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

by Lucy Tempest

  Leander looked at me, and I nodded. Jessamine had dreamed of going to Faerie, and whether this would be her salvation or the last thing she did, she deserved to get the chance to fulfill that dream.

  Leander finally exhaled. “Then it’s settled. We’ll go, all four of us. We’ll leave Ivy in charge.”

  Clancy protested again that we should leave Jessamine behind, and she poked him in the chest with a wing tip. “You expect me to stay and keep your rooms clean while you’re gone?”

  “Of course not,” Clancy spluttered in chagrined indignation. “I just want you to be safe.”

  “What I want is to take control of where my life is heading, of what happens to me,” she said, taking his hand again. “Let me have this.”

  Visibly moved, he gazed up at her with suspiciously bright eyes as he squeezed her hand, placing it over his heaving chest. “I suppose you joining us would help me keep an eye on you.”

  Exhaling in relief, Jessamine grinned as she pulled him up to his feet. “Then we best get ready for our trip. I’ll go pack us all travel essentials.”

  “And I’ll go fetch the maps of Faerie and any books that can guide us there.”

  “Wait.” Leander stopped them at the door. “If the passage of time does fluctuate between courts, then we have no way of keeping track of how long we’ll be gone. What if once there, my time is no longer connected to that of everyone else’s here, and time runs out for them before we even reach the Spring Court?”

  That was a concern that had slipped past us all.

  I could see him retreating into defeated apathy, giving up the effort to straighten, hunching, arms hanging limply. “I realize I just ruined the one hope we had, but we can’t risk going in blind. We might only manage to get lost in time, literally, and cost everyone any chance of resolving the curse during our remaining time here.”

  No! This couldn’t be it. There had to be something we could do, rather than leave it up to the whims of time or magic, or to a specific king of love that I might never feel.

  Suddenly, in the darkest depths of my thoughts, an idea sparked, tiny and tenuous yet lighting up the gloom.

  I reached up a trembling hand to his face, sought his despondent eyes, determined to see them full of the rare ease and humor I’d sparked within them again. “I think I might have a solution for our problem.”

  Chapter Thirty

  I looked down at the city from its highest point, taking in our immediate empty surroundings, and the raucous crowds in the distance.

  Believing the Beast was defeated, the people of Rosemead had gathered into the biggest town square to hold their triumphant parade, full of food stalls, dancing rings and singing stages.

  Leander had said it would occupy them all in one place, making it possible for us to leave the castle. He also thought anyone who wandered off would have had enough mead to dull their senses. His and the others’ disguises should suffice for a quick, drunken glimpse from afar.

  Now we headed for the woods, escorted by Robin and Will Scarlet. They’d decided our venture was their best bet to find the kidnapped Marianne, too. The Quill brothers had stayed behind to keep an eye on the castle. Sir Dale had been tasked with keeping track of our absence, and given letters by both Leander and Clancy to deliver to their families if we didn’t succeed.

  Clancy led our procession with Jessamine who held up a lantern for him as he read the map for directions to Nexia, our layover to the Summer Court, where I hoped to find Ada. Our closest shortcut to the island was the fairy path in the woods. It was risky, considering what lived around the path. But the other option, crossing into Armorican territory during a war was as dangerous, with the added disadvantage of wasting days traveling by land and sea. And this time, we were ready for whatever we’d find in there, and armed.

  But what had made it possible for us to take the trip in the first place was what I now held in my hand. One of the enchanted roses.

  That had been my idea, to take one with us to tell the passage of time, as its lifespan marked one month in the Folkshore. Leander had dismissed the idea at first, fearing it would die rapidly like the one my father had plucked, or worse, cause the remaining two roses to die right along. But I’d suggested that if he were the one to pluck it, as his own life was tied to it, it would live out its natural span. Once in Faerie, if time did pass slower there, we hoped a month would be enough time to get everything done.

  After much deliberation and hesitation, Leander had plucked the rose.

