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

by Lucy Tempest

“You mean that Scarlet boy who held me hostage in his town house and his hood of a friend?” He set me down, still hugging me. “You expected me to believe their cock and bull story about that monster being a hideous, hairy man?”

  “Yes! Yes, you should have, because he is. It’s just a fairy curse!”

  He abruptly let go, glanced back at the two guarding the door then to the others who’d just caught up with me.

  His pale eyes went back and forth between Sir Dale, Glenn and Jessamine before he finally shook his head, as if coming a realization. “Ah. I take it this is your missing sister.”

  Strange. He didn’t seem shocked. If anything, it was his reaction that shocked me. He didn’t even try to argue that it was impossible, just accepted it.

  Jessamine gave him an uneasy smile. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Fairborn.”

  “Oh, I bet you aren’t too happy with me,” he said, guilt creeping into his posture as he looked down at me. “Neither will you be when you know what I did.”

  I grabbed his arms. “What do you mean? What did you do?”

  He swallowed as he glanced over at the door. “I—I was so desperate to get you back in one piece, I went to the one person I knew here after my escape. We bonded over the Beast taking people we loved and about getting rid of it once and for all.” He fidgeted, conflicted, apologetic. “I promised that if he helped me save you, I’d take him on as an apprentice, leave him my shop one day and give him my blessing for your marriage.”

  Though I wanted to rave and rant, that he’d again taken unilateral major decisions about my life, it wasn’t the time. Only Leander mattered now. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  He gave a difficult nod, seeming as distressed as I was. “When our efforts to get through the monsters’ defenses didn’t go as planned, I told Castor we needed to kill the King of the Beasts first, rationalizing that the others would either all die, too, or be easy prey without him.”

  “He isn’t a beast, Dad!”

  “I know that now, but when he lead us to this chamber, Castor slipped inside before those two stopped the rest of us from entering. It seems my offer made Castor even more determined to kill him himself.”

  I swallowed a jagged lump in my throat. At least Leander wasn’t cornered in there with dozens of men bound on killing him. Leander could overpower Castor easily and…

  My father’s next words made me break out in cold sweat. “Before the doors closed, I saw Castor gaining the upper hand. He seemed to be drawing the fight out only to play with his prey. But he’d get tired of that soon and finally exact his revenge.”

  Bile flushed up my throat as every mounted kill in the Woodbine lodge flashed behind my eyes.

  Without another word or thought, I dashed away, ducking all attempts to stop me, from my father, the people in the crowd, Ivy and Clancy, and slammed myself against the doors, caring nothing for the dozen bruises it would spawn as I fell into the room.

  The first thing I saw amidst the trashed room was the massive bookcase lying sideways on the ground with all of its books scattered—and Leander was beneath it. Castor stood over him, crossbow loaded, ready to shoot him in the throat.

  There were no thoughts left in my head as I scrambled up and ran to ram into Castor. “NO!”

  Both men’s shouts clashed together, crashed in my pounding head.

  I pushed against Castor, chest barely containing the booming beat of my heart. “Castor, listen to me, you’re making a terrible mistake.”

  “A mistake? Saving you, avenging my father and Jessamine and releasing the entire city from a life of fear is a mistake?” he seethed, teeth gritted, eyes bulging. “I suspected you were bewitched last time, but now I am certain.”

  I shoved at Castor’s crossbow with all my strength. “I am not bewitched!”

  “Why didn’t you take the others and run as I told you?” Leander groaned, voice heavy with pain as he lay inertly beneath the case.

  “And leave you to die?”

  “I know what I’m doing, Miss Fairborn.”

  The way he said that! It made the realization burst in my mind and almost my head with it. He hadn’t only put himself in danger of death to save us, but he’d actually decided to let Castor kill him. That was why he’d let him overpower him, why he was lying there, not putting up a fight.

  “How many times do I have to tell you to get out?” Leander rumbled.

