I gripped the ring.
And I turned it three times.
Chapter
14
The cottage seemed smaller than I remembered. I could have tucked it into one corner of a ballroom in the castle and forgotten it was ever there. The single front window spilled firelight across a flower garden along the front edge of the house. Seeing the line of rose bushes, I almost turned the ring again, almost turned back. Perhaps I might have if not for Rob’s hollering voice.
“Beauty! It’s Beauty!”
I turned to find him running at me from the woodshed like Honey at a gallop, and I barely had a moment to prepare myself before he swept me right off my feet in a hug. I clung to him harder than I thought possible, all the festival memories twice as fierce and carried aloft in a flood of other forgotten things.
“Beauty, I thought you were dead! I thought—”
He was crying—Rob, who never cried except for severe injury and love.
“I’m alright,” I choked out. I’d made him worry all this time. I hadn’t even said goodbye the night I’d left. “Rob, I’m so sorry.”
After he’d finished crushing my ribs, he dragged me inside to the rest of the family. They’d heard a commotion, so Father was already at the door as we burst in, and then his eyes widened and his face paled like I was a plague victim up from my grave. He wrapped me in a hug as well, and while I was still in his arms, Callista gave a shriek and latched on too.
Had the drafty cottage always been so warm?
“Astra!” Rob called out. “Beauty’s home!”
I pulled away enough to see Astra standing between the small kitchen and the smaller front room.
“I told you she was fine,” Astra said. “Beauty is always fine.”
She did not smile, but I chose to believe she was pleased in her own way at the news.
Father drew me to a chair by the fire and bundled me in blankets. I realized it was winter for them, that in the rush of family, I hadn’t even seen the world frosted white. Callista kept patting my arms and shoulders while I tried to brush her away.
“I thought the monster ate you,” she said. “We all did.”
For a moment, I couldn’t understand what monster she referred to.
Then I thought of Beast, of his snarling smile and his awkward claws gingerly curled around a book.
“He’s not a monster,” I said.
“Foolish girl,” Father murmured, stroking my hair as he would when I was a child. “Going in my place. Foolish girl.”
“What’s happened?” Rob crouched beside me, gripping the arm of the chair while I kept my hands clasped in my lap. “Tell us everything since you left.”
There was so much to tell. It was a lifetime since I’d last been in this room with them. Since then, I’d been Orla Byrne, the pirate queen. And an explorer who found the fountain of youth. I felt that thousand years of age on my shoulders now.
“You first,” I managed.
Rob worked with a moneylender in town, helping keep books and collect payments. He and Father still managed our bit of land, and they did it well. Callista was engaged to a boy who lived a mile down the road.
Callista. Not Astra. Even as Callista announced the engagement, she looked down as if embarrassed, a flush in her cheeks. I hoped it was at least partly from happiness.
“The men here are all poor as an empty flour sack.” Astra sniffed. “It’s a sad woman who would settle.”
Rob grunted. “I’m a man here, Astra.”
“Yes, and no woman will settle for you, will she?”
