Beauty (13 page)

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, addressing them as if this were any normal ball. ‘It has been wonderful to see you all again. A
pleasure
.’ The guests laughed at that as they re-clothed themselves where necessary, and smiled while seeking out their original partners and preparing to leave. ‘We shall have another such evening soon. But for now it’s time for you to return home and continue your delights at your leisure.’

The room cleared relatively quickly, as if they were used to the parties ending abruptly, and while many came to say their goodbyes to Beauty and thank her for her hospitality, none paid any attention to the blindfolded girl who was swaying slightly in the middle of the room. Beauty held the prince back with her and when the musicians scurried out, the doors clicked shut and the three of them were alone.

‘And now for my pleasure,’ Beauty said, smiling at him, her eyes dancing with excitement. Her face was flushed and the prince thought, in that moment, he’d never seen her so aptly named.

She circled the girl, an earthy-looking buxom wench, one hand trailing around her waist and the servant gasped but didn’t speak. Was she drugged? What did Beauty want with her? The expression on the first minister’s face when he’d brought her in flashed before the prince’s mind’s eye. He’d looked like a tortured man.

‘Pretty Nell,’ Beauty said softly. ‘They’re always so pretty.’ She reached down to the silver jug on the table and refilled her goblet and then poured a second for the prince. The red wine looked thick and dark and he stared into it as she drank hers.

‘Drink,’ she said. Her eyes had hardened and the prince suddenly felt unsettled. He lifted the cup and sipped. The taste was metallic and the substance too thick to swallow easily without gagging, as if his body recognised it before his brain had time to.

‘Is this . . . blood?’ he asked, as the awful truth dawned on him.

She smiled at him and he could see where the crimson liquid clung to her teeth. ‘This is cold, but soon we’ll have warm. Fresh and warm and so full of life.’ She clung to him and pulled him close and kissed him, seeking him out with her tongue. The prince’s stomach churned.
Blood
. His princess, his Beauty, was drinking blood.
He’d
drunk blood.

Beauty broke away, breathless, and laughed, tipping her head back and then pouring the glass of blood over her, coating herself in it, the sheer material of her dress clinging to her every curve with the weight of the liquid. She dropped the empty goblet and the sound of the metal hitting the ground echoed loudly in the empty room and the serving girl – Nell, the prince reminded himself; she had a name – flinched.

Beauty stroked her face and hushed her, kissing her cheek and leaving bloody marks on her pale skin. She looked at the prince. ‘Are you ready?’ she whispered, and pulled something from a hidey hole in the side of her throne. The prince nodded, despite his need to run far from this place and vomit. He shivered as she nodded at him to drink more from his cup. Cursing his own weakness, he did. He thought it couldn’t get much worse than this. He thought she would want him to have blood-drenched sex with the poor girl before him.

It was only when he saw the knife in Beauty’s hand and she folded his own over it and they both held the cold blade to the girl’s warm neck, that he realise it was all going to get much, much worse before it got better.

Too late he remembered what the first minister had said before sending him to his room.

The Beast is coming.

T
he prince’s mind had cracked a little by the time it was done and the first minister was leaning over him, his eyes wide with anger and hissing, ‘I told you to stay in your room! I tried to ensure you would, you stupid, stupid boy.’ The prince cried after that, rocking backwards and forwards as the old man put his arm awkwardly round him and tried to pull him to his feet. His feet slipped under him on the blood and he fell back down.

He couldn’t get rid of the taste. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to get rid of the taste, or of the images that were burned into his mind. The things the Beast had done to the poor, dead girl.

‘Why?’ he whispered. ‘Why would she do that?’

Beauty and the knife. Watching as she . . . as
they
. . . and then her terrible dancing in the warm blood, smearing it over herself and him, filling wine glasses with it. Forcing him to drink. Being too weak and afraid to stop her doing any of the terrible things she did.

He groaned and, trying to preserve his sanity, he curled up in a small ball in the corner of his mind. He needed to forget. He
had
to forget.

‘Get up,’ the first minister hissed again. ‘Get back to your room. The bell will ring soon and then the castle will be busy again. You can’t be seen like this.’

‘The bell?’ the prince croaked.

‘The Beast will leave now.’ The minister forced him to his feet. ‘The blood precipitates the change. Our queen will return to herself and she can’t see you like this.’ He glanced at the blood-soaked woman who was starting to tremble. ‘She can’t see herself like this. Now go. Burn your clothes. Wash and sleep. Forget this ever happened.’

The prince didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the ridiculousness of the suggestion that this could ever be forgotten. That he could ever be normal again. As if he’d heard the prince’s thoughts spoken aloud, the first minister gripped his wrist tightly, his thin fingers digging into his skin. ‘You will forget it. Or change it in your mind. It’s all you can do.’ He glared at the prince. ‘Now go.’

This time the broken prince did not hesitate.

10

‘A deal like that is worse than a witch’s curse . . .’

I
t was early evening when the skies cleared and the bell rang out again over the city. The group hidden in the hideaway beneath the tree had slept for a while and then eaten. Petra and Toby escaped to the surface to walk in the fresh air, leaving the huntsman and Rumplestiltskin to talk.

After the fierceness of the storm damp lingered on every surface and the trees glistened green as water dripped from their branches, but although there was a light breeze it was not cold.

‘Do you think Rumplestiltskin’s story of his daughter and the witch is true?’ Petra asked as they walked. ‘Or in his fragile state of mind did he just make it up?’

‘It’s the story he’s always told,’ Toby slid his arm around her waist as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and Petra believed that it might be. ‘I think it’s true. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, no reason. No reason that matters right now, anyway. Will you change again tonight?’ Petra asked, as Toby glanced up at the sinking sun.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There’s two more nights of the full moon.’ He smiled at her. ‘But I’ve got an hour or so before it’ll come on me.’