  “You can say whatever you want. I don’t take orders from you!”

  “It seems you do,” said Castor venomously.

  “I’m not, I’m telling you the truth, and I am living proof of it.” My arms trembled along with my voice as I pushed as hard as I could against Castor’s chest.

  “I don’t know why that monster left you alive…”

  “He’s not a monster!”

  At my protest, I could see whatever affection Castor had for me going up in flames as disgust warped his handsome features, as fury and frustration broke his voice and wet his eyes. “That thing ripped my life apart. It orphaned me, and ended my hope for a new family when it seized this castle, slaughtering everyone who came here to work. It caused dozens of people endless pain and you tell me it’s not a monster? Either you’re not in your right mind, or you’re a monster like them.”

  I fought off untimely thoughts of changelings and bonnibels and what I might really be. Of my mother’s death and the fairy that had kidnapped Adelaide, and the one that had cursed Leander and his sister, causing me and everyone else the desperation and fury Castor felt now.

  But though he believed Leander was speaking through me, manipulating us both, it was he who wasn’t in control, anguish and vengeance blinding him. And I wasn’t helping, hadn’t said anything to influence him yet. I had to calm down, try to reason with him.

  “I can explain everything to you,” I said as gently and patiently as I could. “Just please, put the weapon down and listen to me.”

  Tears falling down his twisted face, he shook his head, lifted the crossbow. “I don’t need to understand anything. I only need is to kill it.”

  Insides quivering, I put myself between the arrow and Leander. “Then you’ll need to go through me.”

  Castor’s eyes widened in shock, before they glazed over with a rabid gleam. “You’re trying to distract me until it can overpower and kill me. Maybe you’re some magical illusion and if I shoot this arrow it would only go through your image and right into its heart.”

  “I’m not budging, so if you want to get to him, you can risk being wrong and killing me!”

  “You are not risking dying for me!” Leander ripped out an anguished roar, throwing off the massive bookcase as if it weighed nothing, rising in one move and pulling me behind him.

  “No one is ever dying because of you ever again,” Castor hissed, aiming the arrow up towards Leander’s chest. “Avert your eyes, Bonnie.”

  I pushed at Leander, trying to get him to duck, but there was nothing I could do as Castor’s finger curled around the trigger.

  “Castor!”

  The shriek made Castor’s aim swerve, shooting his arrow at the wall.

  It was Jessamine, struggling against Clancy as he held her back at the door, hissing to her, “Stop! He’ll shoot you—again!”

  A haunted look gripped Castor’s face as he limply aimed his weapon at Jessamine. “It’s a trick. It has to be.”

  Jessamine broke free from Clancy, advancing into the chamber followed by her brothers, Robin and Will. “It’s not a trick, it’s really me.”

  “It is her,” Glenn assured Castor.

  Castor shook his head, looking like he was about to vomit from the sight of her. “No, no, it’s a trick, this castle, it’s cursed—it’s playing with our minds.”

  “The castle isn’t cursed,” Jessamine told him. “We are!”

  I hurried to add, “But there is a way to break the curse, and we’ve been working on that since I came here.”

  Castor still aimed at Jessamine, eyes growing more
horrified. “I’ve heard stories about fairies and ghosts who impersonate loved ones to lure in prey, but you’re neither—and you’re not doing a good job of wearing her face.”

  I stared up at him in stymied frustration. Like Jessamine had said, he was trying to force everything to fit into his simplistic black and white view of the world. He was the handsome, righteous hero who would save us all from the hideous beast who must have us under some magical compulsion. Now that nothing was going according to his accepted scenario, he could snap at any moment, and his next arrow would be in someone’s heart.

  I had to find something he would listen to. For once, I had to carefully choose my words, and think about their impact, because the wrong phrase could end with one of us or more dead.

  Dreading I’d set him off, but knowing it was a matter of moments before he did anyway, I exhaled. “If she isn’t who she says she is, how do I know who she’s supposed to be?”

