A Curse of Thorns

by Nicole Mainardi

  Bastian looked like he was trying to understand, but then he turned and ran off, giggling again. The old king sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck as he stood again. He looked back at the roses, eying them with fruitless hope.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow, my love,” he said quietly into the emptiness. Then he left.

  The scene before me shifted, turning my stomach again.

  The old king was back, tending to his wife’s plants. Bastian was there too, looking every bit like the brooding youth I’d imagined him to be. He sat on top of the table, muddy boots on the bench seat, wrinkled papers in his hands.

  “But Markus says that the best thing we can do is strike now, before the Regime has a chance to beat us to it.”

  The old king shook his head, still not looking at his son. “I’m not going to attack a friendly nation just so the Regime can’t have it.”

  Bastian’s eyes flashed, and he jumped down from the table.

  “You’re going to get us all killed, father. Everyone thinks so.” He stomped over to where his father was cupping a rose that had just started to bloom. “The Regime is getting closer and closer to Briar, and all you do all day is sit in this greenhouse, being miserable. Mother is dead”—the old king flinched; so did I—“and you’re going to lose my kingdom too if you don’t do something about this.”

  The old king turned to his son, rubbing at the purple smudges beneath his eyes as he said, “I won’t do it, Bastian My advisors do just that: they advise me. It is my choice whether or not to heed their advice, and I am choosing to go against their wishes and avoid an all-out war. Can’t you understand what that would mean?”

  Bastian sneered. “We’ll lose everything if the Regime comes here. They’ll kill you once they take over Briar, probably me too. Can’t you understand what that would mean?”

  The old king remained stoic at his son throwing his own words back at him venomously. “This is not up for discussion, Bastian. When you are king, you can do as you wish. But I am still the leader of Briar, and I will not put my people through a war.”

  “They told me you wouldn’t understand,” Bastian muttered, then stormed out, the doors quaking as he slammed them shut.

  The old king, who had been standing tall, collapsed to the floor, terrible sobs wrenching themselves from his chest. My heart ached for him—he knew his son was being poisoned, was becoming something awful. And yet he did nothing about it.

  The image changed once more, the glass taking on a hazy look, the doors pushed wide open. In the threshold was Bastian, dressed in military garb. He looked out into the greenhouse with cold, unfeeling eyes before he bowed his head and left, shutting the doors softly.

  When they opened again, the figure who stumbled through them was much larger: the Beast. His hooded cloak still hid his features from me, but I knew it was him. With a large paw, he reached for a trowel that sat on the table, collecting dust. Gripping it in his hand, he crushed the wood of the handle and twisted the metal, roaring as he threw it to the ground. He moved violently towards the roses, falling to his knees in the flowerbeds and yanking at the roots. The plants came out easily and he threw them aside before moving to the next one. I gasped at his anger as he roared again.

  When he’d ravaged half the wall of roses, he paused, chest heaving, before falling to the ground in loud, painful sobs, clutching at his heart. I leaned towards him without thinking, my hands clutching at the bed sheets when the vision swayed.

  The Bastian I’d seen with his father wouldn’t have shed a single tear, much less break down completely. But the Beast—the Beast had been broken. Broken by his past, his present, a hopeless future, and guilt tore at my heart.

  Again, the scene changed before me. The roses he’d taken out were still gone, but in their place were smaller rose plants. The Beast tended to them, snipping the dead leaves as his father had.

  He turned up towards the sun high in the sky above him, and said so quietly I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right, “I miss you. I should’ve told you that I loved you instead of fighting with you.” He looked back down, face still hidden. “I’m sorry father. I’ll be a better man, for you. I promise.”

  Then, just as quickly as the visions had come on, they disappeared, and I was once again seeing my room at the castle.

  It was completely dark now. My heart was beating so fast in my chest, I thought it might explode. I looked down at my shaking hands, wondering at what I’d just seen. At least Sophie didn’t poison me, I thought, but it was of little comfort. I don’t know how she’d done it—maybe it was the magic rose petals from the greenhouse that had been in my tea—but now, I didn’t know what to think.

