Astrid

I wake in my room. Not the one at home, but the makeshift one they built for me to lock myself in each day. My head has sunken deep into the feather pillows and the fire crackling in the hearth nearby tempts me to close my eyes again.

A silhouette moves out of the corner of my vision.

My arms move to prop myself up on my elbows. But the moment I move, a sharp pain shoots up my entire left side.

A groan escapes my lips.

“Easy,” a man’s voice interrupts the rhythm of the crackling fire. “Lie still.”

I turn my head to see my employer sitting on a chair by my bedside. Panic rises in my throat.

“Why am I back here?” I struggle to keep the fear out of my voice, though all I can think about is the strength with which he gripped me. “What did you do?”

“I did nothing. You touched the rose and nearly died running off.”

Nearly died. “Please get out,” I whimper.

“You fell off your horse. Fractured your left arm and cracked a rib, but we fixed it.”

The lack of emotion in his voice frightens me to no end. I refocus my gaze on the thin canopy above me, unable to find solace in the warmth of the fireplace any more.

“Get out. I don’t want your explanation. Get out,” I throw his prior words back at him in repetition.

He goes silent for a heartbeat. Two. Three. I close my eyes and clench my fists, readying my good arm under the blanket for a feeble attempt at self-defense.

The chair drags against the floor when he stands. My heartbeat picks up, and for a second I wonder if he can hear it, too.

And then…

Nothing. I open my eyes again.

The darkness from outside seems to cling to his slightly hunched form when he moves around the bed. I watch him warily. Though he walks as if there is a weight upon his shoulders, there is a predatory grace to his silent steps. Almost like he anticipates danger in every moment.

Before he turns the knob on my door, he hesitates.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says quietly to the door. “I apologize.”

My next caretakers surround me the moment I open my eyes again.

“Mama, she’s awake!”

“Oh! Stop surrounding her, Eli, you’ll suffocate the poor girl.”

“Astrid! Did you die?” Eli’s palms apply too much pressure on my arm. I gasp in pain.

“Eli, you stop that this instant!” Imogen yanks his hands off the bed. “Astrid, dear, how do you feel?”

It takes me a moment to organize my thoughts through the ache in my side. “Hungry,” I say.

“Just as I suspected. Here, the kitchen prepared you some honey biscuits. And have some milk, won’t you, just to settle your stomach for the night. You’ve been in bed for three days – three days – so I can only imagine how much you’ve been starving…”

“Miss Pepper, just feed her the biscuits,” someone else cuts in from my right.

Bayorn stands as a statue by my bedside. His hands are folded over each other in front of him, and his sword is kept ready in its scabbard, as if my fractured arm holds a deadly threat.

Imogen helps me to prop myself up against my pillow and places the plate of biscuits gingerly on my lap. When I take a bite, its honey core melts against the flaky pastry and onto my fingers. I almost moan in both delight and relief.

I ask what I’ve been dying to ask since I first opened my eyes: “Can somebody tell me what happened?”

“You did a naughty thing, Astrid,” Eli rests his chin on his folded arms by the edge of the bed and yawns. “You touched the rose. The Mistress told the Master that you brought it upon yourself.”

“Eli!” Imogen chastises him.

The Mistress. I can only assume he means the witch.

“What happens if I touch the rose?” I ask again.

When Imogen does not reply, I look to Bayorn. “When I was riding out, there was this...this strange sensation. As if I were being choked to death. Suffocated. And it was cold.”

He lowers his head like I’ve just told him the symptoms of a terrible disease. Beside me, Imogen sighs deeply.

“So you, too, bear it,” he says.

“Bear what?”

“The enchantment that befalls us all, this entire castle – it has also reached you.”

I tire of asking so many questions. These people conceal too much, giving answers only according to the questions my limited knowledge can conjure.

“Bayorn, please,” I implore. “Tell me everything I need to know right now.”

He exchanges a glance with Imogen. Her gaze wanders to Eli, whose eyelashes flutter heavily.

I understand immediately. “Eli, why don’t you climb under the covers and rest for a bit, hmm?”

The boy makes no protest. Silently, he climbs over my legs and over to my right side. I pull the covers open with my good arm and let him settle under them comfortably. Gently, I stroke his soft hair out of his forehead. We only wait for two minutes before his quiet snores can be heard.

“Sit, Bayorn,” I keep my voice low. “Make yourself comfortable.”

He glances to the door tentatively. Then, he walks over to sit on a chair stationed next to the bedside table.

“There is a curse upon this castle, miss. One brought about by the enchantress, Lady Selaena, when our Master the Crown Prince of Gaerin slighted her.”

