Rose and Bane: (A Dark Paranormal Beauty and the Beast Retelling)

by Brea Viragh

  Rose and Bane

  A Dark Paranormal Beauty and the Beast Retelling

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Brea Viragh

  Contents

  Rose and Bane

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Rose and Bane ©2020 Brea Viragh

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Cover Artist: Ravenborne Designs

  Vector Art: Vecteezy.com

  Rose and Bane

  A Dark Paranormal Beauty and the Beast Retelling

  A tale as old as time, but not as you remember it.

  Reila Barnes has a habit of losing herself in books, not because she loves to read—although she does love to read—but because she’s searching for a long-lost piece of herself. Things happen around her that no one can explain. People in town look at her strangely, always muttering under their breath when she passes, but no one will tell her why she is shunned. Not even her mother and young brother.

  Rejecting a marriage proposal from a handsome but cold-hearted man presents her with a startling bit of evidence to cling to: Reila is a witch.

  Not only is Reila a witch, but she is the one responsible for putting the curse on Merek, the Prince of Bellmare, condemning him to his current beast form.

  What happens when the beast needs to be saved from the beauty?

  Reila must search for a way to break the curse she cast, though Prince Merek refuses her help and cannot trust her. The best thing she can do is commit to sharing his self-imposed exile by staying with him in his solitary castle, poring over books to find a solution—all the way to a happily-ever-after.

  Will Reila find a way to break the curse? Will Prince Merek ever learn to trust Reila again? Or is the old saying “true love can conquer anything” just another fairy tale?

  Prologue

  Once upon a time, in the Halsworthy Kingdom in the European Union, there lived a handsome young prince, beloved by all those around him. Or so he thought. Although he had everything he wanted—cash, jewels, women to warm his bed—he was discontented. Spoiled and a little unkind when it came to matters of the heart.

  Until he met her.

  She entranced him with her beauty and her wit, even though he suspected a coldness in her heart.

  One night he vowed to make this beautiful woman his own. She professed she wanted no one but him, and he loved her wholeheartedly. But the prince was oblivious to the multitude of envious others coveting him for his title, his wealth, and his handsomeness. Many a plot was put into motion to separate the prince from his woman so that he might choose one of them instead. And when his beloved discovered this, when she saw what she wanted to see instead of the truth of the situation, her woman’s sadness transformed into a wildfire of rage, of pain and despair, revealing her true nature as a witch, her power ruthless and vengeful.

  The prince, aware at last of the machinations against him, attempted to apologize for his cluelessness, to make her understand, but it was too late. The curse was cast and as punishment she transformed him into a hideous monster to rival those of legend and myth. Her spell blanketing the entire castle and all who remained inside.

  Anguished, the beast exiled himself inside his domain, ashamed of what he had become. And the curse, like all major uses of magic, extracted a heavy price from the spellcaster as well.

  It also came with a possible solution.

  The prince had until his twenty-fifth birthday to find and earn the love of a woman who would love him as he was. At the stroke of midnight, if love was true, then the spell would be broken. If not, then he would be cursed to remain a monster for the rest of his life.

  Years passed, and he fell deeper and deeper into a state of utter despair, all hope lost. No woman would ever stoop so low as to love him as he was. A hideous creature. An almost mythical beast. Doomed by the spell to be hidden away forevermore.

  Yet the enchantress, robbed of her memories as the cost of casting such a forceful spell, now knew nothing of her part in his decimation.

  Now you know: The tale as old as time is a lie.

  Chapter 1

  I jerked awake, my hand clutching my throat and feeling a tightness in my chest that must surely herald a heart attack. One could only hope.

  No such luck, I thought as my heart slowed and my breathing returned to normal. A heart attack, at least, would have put me out of my misery instead of enduring another day missing a vital piece of myself.

  My memories.

  Pushing long, curling strands of reddish-brown hair out of my eyes, I turned to the window and the sun creeping its way above the horizon. Dawn once more. Soon those rays would top the trees and turn everything they kissed into gilded beauty. The same way they did every morning without fail.

  It was almost more than I could bear at this point. Groaning, I rolled onto my side.

  I lounged for a few stolen moments longer before my morning routine took me through a shower, dressing, and making my bed. Still I arrived in the kitchen before my mother woke. The woman slept like the dead and nothing could rouse her until after nine, no matter what she had to do in the way of work.