  I breathed out deeply and sat up, watching as the fireplace lit itself the moment I’d looked at it. What I’d just witnessed didn’t change anything, I decided, and I couldn’t waste any more time. Bastian’s past—his curse, his suffering—didn’t change the fact that I’d made a deal with Thomas. The longer my sisters stayed under Thomas’ thumb, the more likely he’d be to break our deal and haul them both off to the Brothel anyway. And father would let them go, likely finding a way to strike a bargain with Thomas that might sound a lot like forfeiting their lives for his.

  It was time to find the Beast’s ring, and get the hell out of here.

  I crawled out of bed, finding that I was a little unsteady, and crept across the cold floor, pressing my ear to the door. Not a sound. Forgoing any shoes to soften my footfalls, I slowly turned the filigreed handle that had become so familiar to me and opened the door to the corridor. The dim torches were still lit there, so I kept close to the wall.

  The castle was all the more eerie at night. During the day, there were at least the sounds of the forest floating in through the dusty window panes. Now, it was too quiet—I felt like something might jump out at me at any moment. I was sure there were many things I still didn’t know about this place, and I regretted cutting Sophie’s tour of the castle so short.

  When I got to the dining hall, I quickly crossed the cold stone floor to where I’d tried to go down the other morning, where the Beast had stormed off the night we’d eaten dinner together. That felt like it had happened weeks ago instead of only a few nights—time passed so strangely here.

  Crossing the threshold of the Beast’s corridor, I was almost expecting Sophie to stop me again. But there was no one there.

  No torches lined the walls in this part of the castle and the blackness stretched out before me. I reached out a hand and kept to the wall, the other reaching out blindly in front of me. My pulse quickened at the idea of getting caught, first by Sophie, and second—and undeniably the worse of the two—by the Beast. There was no way of knowing what he might do to me if he found me here. I could practically feel his fury at my invading his privacy.

  But I couldn’t just wait around to gain the Beast’s trust when he’d left almost the exact moment I’d arrived here. He’d given me no other choice.

  Finally, my outstretched hand fumbled against something—a door. It was cold and metal beneath my touch, and I tried to ignore my shaking fingers. I felt around for the handle and turned it carefully once I had a firm grip on it. To my surprise, the door swung open without a sound. The torches embedded into the gray stone sputtered to life, and I squinted against the light as I took in the Beast’s chambers.

  The first thing I noticed was the scent, though it shouldn’t have surprised me: muted pine and a deeper musk, like that of an animal, hit my senses.

  The room was larger than mine, but much simpler than I imagined, considering who he was—or, at least who he’d been. I wondered if the room I’d been in earlier, with all the cluttered furniture and thrown-away things, had been the Beast’s chambers when he’d still been human. Even with all the chaos, it had still felt more regal than this room.

  Here, there was no carpet, only stone, and my feet froze from it as I stood in place. The Beast’s unassuming bed laid off to the right of the door, and while the wrinkled sheets lo
oked silk, it was the only luxurious thing about it. There was a closed door across from me, and an old wooden desk pushed up against the wall opposite the bed, piled high with crumpled papers and yellowed books. They looked pre-Regime and I stepped towards them.

  But before I could reach for one, the painting above them caught my eye. It was one of baby Bastian and his parents—even as an infant, he bore an uncanny resemblance to both his mother and father. The king and queen were both gazing at their son lovingly while Bastian tugged on his father’s trimmed russet beard and gripped his mother’s dainty outstretched hand, smiling.

  Something pulled at me heart as I realized that this must’ve been painted just before the queen died, but the painter understandably hadn’t captured her as sickly as she’d been in real life. Tears stung like needles behind my eyes and my throat closed as I stared at them. God, the loneliness; the utter loneliness Bastian must’ve endured, not just from losing his mother before even getting to know her, but a father that had been lost that day as well.