  So far, it appeared my rationalization held true. The blue rose now hovered in the glass jar, emitting a faint glow that grew brighter as dusk settled around us. I’d been checking on it in my bag every minute and it still showed no signs of wilting.

  Forcing myself to close the bag and think of something else apart from obsessively checking the rose, my mind turned back to Amadeus & Gratia. I’d finished the book last night.

  To my relief, Gratia didn’t die as I’d dreaded. Instead, after she’d tricked the goddess Aglaea into showing herself, she’d struck a deal with her to perform tasks to prove herself worthy of Amadeus. Each test the wrathful goddess gave her was grueling and designed to rid her of the girl. But Gratia passed each, through sheer ingenuity and determination. Outraged, Aglaea broke their deal, smiting Gratia for not only defying her but also for winning.

  But instead of ending her problem, killing her only backfired, causing Amadeus to find the strength to escape his shackles and attack her. During the fight, Orcus, a skeletal antlered god rose from the underworld and dragged Aglaea bodily down to the hell-pit of Erevor to serve punishment for breaking an oath and killing the girl.

  Amadeus cried over Gratia’s body, declaring to all the gods that he would bind himself to her and rot along with her. Moved by his undying loyalty to Gratia, the gods took mercy on them both and brought her back to life, no-longer a battered, burnt husk, but a minor goddess he could take up to the heavens with him. In time, Gratia took over his mother’s place as goddess of love and beauty.

  We were now passing by another goddess’s statue as we approached the woods.

  Rosmerta was looming over us when Leander suddenly said, “If it weren’t for your bizarre ideas Miss Fairborn, we wouldn’t be here.”

  I snapped my head up to him. He was huddling over me protectively, disguised as best as we could get him in case we stumbled on anyone. “A bizarre idea is better than no idea.”

  “Normally, I’d say that’s debatable, but not when it comes to you. You continue to do the unthinkable.”

  At detecting the smile permeating his voice, I relaxed. “Like what?”

  “Like saving us all by managing to reason with that most unreasonable hunter who’s made it his life’s ambition to kill me.” I waved his statement away as I opened the bag. I couldn’t resist not checking again. He peered down at the rose through the glass and its glow played over his sobering face. “I never got to thank you. For everything. For coming back when I got injured, for leaving your father behind so you could help us, for offering your very life for mine by putting yourself between me and a crazed man. If it weren’t for you, it would have been a gruesome ending for us all.”

  No response formed in my mind. I didn’t view my actions with the significance and nobility he ascribed to them.

  Suddenly, a recollection pricked behind my eyes, making me glare up at him. “Mentioning that, I never got to scold you for lying there and intending to let Castor kill you. Why did you do that?”

  He tore his gaze away from mine, was silent for moments before he exhaled. “I hoped if I died, the curse would break. And that once it did, the hunters would spare the others.”

  I’d already suspected he’d let Castor overpower him on purpose, but had thought he’d just given up, no longer wanted to fight. But to discover he’d done it in hope of saving the others…

  His quietly intense words interrupted my seething thoughts. “I now know it was wrong not to fight to my last breath for all our
lives. So I have you to thank for being alive, for having another chance to save us all.”

  I blinked back tears. “The best thanks would have been all of you turning back into humans. I don’t understand why everything I did wasn’t enough for that fairy queen.”

  “Maybe she didn’t consider that love.”

  “Then what is?” I hissed in frustration.

  “I wish I knew.” He stared down at me, his eyes brimming with emotions I couldn’t fathom, but that made the whole world spin around me. “If it depended on feelings from my end, we would have been free already.”

  A flush crept up my neck, burning my face. My heart buzzed inside me like a hummingbird. I again couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  What did one say when someone basically said they loved you? Especially when it was the last thing you could have expected?

  All through, I’d only been thinking of my feelings, and how they would impact his and everyone else’s fates. I hadn’t even considered it was possible for him, in his situation, to feel anything for me.