  The outline of a baby-blue sky showed through every window cut into the cottage’s thin walls and shingled roof. A hovel by many standards, with creaking floor joists and rafters that were sunken in the center like a swaybacked old nag. Comfortable to me, yet a far cry from the opulence we’d once enjoyed when my father had been alive. Opulence I barely remembered except for the few tiny crumbs we’d managed to salvage through the eviction.

  The elder Barneses kept those treasures locked away in a chest where no one could reach them, no doubt to protect my brother and me from the memories of all we’d lost.

  Funny thing, though…I didn’t remember much of anything. I didn’t remember the money, or the grand manor house, or the land comprising the estate. And when my mother, Patricia, told me stories of our past, none of it rang true for me. When I searched my brain for a recollection outside of the last five years, I found nothing but emptiness, an endless space of black with but a few bright spots of color in the shape of my family.

/>   Dressed for the day in trousers and a loose blouse that had seen better days, I settled on reading while I made breakfast, humming to myself and turning the pages with one hand. The movements were natural due to a lifetime of practice.

  Or so I guessed.

  I pushed the eggs around in a pan while the coffee maker hummed and chugged out a refreshing stream of black goodness that would be gone the moment Patricia woke. She had a terrible habit of finishing the entire pot before I had even poured myself a cup.

  But I loved her. It was just her, my brother, and I here to turn our lives around after my father died of typhus. Now, still at home at the tender age of twenty-four, I took it upon myself to take care of her.

  Patricia had gotten too old to do much in the way of work, although trying to convince her to take it easy was harder than pulling teeth out of a grizzly bear’s mouth, despite the arthritis in her knuckles. She refused to slow down, knowing we depended on her meager income from selling her paintings to keep us afloat.

  I wanted to help out but I couldn’t find a decent job. The only place in town that had been willing to hire me was the local library, and only part-time. I went in two afternoons a week to restock the shelves as long as I promised not to interact with the patrons. Even with the familiar and comforting hush of the library, it didn’t stop people in town from stopping in to stare at me. To whisper under their breath saying God knew what about me.

  And no one would tell me why.

  It really made a girl want to get out of bed in the morning.

  “I’m not worthless,” I muttered to the eggs. They didn’t respond, so I wasn’t sure if they agreed or disagreed. Either or neither or both.

  The stove’s warmth soaked into my skin, allowing me to relax and my imagination to run wild. I flipped through the book’s well-loved pages and left space for the slow-to-burn romance to lift my soul. To take me away from the dingy cottage and the sunlight trickling in through the dust-covered windows.

  That kind of pleasure and hope one could only find in a book, I knew.

  “Reila. Haven’t you read that one twenty times already?”

  Patricia’s voice cut through the reading haze over the sizzle of the eggs. I smiled. “Yes, and the odds are good I’ll read it twenty more times before I’m done with it.” I trailed my thumb down the spine. One of my favorites, and one I’d been drawn to since first seeing it on the shelf of the bookstore all those years ago.

  As if it would somehow help me find that missing piece of who I was, despite the fact nothing had helped yet. Nothing ever helped me fight back against the yawning blackness in my mind and heart. Memory loss, the village healer had confirmed, though she offered no remedy. The memories would either return on their own in due time or they wouldn’t, and I should be grateful to remember my family at all. An entire chunk of my life gone in a snap.

  And I didn’t remember the snap, either.

  “Well, watch out, or you’re going to set fire to it.” Patricia took a step forward and leaned over my shoulder, inhaling deeply. The strands of her too-long gray hair dipped low and might have caught fire if I hadn’t nudged my mother back a step. “Needs more salt,” she said.

  “How do you always do that?” I laughed and grabbed the salt shaker from the counter, twisting the top until I’d given the eggs a generous helping. “You just sniff and you know what’s missing.”

  Only when it came to food, sadly. Not when it came to reality, and certainly not when it came to her own health.

  Patricia shrugged, her bony shoulders shifting the light-green fabric of her tunic. “It’s a gift limited to breakfast food. And you’re going to need way more than a few eggs if you want to sit down and eat with us. The way you’re cooking those, there isn’t going to be enough for the three of us. Thomas is a growing boy.”

  “We’ll need to wake him up soon,” I said.

  “Let him sleep.”

  She settled at the kitchen table, relaxing, and I paused in my reading to glance over, to take in Patricia’s features. A little pale, but nothing so bad I should worry. I had to keep careful stock of the woman these days, otherwise she was prone to losing herself in her mind. It left her little time to remember to eat, remember to drink enough water, or even to sleep. When she wasn’t deep in her thoughts, she chose to throw herself into art. A no less detrimental hobby when it came to her health.

