“It won’t gather itself,” I said, because I knew I had to speak first.
“Tell me honestly, Beauty, what does the monster look like?”
It wasn’t the direction of conversation I’d expected. A log slipped from my gloved fingers. The gloves were Rob’s and much too large on my hands.
“He looks ...” I hesitated, thinking of Beast’s round yellow eyes and his velvet suit. Despite myself, I smiled. There was no way to explain him to Astra. She would never understand. “He has fur.”
Fur?Beast would have said.Not technically wrong, but suppose she imagines me as a rabbit.
“Also ears,” I added, biting my lip to hold the laughter. I grabbed the dropped log and added it to the pile balancing in the crook of my left arm. “Eyes, nose, mouth. Arms and legs. You know—the expected features of a beast.”
This time, I could almost hear him laughing with me.
Astra saw no humor, and her scowl was as fierce as a beast herself. “You mock me.”
And suddenly it wasn’t Beast I thought of. It was Stephan, both of us trading jibes over Astra’s head or mimicking her stiff posture and exaggerated laugh within her view at a party.
I was wrong. Beast wouldn’t laugh. He didn’t mock others.
“I’m sorry, Astra.” I sobered. “We’re so different, sometimes it’s hard ... I don’t understand you, and I know you don’t understand me.”
“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t understand, Beauty. Your books don’t make you an expert on everything.”
It was the way it had always been—a few sentences’ conversation with Astra made me want to pull my hair out. But she was still my sister.
“Why do you want to know about Beast?”
“Never mind. I already know what I need.”
She gathered firewood with such ferocity, her stack caught up to mine as if a gust of wind had blown it into her arms all at once.
“Astra, are you ... happy here?” It was such a foolish question that my face burned at once. I’d tried to think of anything to connect us, but it would have been better to stay silent. Beast never would have been so careless with his words.
“Happy?” she spat. “No, I’m not happy here. Who could be?”
I opened my mouth, though I would probably only make things worse, but she plowed over top of me. “And don’t pretend you care when you ask only to rub it in. You came here from your castle bringing diamond dresses but still wearing rags to show us all how humble you are. How, even when surrounded by wealth, clever Beauty only cares about people and ideas. Clever Beauty’s better than the rest of us, young and carefree and loved by every man in society—and the beasts too!”
My face flooded with heat.
I couldn’t manage a sound.
Astra stalked from the shed, but I stayed, shivering in cold and rage, but ashamed too, because of the kiss Astra had seen, because of everything Astra had ever seen me do, every stupid word she’d ever heard me speak. She was a fool. But I was a fool too, and nothing I did would ever make it right.
Then I thought of Andre and Bastien, and with a deep breath, I followed her into the house.
She had already removed her cloak, and she held her hands extended to the fire.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have said and done a lot of things just to be unkind to you, and I’m sorry.”
She stared at me with such hatred that I flinched.
Then she left the room.
I kept my cloak on, and I went out to meet Rob. He finished his rounds for the moneylender in a fraction of the time with Honey, which meant he came home earlier and had more energy to help in the evenings. I met him on the road, and he dismounted, leading Honey as he listened to my story.
At the end of it, he only shrugged. “Astra is stubborn, and she won’t be reasoned with unless she wants to be. Not only that, but you can give a million apologies, and she’ll still bring the grudge back like a knife.”
“Still, I acted like a child, and I feel bad.”