  Castor blinked at me dazedly. “What does that even mean?”

  I ventured a step closer, forcing calmness into my voice. “It means that none of you mentioned the name of the girl you all lost. But I don’t only know it’s Jessamine, but that she worked in people’s homes and that you met when you were receiving battle training with her brothers from a knight called Yewan. How could I know all these things?”

  His face went lax as his tears stopped, dripping off his lashes as he stared ahead blankly, lowering his crossbow. “She told you.”

  “And if she told me, that makes the harpy before you, and everyone else here…”

  “People,” he finally rasped in answer to my prompting, his voice a horrified tremolo. “They’re all people.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “I told you that!” Leander rumbled. “As I told your father. But neither of you would listen to me!”

  Castor stumbled back, his grip on his weapon loosening, his eyes glazing over. “Jessie. Jessie.” His stunned gaze went to her wings then to her face. “I thought you were dead, I thought this thing ate you, wore your face, I thought—” The crossbow hit the floor with a hard clatter. “If you were all never slaughtered, if you are the staff of this castle, then that means you’re…” His eyes widened at Leander above me. “You’re our duke!”

  Castor spun around, chest rising and falling, his breathing labored as he glanced at each face in the room, then at the doors where the commotion of the mob continued unabated.

  Castor rounded back on Leander, sweating and shaking. “But my father—you killed him.”

  Leander’s beastly face scrunched in a grimace. I knew how guilty he felt about Woodbine’s death, feared he’d say something that would set Castor off again.

  Thankfully, he only said, “I didn’t.”

  “But I found him clawed to death!” Castor cried.

  Leander looked away, probably seeking Clancy, to tell him how to proceed.

  I nudged him. “Just tell him the truth.”

  “He won’t believe me.” I nudged him again, and he let out a heavy breath. “It was an accident.”

  Castor surged towards him with an incredulous shout. “An accident? You expect me to believe that?”

  “Would you let him finish?” I pushed Castor back, with no real strength, but he let me stop him. “Would you for once let anyone finish?”

  Glaring at both of us, Castor still clamped his mouth shut.

  After all this effort to let him say his piece, Leander said nothing more.

  I threw my hands up in frustration at both of them. “Your father came at him with an axe, and Leander stopped the blow. But in the attempt to rip the weapon back, your father ended up hitting himself with the blade.”

  Castor dropped Leander’s gaze to gape at me, growing even paler.

  “Castor, you’re a hunter,” I persisted. “You must know what claw marks look like and that your father’s head was cleaved. There must have been blood on the axe and—”

  Castor let out a keen that made his entire body spasm as he stumbled back. It was an agonized sound, an outburst fueled by a sudden slam of life-changing realizations.

  “Why didn’t anyone say anything?” he wheezed shakily. “Why didn’t you tell us who you were, and what happened here?”

  “Would you have listened?” Leander snapped. “I told your father and it made no difference whatsoever. I only wanted to be left alone, but you made this whole story about me being the Beast and started sending me tributes, and at the same time it became your obsession to hunt me.”

  Castor lowered his gaze, avoiding Leander’s and seeking mine. “That day I came to save you, you already knew the truth already. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  I gritted my teeth, feeling the hot breath of my bubbling anger whistle through them like steam. “I did. Over and over. And you called me delusional and ignored me. Whatever I said, about anything, that night and before it, you ignored me!”

  Castor looked like he was about to collapse. I could almost see consciousness fleeing his eyes as he grabbed his hair in spastic fingers, mumbling sluggishly, “All this time, everything I thought happened—and it was all a lie.”

  “More of a misunderstanding, really…”

  He cut me off by suddenly straightened up, wiping at his eyes roughly. “I put you all in danger. I wanted to save people but I nearly got so many killed. I’m an idiot.”

  “No one is contesting that,” Jessamine said, taking the words out of my mouth, gentler than I thought she could be with him.

