At that, my cheeks flushed even more. I cleared my throat. The sunlight had taken on its usual farewell slant, and he would soon disappear, leaving me to return to my room for dinner alone.
“I’ll take my meal here,” I said abruptly. “Whether you stay or not.”
It came out more obstinate than I’d intended, but I still felt the pressure against the spine of my chair. He didn’t leave.
Without a word from me, a dinner cart zipped into the room, as easily as it always came to my sunny bedroom. There was a plate for me and a glass of fragrant wine, but nothing for him. My ears burned.
“Do you have your own cart?” How silly it felt to ask about dinner customs when they should have been obvious.
“No,” he said, once more not elaborating if it was by magic or choice.
I’d once assumed he would eat me. The thought seemed ridiculous now. I could not imagine the keen beast who enjoyed folktales digging claws into wild game like a common wolf. But neither could I imagine him holding a fork if he could not hold a quill.
“You doeat... don’t you?” My ears burned with double force. If only this had been a hypothetical discussion about a hypothetical talking beast, held in the safety of a schoolroom with my instructor.
“Don’t let me keep you from your meal,” he said, and I could swear the growl in his voice turned lazy at the edges, as if it had curved up in a smile.
I took it as a challenge, and as I dug into the food, I commented on every item I ate.
“These sweet potatoes are divine. Royal, I should say.”
“I have never had a roast so juicy. It must be the favorite of a prince.”
“Grapes from a king’s vineyard, surely. Ah, I forgot where I was.”
Each time I made one of my barbs, he had a ready answer for me, and with each one, I struggled to keep my face impassive. Sensitive to sweet potatoes, indeed, and no stomach for roast unless it was bone-dry.
“Beast,” I said at last, “you are teasing me.”
“Beauty,” he said, “you teased me first.”
And for a girl who didn’t believe in miracles, such a thing came suspiciously close to being one. At first, I’d looked to him for escape, then to avoid the silence. Now I had to admit his company was enjoyable in its own right. Though he might have been a voice on the breeze or an invention of my own mind for all the evidence I had of him, I still looked forward to afternoons in the library.
As if to spoil that very thought, he said, “Beauty, will you marry me?”
I didn’t drop my fork as I’d dropped the book. Instead, I clutched it all the tighter.
“Why?” I choked out, unsure what the question even meant.
I wasn’t asking why he would want to marry me—he couldn’t possibly want to.
I wasn’t even asking why he was asking—first or second time—I only wished he would stop.
Perhaps I was asking the universe at large why the question existed, and why I could not escape it no matter how far I ran, not even to an enchanted castle buried in the middle of an impenetrable forest, a castle I couldn’t leave for fear of the outside world.
If I began to fear the inside world as well, I would have nowhere left to go.
In the silence, my chest ached, and in my hand, the fork turned its tines toward me, everything pointed, everything exposed. If I said no, would he keep asking forever? Stephan hadn’t. He’d asked three times, and then—
And then—
“I’ll go,” Beast said. “I’m sorry.”
I thought of the woodcutter and his false regret. If the beast was sorry for asking, he wouldn’t ask, certainly not twice.
I turned, ensuring the room was empty. Then in the fading light, I tucked myself deeper into the red armchair, pressing into its cushions, trying to dig myself a grave but finding no shovel to aid me.
Stephan’s second proposal had come a fortnight after the first. He’d summoned me to the baron’s estate alone, my cheeks turning pink as the servants gossiped about the cause. Nevertheless, I went, because it was Stephan, and if he called for me, it must be important. I thought perhaps his uncle had taken ill. Perhaps Stephan himself was ill. My stomach churned to think it.