  But if he did love me, what was I supposed to say? Thanks? And what was I supposed to feel? Flattered? Shocked? Pitying? Delighted?

  “Conflicted” won out over all other emotions.

  As if realizing what he’d said and regretting it, he attempted to straighten his back and avoided my eyes as we walked on.

  Still speechless, I busied myself with adjusting the padding around the rose jar. We’d packed everything we could, food, water, first-aid, clothes, and the required reading for our destination. I’d taken Færie Flora & Fauna, in case we needed to sample the local fruits or fungi.

  We entered the woods, and soon found ourselves on the fairy path, bordered by lines of those blue, glowing mushrooms. I’d hoped that Leander and Robin had killed all of the redcaps, but they’d assured me there’d be more of them. I bated my breath, ready for them to pop out.

  But they didn’t.

  Robin had his bow out, arrow drawn, Will had his throwing knives, and I had a hunting blade left behind after yesterday’s attack, with etchings of vines and leaves on the handle. Leander had his brute strength and claws, and Clancy and Jessamine had their own beastly defenses.

  We remained on alert as we continued along the path, watching the mushrooms’ glow intensifying as the remnants of the day fell beyond the trees, and the leaves above cast inky shadows. Vapor clouds began to form between the trunks, thickening into fog that completed the eerie atmosphere.

  Where could these creatures have gone? Did they just pop out at deep night? Were we due for a belated ambush once all traces of dusk had vanished into darkness?

  Deeper and deeper into the woods we went, until the landscape around us started changing with an undulating shimmer, like sunlight on rippling water, shifting our surroundings in a dizzying yet smooth transition.

  The woodland territory changed into the cold, windy one of an open field overlooking a seashore. Tall, greenish-blue grass covered the land, dotted with purplish weeds and fist-sized dandelions pulsating with a warm, golden glow. Large, antlered rabbits hopped in the distance, chasing giant blue moths, all to the tune of the crashing waves beneath a cloudy, twilit sky.

  We had arrived in Nexia!

  After a few miles’ walk, we arrived at the threshold of a town. It bore a combination of Rosemead’s beautiful architecture along with stunning fairy influences; abstract, colorful wall paintings, intricately carved greenwood doors and golden carriages pulled by white stags.

  It was so beautiful and peculiar, but not yet overwhelming in its difference as Faerie itself ought to be.

  “Now that we’re here,” said Clancy, folding the map back into its book. “Should we ask for directions?”

  “Maybe another fairy path will show up to guide us there?” Jessamine said hopefully.

  Robin put his weapons back in his quiver. “I’d rather the second option. Interacting with the natives is a bad idea.”

  I trudged to his side though the improbable grass, half swallowed up by it. “Why’s that?”

  Robin pulled his green hood further over his eyes and did the same with Will’s red cloak. “Last I heard, they wanted no part of the mainland, since both Arbore and Armorica kept trying to drag them into the war. Let’s not draw attention to ourselves.”

  Leander muttered under his breath so only I heard him. “Who’s not going to stop and gawk at the traveling pack of two armed men, their monsters and pixie?”

  Before, the comparisons to gnomes and pixies had warranted nothing more than a roll of my eyes. But ever since I’d found my name in that book, they had become scary possibilities.

  And I might get my answer here. If the fairy denizens of Nexia didn’t recognize me as one of them, then that theory could be laid to rest.

  Robin took the lead with Will behind him, who was discussing with Clancy the possibility of finding his sister Marianne, along with my family. Leander seemed both fascinated and unsettled by the place, while Jessamine’s wings twitched ahead of me, no doubt aching to spread and fly over the fields as she’d said she longed to.

  As we entered the town, the signs of life we’d glimpsed from the distance had disappeared. All doors were shut and the carriages were empty, left standing in the middle of the road, like the place had suddenly been abandoned.

  “And that’s not odd at all,” Leander mumbled. “Fairies!”

