m allowed in?”
“If you will spend hours chasing your tail over which section to start with, then yes.”
“Is that what you do? Do you have a tail yet?”
I groaned. I really needed to think over what I said before it left my mouth.
“You recently said my hands would turn into hooves,” Clancy reminded as he stopped before a ladder, seemed to be debating whether he could climb it. “So it’s not hard to assume you’d have a tail soon. But watch that one, Miss Fairborn. He doesn’t take jokes in stride.”
Before I could say I hadn’t been joking, just being tactless, Leander said, “I’m actually beginning to.” He looked down at me with an unreadable expression in his brilliant eyes, and I for some reason felt faint for a moment. Then he sighed. “But to answer your questions, no, I don’t have a tail, and yes, I sometimes find myself chasing my proverbial one for ages.”
Relieved that I hadn’t offended him by stepping all over such a sensitive subject, if still ashamed, and confused about those strange sensations coming over me, I blinked up at him. “Why, when you have so much to choose from?”
“Well, that’s the issue. It’s like being a mouse in a cheesemaker’s shop. Which type do I nibble on first?”
That analogy made me think that should I ever be infected by his curse, I would turn into a mouse, as I was small, and evidently, a bit of a pest.
“As someone who’s sampled the whole shop, which cheese do you recommend?” I smiled, hoping to soothe the jitters in the pit of my stomach.
He still gazed down at me with this unusual quiet intensity. “Would you like me to choose for you?”
“Are you going to surprise me with another archaic tome?”
He didn’t answer for a beat, before words left him in a rush. “I was thinking more along the lines of giving you one of my favorites.”
“Oh, I’d love that!”
Surprise lit up his face. “You would?”
“Yes, I can’t wait to critique your terrible taste in reading material,” I teased, trying to get back into an easier to handle bantering mood.
“I will not be shamed for my preferences, Miss Fairborn.” He started walking away, looking over his shoulder, eyes glinting with something I hadn’t seen there before—mischief? “Regardless, I will find you a book and by all the gods in heaven, you will like it!”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’ll read it again with a keener eye!” His voice blasted through the room as he stopped before one section, startling Jessamine and echoing loudly before fading.
“I can hear you in this silence even if you whisper,” I groaned. “Use your indoor voice, please.”
“It is my voice, and we are indoors, therefore it is my indoor voice,” he tossed back.
It was intriguing how that very tone and expression had gone from terrifying to funny. Even more so when I envisioned him as the spoiled prince he used to be. I told him so.
He gazed back at me with—fondness? “You may be disrespectful, and more than a little thoughtless, but I do appreciate your honesty. It makes for stimulating conversation.”
Before, this would have warranted a huff, but now his sincerity made me smile. “And you may be loud and aggressive, but I too appreciate that you’re an open book. Those unbridled reactions could just use a little restraint.”
“Then that’s something we both need to work on.”
“You more than me.”
“No, we either share this burden or I want no part of it,” he joked.
I couldn’t resist snorting. “What do I do until you find that book then?”
He pointed where Clancy and Jessamine were doing a terrible job of pretending to be browsing a shelf while surreptitiously chatting. “There’s an array of books on flowers. Maybe one can tell us if there is such a thing as a bonnibel.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “When I find it, I will rub it in your face.”
“To do that, you’d need to reach my face first,” he teased.
I didn’t know which was worse, that I hadn’t seen that joke coming, or that I didn’t have a comeback.
Not giving me a chance to think of one, he turned away. Harrumphing, I headed over to my friends.
Clancy’s wide smile shr
ank as soon as I approached them. It seemed to tip Jessamine off as she retreated out of the library with a hurried excuse. “I will get tea right away!”
I raised an eyebrow at him, an unmistakable “Explain yourself.”
Clancy was so flustered he took the bait, spluttering a defense, “She asked me which bird I thought she resembles, so I was searching for a book to guide me to an answer.”
“You sure that was all?”