The city sparkled ahead of them, clean and bright, and Petra stared at it, still fascinated by a sight so different from any she’d experienced before. ‘It’s very beautiful,’ she said quietly. ‘But it must have been so very lonely for you with only Rumplestiltskin for company.’

‘Yes, it was lonely,’ Toby said. ‘But it was good to be free. To not have to hide for several days a month and to not have to lie to people. They would have killed me, I’m sure of it, had the curse not come.’

‘I don’t understand how anyone who heard your howl could hunt you. I found it beautiful.’ Petra blushed slightly.

‘I’ll never forget the first time I heard you howl back to me. It was like seeing a light in the darkness.’ Toby said. ‘When you called to me from the castle, I knew I had to find you. And I knew when I saw the soldier with his knife at your throat that I had to save you.’ He stopped walking and looked at her. ‘I’d happily die to save you.’

She smiled at him, warmth rushing through her body. The howl beyond the forest wall had drawn her to it, and this was why. Toby leaned forward and kissed her and for a moment after his lips left hers she was breathless with the rightness of it all.

‘I thought the prince was a fool with his love for Beauty,’ she whispered. ‘Do you think this is what he feels?’ She slid her arms around Toby’s waist and rested her head on his chest as he held her. His laughter vibrated through his shirt.

‘No, you can’t blame the prince for his stupidity. He kissed her and that was his downfall. The water witches are famous for their allure. Their sisters, who live in the Eastern Seas, are called Sirens. They lure men to their deaths on the rocks because the sailors can’t resist getting closer to them. Your prince may be a fool in many ways – I can’t judge him on that – but where our queen is involved, it is hard to not love her. Her blood dictates that we do.’

He kissed her forehead and she liked the feel of his stubble against her skin. ‘This, however,’ he said. ‘This is a different kind of magic altogether.’

She didn’t need to ask what he meant. She felt it inside her. They were made for each other and were destined to be together. Was that why the wolves had come to her grandmother’s house so often? Had her longing for him been what had drawn them?

‘You should go back,’ Toby said softly. ‘I can feel it coming and I would rather change alone.’

In his last sentence she could feel the weight of shame he felt about his curse, the loneliness and dread it brought with it, and as she headed back to the oak tree she vowed that, whatever it took, she would break
that
part of the curse – he would never be lonely again.

He joined them ten minutes later, padded over to Petra, curled up beside her on the floor and rested his heavy head in her lap, one ear cocked as the huntsman and Rumplestiltskin continued to talk.

‘I won’t do it again,’ the old man said. ‘Everyone I love is dead. My child is dead. Let the city live with the Beast until we’re all dead and rotting behind the forest wall.’

‘I don’t care about your curses or your Beast,’ the huntsman countered. ‘My responsibility is towards the prince. We cut our way in through the forest, and we can get out again the same way. We don’t belong here, it will let us pass. But I need to get to the castle and force him to come with me, and do it without the first minister seeing me. Once we’ve gone you can do what you like. Hide and die in here, or destroy the spindle and free the city.’

‘I will never release them while she lives.’

‘Then you should do what you promised your friend the king you would do,’ Petra said softly. ‘Prick her finger again.’

‘And wait another hundred years alone?’ Rumplestiltskin’s voice trembled with horror at the thought. ‘A hundred years, only for someone like you to come along and ruin it again?’ He shook his head. ‘I could not. I could not. No good comes from curses.’

Petra stroked the wolf’s head and thought that Toby should have been dead for decades before she was born. ‘Sometimes it can,’ she said.

‘Just tell me how I can get to the prince without being seen,’ the huntsman said. ‘I have no loyalty to your first minister and I have no desire to see you dead. But I do have to see the prince and if you can’t give me another way in then I’ll have no choice but to walk through the castle doors, and then he’ll want to know whether I found you. If what you say about the dungeons is true then I will have no choice but to tell him.’

‘This isn’t my only hiding place,’ Rumplestiltskin said roughly, but the huntsman’s words had clearly caused him alarm. ‘But I will give you a way in. Our tunnels go everywhere.’ His untrusting eyes flashed darkly. ‘But I will go with you, to be sure you don’t betray me. And I will not bring the spindle.’

T
he network of tunnels that Rumplestiltskin had built was extraordinary, and even with his natural sense of direction and eye for remembering details of a path, the huntsman knew that he would never find his way back without the old man. They’d left Petra sleeping and the wolf had slunk out, no doubt to feed on nearby chickens or other domestic animals. He pitied the cursed man, wondering how terrible a thing it must be to spend part of your life trapped in an animal’s body with all the cravings that came with it. He made a quiet vow to himself never to cross a witch if he could avoid it.

They eventually came up into the dark castle through a fireplace in what appeared to be an empty set of apartments. Rumplestiltskin lowered the hatch back down and stretched as he straightened up.

‘How did you know it would be empty?’ the huntsman asked, his hand on the hilt of his knife.

‘These are my apartments. I doubt anyone is keen to take a traitor’s rooms just yet.’ It was the dead of night and the castle, the tension eased now that the Beast had left them for a while, slept soundly. They crept through it undisturbed. Under the prince’s door, however, a strip of light shone out.

He almost shrieked when he saw them, leaping from his bed and grabbing at an ornament to use it as a weapon. The huntsman rushed over to quieten him as Rumplestiltskin secured the door.

‘What did we do?’ the prince said, trembling. ‘We should never have woken her. We should never have touched her.’ He gripped the huntsman’s arm. ‘I can’t get rid of the
taste
of it.’