Loved by every man in society, she’d accused me. And the beasts too. She’d tried to claim Stephan and couldn’t. Now it was only the beasts left.
Once more, I remembered kissing Stephan to anger Astra.
I remembered how Beast could not help but ask his question.
How the castle drew people in.
I searched the small cottage from top to bottom, overturning two chairs in my haste. Astra was not there. Outside, a light snow had fallen, and no footprints marred it but those belonging to Father and Rob.
I ran to the edge of the forest and stood there, panting, breath fogging and fading. The dark trees looked down on me, and every shadow seemed to laugh.
Somewhere in those dark trees, there was a bright castle.
A glimmer of blue flickered before me, and then the fairy and I stood eye to eye. She smiled, but it didn’t reach those inhuman blue orbs.
“Have you a wish now?” she asked.
I had been cornered. I thought of sitting on Honey, watching the storm above the trees, hearing Beast say they came alive to keep even him out. Had anyone tried to force their way through at all? Had it all been a fairy’s trap for me?
“I can grant you safe passage,” the fairy offered. “Only say the word.”
“My father passed through once,” I choked out.
“The castle has no need of an occupant,” she said, “if it already has one.”
I saw the truth in her empty eyes.
I was not Orla Byrne, pirate queen. I was not undefeated in combat, nor did I possess any skill in it, and skill would not defeat enchantments anyway. As soon as I entered the forest, the trees would hook me with root and limb and drag me screaming into the wet earth. I would never make it.
But I could not let Astra marry Andre.
She would do it to spite me. Not for the riches and the castle—for spite.
And he would be kind to her because my beast was kind down to his soul, and that would never change.
“Have you a wish?”
“I do.” I swallowed. “But not for you.”
I ran back to the house. I traded my boots for Callista’s, lined with rabbit fur and warmer than mine. I had borrowed her cloak the day before, and I wrapped it around me again, pulling the wool hood snugly around my face.
“Beauty, what are you doing?” Callista’s voice was hysterical.
“I have to get back to him.”
“Astra freed you! Can’t you see that? She’s been miserable here. Let her at least have a castle if she’ll abide the beast who owns it.”
“He’s mine,” I snarled, selfish and possessive and uncaring.
You are selfish,he said.And so am I.
Before I’d left the castle, he’d asked me to marry him even though he’d already asked that day. That wasn’t the enchantment. That was him. I’d known, and I’d listened to fear.
But I wasn’t afraid anymore.
A feeling nudged me, and I checked the gold-trimmed chest that was still in the front room. After I’d pulled Father’s book from it, it had been empty, but now it held two sword hilts. I drew out the weapons one at a time like drawing swords from stone. Though I’d never seen the shining silver blades before, I knew at once they had previously been wooden. They belonged to two pirates who belonged together, and they were the finest fairy silver, forged in a dragon’s breath.
I borrowed one of Rob’s belts and strapped the spare sword to my waist, gripping the one I knew to be Ruiner.
