“Let me go,” I panted, struggling. “Please. Let me go!”
He lifted me first, unhooking my foot where it was still tangled between the cushion and the arm of the chair, and in that moment of holding, that moment of delay, my panic doubled.
“Let me go!” I shrieked.
He set me down, and I bolted, pressing myself against a bookcase, gasping for breath.
He was apologizing, had been from the start, and the madness of it washed over me. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d saved me from a fall. But I turned my face into a bookshelf and cried anyway.
Because I couldn’t escape his arms unless he let me.
Because I was not an undefeated pirate queen at all, just a broken beauty.
“Beauty, I’m sorry.” His voice was ragged at the edges. “I’m sorry I frightened you.”
I wanted to tell him he hadn’t, but he had. I wanted to say it didn’t matter, but it did.
Mostly I wanted to run Stephan through with a real sword and know he was gone forever, that I would never see his gleaming eyes again or hear his voice say,My Beauty.Perhaps a sword of fairy steel could kill even his ghost, could cut the handprint from my soul and the shadow from my shoulder.
But I had no fairy sword, and that ghost was all I could feel.
It may have been the stress and worry that brought on my fever—if so, irony was a cruel master. Father took my siblings to a dinner party one evening, and I stayed home to recover, the lone member of the household.
Stephan heard I was sick.
Stephan came to the house, asked to see me.
I hadn’t thought to tell any of the staff he was unwelcome. Even if I had thought of the idea, I would have restrained myself for fear of gossip reaching my family. Since I was sick in bed, the maid brought Stephan to my room, and he dismissed her before I had a chance to catch my bearings.
Then it was just the two of us, alone in my bedroom.
And I saw the gleam in his eyes.
“Stephan, don’t,” I begged.
But he had as little ear for my refusals as ever.
Even in the best of circumstances, I couldn’t have hoped to fight him off. At least I could have tried. But I was weak and feverish. Caged in his heat.
And my world burned to ash.
“You’ll always be mine,” he whispered at the end, mouth pressed to my ear. “My Beauty.”
The marriage was only a formality now; in his eyes, he already owned me.
And in my eyes, the worst outcome was not choosing between marriage and death, although I considered both. The worst outcome was trying to imagine how I could ever look in a mirror and see Beauty again.
News of Father’s bankruptcy came the very next day, my saving grace, my mercy. My escape.
An escape I chased all the way into the arms of a beast.
I managed only one sentence through my tears: “Don’t go.”
I knew Beast would disappear if I didn’t say it, vanish into thin air and go somewhere I couldn’t follow and blame himself. I wanted to hide my sobs, but I would rather be seen than lose his company.
My fingernails dug into the bookshelf. I pressed my forehead to my knuckles and stared at the leather book spines, though I could not see much through my tears. I imagined reading folktales and poetry and poetry and folktales until Stephan’s touch faded from my skin. My breathing slowly evened, widening lengths between gasps, until it finally made way for the return of silence. My knees trembled.
“Can I help?” Beast asked, his voice small and faraway. He’d retreated to his shadowed corner.