  But she seemed fine today. My shoulders relaxed inch by inch.

  I’d be lost without you.

  “This is half a dozen eggs,” I told her, pointing to the pan with my spatula. “How hungry are you?”

  “Better get the rest out. I woke up starving.”

  Starving for her meant an egg or two and then she’d complain of a full stomach. My face settled into a frown but I said nothing about it.

  “And earlier than usual, too. You normally don’t show your face for another hour. What gives?” I asked.

  “Had a nasty dream.” Patricia shook her head, her swollen and twisted fingers hidden on her lap though I could see how she fidgeted. “It woke me up and these old bones refused to settle down again. You understand, I know.”

  We’d both grown used to my nightmares. How I woke in the middle of the night screaming, but with no recollection of what tore the sounds from me. They were part of the hole inside of my head and my heart. The hole that, no matter how hard I searched for answers or who I asked for clues, nothing could seem to fill.

  “I know about those,” I agreed. “No worries, Momma, I’ll make more eggs for you. Might just throw some cream cheese in there, too, if you behave.” I sent her a wink and crossed toward the fridge. “We all know Thomas can eat his weight in eggs anyway.”

  Patricia leaned back in her chair. “Cream cheese? I don’t know what I did to deserve such indulgence.”

  Cream cheese was a luxury we didn’t often have, but I had no good reason to wait for a special occasion.

  “I must be in a good mood today,” I teased. Though it felt good to keep myself busy with the cooking. Better than worrying. Better than trying to remember my own bad dreams from last night.

  Farm-fresh eggs would have been preferred. I did well enough with the gardening, my herbs growing larger than any of the neighbors’ under my gentle hand. But chickens… I had never been able to get the hang of farm animals. The best I could manage was a horse that seemed happy enough in the little makeshift stable toward the rear of our property.

  I made do with the weekly farmer’s market and let the chickens be someone else’s problem. A farmer I would never be.

  Balancing several more eggs in my hand, I brought the rest of the basket from the fridge to the countertop, studying the pan. “How many more are you thinking? We have to save some for dinner if you’re going to make that quiche you promised us.”

  “Another four should do it, I’d think,” Patricia stated, crossing one leg over the other. Her hands trembled when they reached to massage an apparent ache across her ankle and lower leg. But she didn’t complain, so I assumed it was a trifling nuisance.

  I allowed myself a moment to bask in the scene, the unique blend of scents in the air and the bitter aroma of dark coffee. Did I like to cook? I guess so, but even more I enjoyed seeing Patricia and Thomas happy. Even when they laughed at me when I came across the blank spots in my memory.

  “I was thinking,” Patricia began, pushing herself up and reaching out for the pot of coffee before pouring a large cup of the stuff, “we should try to get you out of the house this week.”

  “What do you mean?” My lips pursed. “I’m always out of the house.”

  “You know what I mean. Out of the house and out of a book. Maybe get you in touch with some people your own age. It’s past time for you to have a social life, Reila.” She waggled her eyebrows for emphasis.

  “Yeah, well, people my own age are overrated.” The grumble I’d meant to keep to myself, but it came out anyway. I might not remember the townspeople well, apart from the last few years,
but they sure remembered me. Remembered and laughed and kept their secrets close to the vest.

  I’d turned the heat up too high in the pan. The eggs I already had in there suddenly crackled and burned. Sizzling away to nothing. Like the hole inside of me. If I could just—

  “Reila!”

  Patricia’s exclamation resonated through the room just behind a fierce crack. When I looked down, the eggs in my hand had exploded. Along with the rest of the ones in the basket. Broken shells littered the countertop and floor, yolks and whites raining down.

  I stared down at the gooey mess oozing between my fingertips, at a loss for words. My stomach sank. “I don’t understand…”

  Setting her coffee cup aside, my mother slowly crossed to me, grabbed a towel, and held it under my hand to take the shells. “I’m sorry,” she said lightly. “I should have warned you that I dropped the basket yesterday. Some of them must have taken more damage than I thought. That’s why they broke so easily.”

  She laughed it off like it was nothing. As though there was no need to worry over a few broken eggs. Without her saying more, I knew. It hadn’t been an accident.

  Something had surged inside of me. A whip of anger, frustration, manifesting into physical force. But that kind of thing was impossible. Wasn’t it?

  “I would have noticed if they were cracked,” I murmured, more to myself than to her. “Maybe I squeezed them too hard…”