  As we walked in, we passed by a doorway of one house that resembled a wide-open mouth. Leander was closest to it, and he peeked inside. Whatever he’d seen inside made him tense up. Before I could ask, a flap of wings and a scream had me swirling around in fright.

  Jessamine had shot up into the air and was flapping about in zigzags above a section of the road that had soundlessly caved in.

  Stumbling away from the edge of the crater, Robin and Will stood back-to-back, dropping into fighting stances. Leander scooped me up as Clancy shouted directions for Jessamine on how and where to land. We all kept our eyes on the ground in trepidation, expecting more areas to disappear.

  Instead, the ground started rising and dipping beneath us like waves, knocking us all off balance. While Leander and I hit the ground in one mass as he squeezed me closer, protecting me within his envelopment, Will and Robin rolled down apart from each other.

  Jessamine swooped down to push Clancy after them. “We have to get away from here!”

  “How?” I shouted, heart blocking my throat, eyes darting around the warping landscape. This place seemed bound on tossing us around.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the road, vortex after another of crackling light and wind yawned wider. Some had sinister glowing eyes like those I’d seen in the Hornswoods, others had glimpses of other locations, either the rest of Nexia or places beyond it.

  Portals! Like the one that had showed me Adelaide!

  Before I could think of rushing towards one, to look inside, the ground bucked beneath us. It catapulted us in the air, making Leander lose his grip on me, before it ducked back, like the earth had sucked in its gut. I plummeted to the ground, flapping my arms with a startled scream. Leander caught me at the last second, and we hit the slope as he broke my fall, slid down to where the rest had landed in a heap.

  “Is this some sort of trap?” Leander grunted as soon as we disentangled.

  “I’d say it’s a security system,” Robin panted. “I’ve bypassed plenty, so now I know what this one is like, I can see the pattern. I can lead us through, no problem.”

  “Circumventing stationed guards or long-jumping a moat full of crocodiles isn’t the same as whatever this is,” Will snapped. “The people here want us out of their town! This town wants us out!”

  Jessamine landed with a squeak and a stumble, slamming into Robin. “Then let’s leave and find our next stop fast!”

  “Follow me!” Robin slid down the slope leading away from the massive cavity.

  As we followed, I searched ever doorway we passed for any sign it could be our way to F
aerie. I couldn’t fathom what I saw inside, until my attention was snatched away as we approached a fountain that seemed to be folding itself in half, like a giant clam.

  It would have snapped shut over Will’s head if not for Robin. He pushed Will aside, and it slammed over his forearm instead, with a thunderclap that rumbled around us and made my joints lock up.

  Robin’s roar of pain melted my shock into horror. I was afraid it had cut off his arm when he pulled it from between its lips. It was there but clearly broken, and his hand was bright red and swollen as he held his limp forearm to his chest, heaving and groaning in agony.

  The men rushed to his side. But when Clancy tried to examine his arm, we all fell down again as the ground rose back up like a cresting wave, this time with an inhuman chorus.

  “HUMANS OUT!”

  The distorted ground rolled us down the steep slope, slamming us back at the start in a pile of limbs and cries of pain, none louder than Robin’s agonized shouts.

  Will got up first, trying to drag Robin away. “We must fall back!”

  Robin struggled. “No, we can’t!”

  “Yes, you can,” Leander insisted. “This was a stupid idea. We know nothing of this place except from the vague and clearly inaccurate books we have. We need to regroup and investigate before taking one step further. And you need to go home.”

  “No,” Robin groaned.

  “Your arm’s broken.” Leander lifted him to his feet, setting him by Will, so he could put his good arm around his shoulders and lean against him. “Unless you can shoot arrows with your teeth, you’re going home.” He looked back at me, eyes feverish with anxiety. “We all are.”

  I stopped nodding along, all thoughts of encouraging Robin to postpone his rescue of Will’s sister gone. “We can’t go back! We need to try again!”

  Leander’s agitation rose, skin pale against his messy hair and beard. “If we do, then the inhabitants will get angrier and more brutal with us. This was just a warning.”