His fair skin flushed. “Yes, well, we have every right to worry about what we might soon turn into, and to learn what we can about them.”
That was a blow of misdirection. But my guilty sympathy wasn’t yielding the conversation. “You two didn’t seem upset at all, until I showed up.”
“I do enjoy talking to Miss Quill. She is a very personable young woman.”
“She’s very pretty as well,” I pointed out.
Clancy took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead, where his curls were suddenly drenched. “Objectively speaking, yes, she is.”
I elbow poked him. “You like her, admit it.”
“We’re just friendly,” he said in a rush.
Just what was the issue here? Could this be about the disparity in their social standings? Or did he think it pointless to pursue his passion for Jessamine with the curse hanging over their heads? I would have thought it should have done the opposite, making him throw all cautions and considerations to the winds.
But I’d done enough matchmaking, and though I hated seeing them torment themselves needlessly, I had to step back.
“So, what is it you’re looking for?” he asked, tucking the handkerchief away. “Perhaps an old cartography book, to investigate you lost isle?”
“I’ll hold off on the really ancient stuff for now that I’ve seen how some were written.” I waved a hand around the shelves by us. “I’m looking for a flower book actually.”
“Native or exotic?”
“I suppose native, assuming my island is similar to Arbore.”
He headed in the other direction. “I’ll help you look!”
I followed him until I stood facing a shelf, eyes roaming over book spines, some with beveled titles, some a blank mystery. There really was a daunting number.
I started sampling some and from the variety, it seemed they’d been collected from around the continent, originals or copies, handwritten or printed. There must be rarities here, too, full of one-of-a-kind information, probably most lost to my people. From the little I read, I felt it put Ericura in one century and Arbore in another.
The concept of lost knowledge dug up thoughts of my mother, my uncle Ossian and, strangely, the redcaps. I didn’t even know what my mother’s maiden name had been or anything about the circumstances of my uncle’s disappearance. I knew my father was hiding some things, possibly the whereabouts of his brother and why we never visited other Fairborns. But whatever they were, terrible truths, shameful secrets or even a silly family feud, he intended to take the knowledge to the grave.
Then there were the redcaps and their morbid rhyming, and the things they’d called me.
It must have been my size. Adelaide had jokingly compared me to gnomes that last day together, and I’d told her I’d seen shorter trees. And to think she was somewhere in Faerie now, seeing actual gnomes, sprites and sylphs and who knew what else.
I missed her terribly, and the gnawing loss was made even worse by not knowing how to start looking for her. When or if I broke the curse.
An odd noise crackled behind me. Thinking it must be Leander’s rummaging, I continued my search until my gaze snagged on a blue book.
FÆRIE FLORA & FAUNA.
I reached for it on my toes, arm stretched to its limit. The noise behind me continued, now sounding like an open window on a windy night.
I started to turn to investigate, and Clancy came over, got the book down for me. I smiled my thanks up at him and….
“WATCH OUT!”
Leander’s thundering shout had us both jumping around.
Behind us, blocking out the entrance, a hole in the air was hovering in the middle of the room. Its edges spun with light and color until an image started to form within it.
The memory surged, so clear it blinded me. That was exactly like what I’d seen back in the Hornswoods. What had sucked us in and spat us here. A magic portal!
Next heartbeat, the image inside it sharpened, and my heart almost burst in shock.
On the other side, with long, rioting hair, strange, ornate clothes and a sky-high gate behind her, Adelaide stood in a sea of sand.
Not caring how or why this was happening, I dropped the book and barreled towards her, hands desperately reaching, a scream for her ripping from my depths. “ADA!”
She ran, too, mimicking my movements, her expression, urgent, anxious, overjoyed, her mouth moving but no sound leaving it. She seemed to be screaming my name, too.
As I got closer, I saw three people behind her. One who seemed to be the fairy woman who’d kidnapped her, another younger woman who was even taller than Adelaide, and a hulk of a man in dark clothes, with everything else about him totally white.