  I thought about how distracted the king had been in the visions I’d just seen, and I knew that the cruel king had not been shaped at all by his father, but instead by the so-called advisors that had never had the kingdom’s best interest at heart. Cruel men who had only wanted the power for themselves, and had been willing to corrupt a young prince to do it.

  I touched the face of the young Bastian, biting my lip to abate the ache I felt for the Beast—when I heard a low growl.

  I spun around, my hand still poised as if it were going to touch the painted version of Bastian, and faced what that child had become: the Beast, in full form.

  His normally slumped shoulders were slung back so that he was at his true height, and his sharp fangs were bared, blue eyes ablaze with rage. I saw that he didn’t have his hood covering him up this time and his entire face was exposed to me. Heart in my throat, my stomach dropped and my limbs trembled uncontrollably. In my foulest nightmares, I could’ve never imagined anything like this.

  Thick scars, both silver and pink, marred his face and neck, and what wasn’t scarred was grown over with thick fur: a dark blond color, matted with sweat and what looked like blood. His long, sharp teeth were bared at me, and the nostrils of his small snout-like nose were flared in anger—he reminded me of the forest wolves. I took a step back and my spine hit the desk.

  Trapped.

  Stupid, stupid Belle; how could you have been senseless enough to come here?

  “Leave,” he breathed out in barely-contained rage.

  I told my muscles to move, but terror had gripped me, and they wouldn’t obey. Even my lungs had frozen up.

  “NOW!” he growled, taking a large step towards me—and I remembered that I had legs. I pushed myself off the desk and hurried past him out the door as best as my broken leg would allow. I didn’t stop at the hallway that led to my room, moving past the dining table and down another corridor that was lit but unfamiliar.

  My leg moaned in pain, but I pushed myself to go faster as I realized something: I can’t do this anymore. I had to find a way out.

  Not only had I just broken any trust that I may’ve built up with the Beast, but I’d been blind to how much danger I’d been in by staying here. All this time, I’d been risking my life just thinking that I could get the ring from him. I’d been one swipe of his claws away from being gutted just now.

  I couldn’t believe I’d thought that I could appeal to his human side—there was none of it left. What I’d just seen had been only the Beast, and I’d angered it.

  My heart threatened to pound out of my chest as I hurried recklessly through the deserted castle. Every corner I turned brought me to another stretch of corridor that I didn’t recognize, with no doors to hide behind. I began to sob at the endlessness of it. What if I never got out of here? What if the Beast caught up with me? My sisters would never know what had become of me, thinking I had abandoned them as they were carted off to the brothel.

  Tears entirely obscured my vision now, and my bare feet tripped on a loose stone. I pitched forward, scraping my hands and knees as I landed hard on them, pain shooting up my leg. I thought about getting up, but I didn’t have the strength, knowing that no amount of running would keep the Beast from catching up with me.

  Then the sobs released.

  I pulled myself up against the wall, tucking my knees up to my forehead, and cried like I never had in my entire life. Emily had always called me the bravest one of the three of us, the one that never cried and never backed down from a challenge. This place had changed me, but I couldn’t remember when it had happened. Or maybe I’d always been like this.

  A coward. A thief. A failure.

  After some time, when my eyes finally dried but were puffy and strained in their sockets, I heard quickened footsteps. I braced myself to get up and run, but my hands were still bloody and they slipped on the stone, stinging like the weight of a thousand barbs. I accepted my fate, disgusted with myself by the surrender, but knowing I couldn’t outrun what I’d done.

  When I looked up, though, I saw that it was Sophie, not the Beast.

  Not the Beast.

  I nearly choked on another sob as I looked up at her.

  “Oh, my dear,” she said, her eyes flitting over me, landing first on my puffy eyes and tear-stained face, and then my bloody hands. She sighed. “Let’s get you fixed up.”