I blink. I do not know why their reference to my employer as a Crown Prince should surprise me. This is a castle, after all.

“When the King banished her from the castle, the rumor goes that the Prince retired to his room that night to find it filled with roses. He picked one up, pricked his finger on a thorn and…” he stops himself. When he speaks again, he does so carefully: “The curse was brought upon us all. Those of us who were in the castle at that very moment were enchanted to be prisoners here, never able to leave the grounds.

“We didn’t find out until the first day, when the beast attacked the castle the night before and most of the people – courtiers, servants, staff – decided to flee the castle. They only got so far before one of our watchmen claimed he saw them turn to stone. On the first day, those who fled turned to stone within minutes. But as the days went by, we found we could only leave for no more than an hour.”

The memory of the statues, frozen in the midst of escape, flashes before my mind.

“The rest of us stayed and tried to protect ourselves as best as we could. At night, the beast would roam the grounds. It was not long before the numbers dwindled and now, only the three of us remain.”

There is a chill in the air despite the fire in front of the hearth. I glance over at Eli, who remains slumbering and undisturbed. How a boy could have witnessed such horrors is beyond my imagination.

“When was this?” I try to recall reading about Gaerin in the history books but fall short.

His forehead creases as he struggles with memory.

“About…a hundred and seventeen years?”

My jaw goes slack. I look between Imogen and Bayorn. They might have crinkles around their eyes, but neither of them look any older than forty.

There is, of course, the age in their eyes. I have only ever noticed it in Bayorn; never in Imogen’s smile and chatter. But now, as Bayorn recounts the tragedy of everything they’ve lost and an eternity that seems to stretch on, the shadows cast upon her features bring her fatigue to light.

“We no longer feel the time once we stopped counting,” Imogen says. She gazes at her child as she speaks. “We simply tried to help the Master overcome the curse.”

My eyebrows furrow together. “Overcome it? How?”

“By finding the true love he so desires,” they both chorus tiredly, as if they’ve practiced it a thousand times.

“He was meant to do so by the time ten years came to an end,” she says. “We tried to find a nice girl for him, someone who could see past his growing bitterness and love him for the man we know him to be.”

Clearly, they’d failed.

“And now...there is no way to undo the curse?”

“It is permanent,” Bayorn says. “He tried to pursue a cure long after a decade, but time and time again the enchantress warns us that our efforts are in vain. It never bodes well with the Master.”

They both fall silent. I mull this story over in my head, listening to the soft snores coming from Eli. He turns in his position and lets an arm loop around mine.

Imogen sniffs once before she tries for a smile.

“Anyhow, it’s a fortunate thing the Master has gotten to you in time. Goodness knows what would have happened to you if you were left there any longer, let alone over an hour.”

Over an hour. That rule now applies to me. Me. I am now cursed. And trapped within this castle for good, never to see my father or Lady Tremaine. Or Damian. Not even for a few hours.

And I have done nothing to deserve it.

“The Master has been awfully worried, Astrid. Wouldn’t leave your side while you slept the past few days.”

An inexplicable anger starts to stir in my chest. Worried. As if all this is not his fault in the first place.

“Where is he now?” I demand.

They look at each other.

“Why, it’s night-time, isn’t it?” Imogen says with a nervous chuckle.

That makes absolutely no sense. “Where is he? I want to speak to him.”

I give Imogen the plate and try to wriggle my arm free of Eli’s grip. Bayorn jumps to his feet.

“I’m afraid you cannot leave the room past midnight, miss. You know the rules.”

The harsh laughter that escapes me nearly stirs Eli. “What’s going to happen? I’ll be cursed a second time?”

“Lady Astrid, please.”

“Fine,” I harrumph in defeat. “Then tell me more. Did the curse bring about the birth of the beast, too? Why can’t you kill it?”

Bayorn shoots me a weary look, as if he is anticipating me to suddenly kick myself out of bed and run out the door. When I adjust the pillow to lie down again, he relaxes and sits on the chair again. But his hand never leaves the hilt of his sword.

“He is immortal,” he says.

Immortal. Of course. Just like everything here. How cruel could the enchantress be, to have locked innocent people in a castle at the mercy of a monster? To have allowed it to take lives.

And, I suspect, even the lives of my own townsfolk all those years ago?

“So the Prince keeps it here, then, and has somehow turned it into his pet. He’s locked it in a dungeon to keep it from escaping and causing a massacre elsewhere? Where does it go in the daytime? Does it sleep? How come we only stay indoors at night?“

Bayorn’s eyes flicker against the firelight.

“Because, Lady Astrid, during the day, the beast roams the castle as the Prince.”