I was almost touching her when the portal suddenly collapsed on itself, winked out of existence with a harrowing snap of wind and an eye-searing flash.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Ada!”
My scream echoed in the library long after the portal disappeared.
Nothing moved. Not even my heart, it seemed. Everything seemed to be bating its breath along with me as I stared into the nothingness where Adelaide had just been standing.
Adelaide! I’d seen her. She’d been right there. I’d almost touched her.
Suddenly everything exploded within me, my heartbeats tripping over each other as my heart seemed to try to ram out of my chest.
“D-did you see that?” I finally rasped, throat feeling gashed with my screams for her.
“I did.” Leander stopped beside me, panting, his eyes, stunned, anxious. “That was why I yelled. I thought…I don’t know—I just thought it was a threat.”
He’d seen it too. It had been real. And now I wished it hadn’t been.
It would have been better if it had been my mind playing a trick on me, fueled by my intense yearning to find her. Better than knowing she’d been within reach, right across from me, then, like a ribbon in the wind, she’d slipped through my fingers.
Gone into the unknown—again.
Clancy gently touched my shoulder, concern lacing his voice. “You don’t look so good, perhaps you should lie down.”
I shook my head frantically. “I can’t! It might open again! I need to be close enough this time to reach her—can’t risk losing her—” I couldn’t finish, refused to blink, remained fixed to the spot, everything inside me winding tighter with dreadful hope.
They talked to me. Talked at me, for what felt like ages. At some point Jessamine returned with a tea trolley, and Clancy filled her in, and told Leander off for something.
My feet began to hurt and my barely blinking eyes dried, stung, wetting themselves with a burning precursor of the desperate tears I couldn’t yet shed. She might still come back.
I started begging, and kept on begging. “Please—please do it again—come back. Ada, come back.”
But nothing happened.
“Surely if it were to happen again it would have done so by now.” Clancy again tried to nudge me away. I swayed on aching feet but didn’t budge. He sighed. “Have you seen that—that portal before, Miss Fairborn?”
“That’s what brought me here,” I choked. “I saw my friend on the other side!”
Leander bent down to face me, eyes grim. “The one that was taken by fairies?”
A sob tore from my chest. “Yes.”
He shook his head, straightening as much as was able to now. “Then you should stop waiting for it to happen again. It’s unlikely it would any time today.”
“Don’t say that! Why do you say that?”
I hated to hear it, but he wasn’t the first one to tell me that terrible concept. Robin had said the same thing about his Marianne, who’d been carried off by fairies, and about the king who’d gone there for days, returning to find centuries had passed.
The thought that she might return for me days from now, only to find my tomb instead was horrifying.
Abruptly, Leander swept me off my feet. “You need to sit.”
I didn’t struggle. Enervated by despair, I let him carry me to the seating arrangement in the center of the library. He tried to place me gently on the crimson sofa, but with his clumsy hands and my uncoordinated body, I plopped on it in an ungainly mass.
He dropped in the chair next to me, and its legs groaned under his weight. “Tell us everything you saw exactly. I couldn’t see anything inside the vortex from my vantage.”
“I saw Adelaide with three others, two women, the one who kidnapped us, and another—she was huge—with long, pale hair…” I stopped as the significance hit me. “Ada herself had long hair!”
“Is that bad?” Jessamine set a teacup before me, sounding confused.
“The last time I saw her, a couple of weeks ago, it was almost as short as a boy’s!”
“Months must have passed on her end then.” Leander exhaled heavily. “If not years.”
My heart squeezed even harder. To think she’d been lost and alone and trying to find me for that long! “I thought it was the other way around, that time was slower there?”
“There are theories it swings to and fro,” said Clancy. “Or that in some courts it’s slow, in others fast, depending on the climate, or the flow of magic.”
I let out a whimpering keen, everything inside me muffled by deepening shock.
A frown of concentration pleated Leander’s brow. “Did you see her surroundings?”
I pounced on his question. “Why? Can we find out where she is, depending on those? Do we have a map of Faerie?”