  She picked me up from the floor with that great strength of hers and supported a good amount of my weight as we made our way back up the corridor. I shouldn’t have let her help me; I knew she was loyal to the Beast. She could be bringing me to him right now so that he could kill me, like I knew he wanted to.

  But my hands stung from the scrapes, and there was no way I could make it in the Black Forest with injured hands. The wolves would smell the blood on me before the castle was even out of sight. My only choice was to stay with Sophie. With the Beast.

  We passed back through the dining hall and I accepted my fate, hoping only that it would be a swift death. I felt sick to my stomach with the thought of dying. Not because I’d no longer be alive—no matter how painful it would be for me when the Beast ripped me apart—but that my sisters would face a fate far worse than death.

  But the old woman took me down a different corridor and I found myself in a room situated much like mine, except that it looked like someone actually lived there.

  Sophie’s room, I thought.

  “Sit,” she ordered, pointing at a blue velvet chair, and I did as she said. I closed my eyes as a wave of nausea hit, and felt a wet cloth being pressed against my forehead. “Hold out your hands; this will sting.”

  She used another cloth to smooth something onto my palms, and it took a moment for the pain to set in. It was only a warming sensation at first, but then I cried out as it sank into my skin. She shushed me—I bit the inside of my mouth to divert the pain. After, she pressed a cooling salve on them and I breathed out in relief, though the pain didn’t feel much different than it had when I’d injured them. As she began wrapping them in gauze, I finally opened my eyes and saw that chunks of skin were missing from my hands. But at least the bleeding had stopped.

  I looked up at Sophie, her face pinched in concentration. She was braver than I, and much more forgiving, and I couldn’t help admiring her for it.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  She snorted. “That was stupid, my dear. I told you not to go down that corridor.”

  “I didn’t know—I thought he was gone—I—” I took a shaky breath and mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

  She looked up at me and I noticed that she was done wrapping my hands in the gauze. “It’s not me you should be apologizing to. He has a temper, I’ll give you that, but he’s had a hard life and he deserves as much privacy as you or I.”

  Her gaze turned fiery and her nostrils flared. “Just because he’s a beast, doesn’t mean that he has a heart that can’t be broken.”

  Chapter 15

  Straight
to Her Heart

  BELLE

  I didn’t realize that Sophie had brought me back to my room and put me into bed until I woke to a knock on my door.

  My eyes felt like they’d crusted shut, probably from crying. But I managed to open them and squint against the morning light. Out of habit, I went to remove the covers from my body to get the door, but pain shot up from my hands and I hissed.

  The events from the night before came rushing back, and embarrassment colored my cheeks. I’d almost forgotten what had happened—what I’d done.

  “Come in,” I said finally, giving up on moving at all.

  Sophie came in, as I’d expected. “He wants to see you,” she told me.

  Her eyes looked different and I realized they were narrowed slightly. She was still angry for what had happened. I couldn’t say I blamed her.

  I nodded and went to work trying to get the sheets off of me again. Sophie watched me for a moment with flinty eyes before a grin crept onto her face and she snorted out a laugh. She walked over to my side of the bed, pulled back the covers, and helped me slide out.

  “Honestly, what are we going to do with you?” she asked, looking me over.

  Isn’t that the question of the century, I thought.

  She helped me with removing the clothes that I hadn’t thought to change out of, and dressed me in a long black skirt and thick gray sweater. My nerves jumped up ten notches as she finished brushing my hair—a gesture I appreciated more than she knew—and I realized that I was getting dressed to meet the Beast. Where he might hurt me, or try to kill me.

  As if sensing my panic, Sophie stopped brushing and leaned down in front of where I sat on the bed so that we were eye level.

  “He’s sorry, you know,” she told me, and my eyes widened in surprise. But before I could speak, she continued, “He knows he overreacted…but you know that you shouldn’t have been there in the first place. He’s not the only one to blame for what happened.” She looked down at my hands as she said the last part.