  But actually, he deserved it. He was being more accountable and mature about this than I’d thought him capable of.

  Leander faced him. “You can stop this, Woodbine. If they listened to you once they’ll do it again, whether it’s to convince them of the truth or just to spare us. It’s not too late for you to be a hero.”

  Pained and enraged as I felt he was, Leander had his tone and words under control, sounding calm and comforting, and it had an immediate effect on Castor.

  “You said you were trying to break this curse?” Castor asked us. “How soon will you do it?”

  I rushed to answer him, hoping I sounded as confident as I totally wasn’t. “Within the next season, we hope, if not sooner.”

  “There’s no guarantee they’ll believe us,” Dale said. “They might just think what we thought of Bonnie—that we were compelled.”

  “Then make them believe you killed me.”

  Leander’s words made us all gasp in shock.

  “It’s for the best.” He set a large, gentle hand on my shoulder stopping my protest before facing Castor. “Make them believe that with the King of the Beasts dead, the rest would die right after. But say that the castle would be haunted, so no one comes back to loot it, so my people can stop living in fear. Then from now on suppress our story so it never goes beyond local legend or travel beyond our borders, causing unnecessary trouble for our—monarchs.”

  Castor appeared to be considering the suggestion. “What happens if anyone doesn’t believe me, or come back to loot the castle anyway, and find out you’re still here?”

  “It won’t make a difference, because either we are spared from the curse and would resurface in a miraculous return, saying we were lost in Faerie the whole time, or—” He stopped, reluctant to say the alternative out loud. That if the curse didn’t break, they would all die for real. “Either way, as Miss Fairborn said, we have a season. What happens after that won’t matter.”

  This was a new side of Leander I hadn’t thought I’d ever see. Though he didn’t look the part of a prince, he now embodied it. The way he held himself and spoke, issuing reasoned strategies and commands to resolve the crisis and deal with its aftermath, thinking of his people first and himself last—it was awe-inspiring.

  This was a glimpse into what he could have done for Arbore as regent in his father’s absence, if not for the curse. Instead the kingdom was now in the grip of his corrupt uncle. And should King Florent die at war, and Leander not survive the curse, the
rule of this nation would fall to his child brother, Florian, who would be solely steered by said uncle.

  But Leander was stuck here, devolving into something that inflamed his people’s superstition and aggression, when he could have been ruling them with the firmness and wisdom he’d just given Castor.

  Appearing to make up his mind, Castor nodded vigorously and rushed to the door. Robin and the Quill brothers helped him open it, saying they’d herd people away from the quarters, while instructing whichever staff members they found to play dead.

  I asked Leander and my friends to hide until everyone had left and followed them as they burst outside.

  “It’s over!” Castor booming voice drowned even the cacophony. “I killed it! All of its fellow monsters should drop dead now. No need to fight any of them anymore. We’re done here! Everyone out! Out!”

  Voices rose, relaying the news from one to the other, until I could hear victorious shouts coming from every direction.

  Rushing them along, I directed everyone I passed out of the castle while I searched every face for my father, calling for him over the stampede.

  Failing to find him, and with the last of the mob disappearing into the distance, I ran back inside. He was probably hiding, too, so no one would see him and think it strange that he wasn’t leaving with them.

  I found Leander calling for everyone to stop playing dead or emerge from hiding and gather in the main entrance for a headcount. Everyone gradually shuffled in, filling the area, checking each other’s injuries and tearfully reuniting with those they’d feared losing. Some asked him what to do now.

  “First, we search for those unaccounted for and treat injuries,” he said, booming voice for once working in his favor. “Second, we put the doors back in place. After that’s dealt with, I want you all to retire for the night.” More distressed questions overlapped, becoming a garbled mass of frantic voices. He held up his hands, silencing them. “This won’t happen again, I swear to you, on my life.”

  A long moment of absolute silence reigned. Then everyone started moving and murmuring as they shuffled away to do as their master bade them. They believed him.