by Lucy Tempest
He blushed, almost as much as she had yesterday. “I will.”
So, her feelings weren’t one-sided. It was perplexing how their affection, if not love, was mutual, but neither of them did anything about it. It was frustrating to see them stuck in the same place and condition and not try to act on their feelings.
A loud crack made me drop my butter knife.
His plate had split into three big shards, spilling grease and egg-yolk onto the tablecloth.
Leander dropped his cutlery and put his hand over his eyes. “Ivy is going to strangle me. It’s the second time this happens.”
This giant prince, afraid of upsetting his housekeeper, rather than the other way around, was quite baffling. And funny.
“Third,” Clancy corrected, holding back a chuckle. “Perhaps you should spare her irreplaceable crockery and eat on tea trays. Silver might withstand your brute strength a bit better.”
“Or you could eat with your hands,” I suggested.
Leander gaped at me. “I can’t.”
“Why not? You obviously can’t use a knife and fork, not unless someone welds you a larger pair.” I waved my buttery roll pointedly. “Eat with your hands.”
His brow furrowed, and if his fangs weren’t jutting out, I believed his mouth would be downturned in unease. “It’s improper.”
“Are table manners really more important than twisting your wrists and shattering your dishes?”
“I can’t eat like that in front of you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a lady, and it’s rude.”
“I’m a peasant, and I don’t care.” I stuffed the entire roll in my mouth and kept it open as I chewed loudly, looking him in the eye the whole time.
Hesitant, Leander squished some meat and eggs between two slices of bread, watching me as he slowly lifted his makeshift sandwich. Checking if I were serious or if I’d change my mind, it seems.
I made a hurrying gesture, and he spread his jaws far apart and shoved it all in his mouth.
I tried to keep quiet as he literally stuffed his face, but it was too much for me not to react. I spluttered in laughter as egg yoke dribbled into his beard.
He stopped, eyeing me again, self-conscious. I reached for another roll, heaped it with butter and two types of jam then squished it between my teeth. Jam leaked down my chin, and I tried stuffing it back in my mouth, making a mess I haven’t made since I was a child.
Leander’s shoulders shook as I wiped the excess jam with another roll before gobbling it, his laughter breaking out when he swallowed.
As we continued our eating match, he went a step further, piling another plate and bending to eat right off it. He wiped swathes of food in every lick before piling more and scarfing it down. One could only guess how much food it took to fuel a body that large.
Clancy shook his head at us, chuckling more from discomfort than amusement. “Disgusting.”
Leander raised his face from the plate, eyes narrowed, beard soaked in food.
Clancy tutted. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. Just because we look like animals doesn’t mean we have to act like them.”
I took a sausage out of my mouth, chewing. “He was an animal before the curse got a hold of him. And it wasn’t on account of his eating habits.”
Leander choked, banging on the table as he coughed. I reached over to thump him on the back, but I might as well have been tapping him, my hand too small to make any impact.
“Is this—” He got cut off by a cough. “Is this really the time to bring that up?”
I shrugged, unrepentant. “Am I wrong?”
His coughs subsided but his rumble grew louder. “That’s not the point.”
Unfazed, I held his chagrined gaze. “Then what is?”
Glowering at me, he raised his plate and dumped its contents right into his gaping mouth.
It was as if he was trying to shock or revolt us. From the noises Clancy made, it worked spectacularly on him. I placidly watched him and continued my own disgusting behavior.
After that animalistic spectacle, Leander neatly wiped his mouth and hands with the splotched-beyond-recognition napkin on his lap, leaving his beard adorned in crumbs. I broke out in gales of laughter.
It was all so surreal. I was in a castle’s dining room, debating past transgressions and destroying table manners with the fearsome Beast. All under the disapproval of a goat-man, who, despite what I’d seen of the indiscriminate gluttony of goats, was the most fastidious of us.
This scene reminded me of engravings in a children’s book I had, one that had been in the family for years, where a little girl ventured into a forest only to find civilized animals with houses, picnics and teatime. Before my hunger for adventure and exploration had settled for traveling to other worlds in my mind, I’d always wanted to dive into that book. Now I was in a more fantastical setting, with more unimaginable companions.
Leander gestured to the box I’d put on the seat beside me, his gaze disheartened. “Are you returning today’s gift, too?”
I rushed to show him the back of my head. As he exhaled in relief and poured us tea, I studied the stained-glass windows at his back for the first time.
In the first panel, Rosmerta, the equivalent of Ericura’s Field Queen, stood looking at the yolk-yellow sun curved in the upper corner of the pane, her flying hair a peachy-orange and her dress grass-green, one arm cradling a warm gold cornucopia, the other extended.
The middle, bigger panel was a split depiction of night and day. In the third, there was an ominous figure swathed in deep purple and black, with an antlered head and a visible ribcage of pearlescent white, shrouded in heavily detailed clouds of smoke in shades of grey—the Horned God!
He’d never alarmed me as he did other Ericurans or Adelaide. But after we’d been whisked away through that fairy’s portal at the feet of his iron sculpture—the sight of him made me shudder.
“What do you call that here?” I pointed at his panel.
Clancy self-consciously reached for his own horns, instantly uneasy. “We don’t say his name, or else he’ll respond and give us a personal visit and…”
Leander cut him off. “His name is Kernos. Campanians call him Orkhos, or Lucros—something like that.”
“LEANDER!” Clancy yelped.
“Oh, what is he going to do to us? Drag us all to hell?” Leander reached for the crystal jug of water, filling our glasses. “He’s welcome to at this point.”
Clancy turned his horns on him. “If you don’t stop with this attitude, I will head-butt you.”
Leader scoffed a laugh. “I’m only surprised you haven’t done something that goatish yet. Any day now, your eyes will grow horizontal pupils and become impossible to look into.”
“Will you stop it?” I nudged him. “We’re going to break the curse.”
He shook his head, sighing in resignation.
“We just discussed this yesterday, what’s the problem now?”
“I don’t feel this will work, not with how fast I’m devolving.” He raised his hands to me. They seemed bigger, hairier, his hard nails looking more like the claws than ever before.
I put my hand on his, lowering it. “If you got a grip on your temper, maybe you’d be a lot more loveable.”
He exhaled, sagged in his chair. “I didn’t get angry.”
“By temper, I mean general temperament. You could do with some optimism.” I gave him my best reassuring smile. “We have time, right?”
He only stared at his broken plate. Before I could persist, he suddenly said, “So, you do like the hair clip?”
I laughed softly. “Yes, it’s on the right track in terms of gifts.”
“It is?” He surprise had an undercurrent of relief, and disbelief.
And at this moment, I could see exactly why he’d bumbled his interactions with girls who weren’t his relatives. He’d never been told how, or even worse, had been taught the wrong things, about himself and about others. A pr
ince with every privilege this world had to offer, guided by the worst kind of example and counsel and led astray by unbridled passions.
As the conversation ebbed and flowed, my mind kept straying to the ruined family portrait outside his room.
From the example of his parents and siblings, and the bits of the slashed face I’d been able to put together, Leander must have been as handsome as he was now hideous. And I kept wondering if I would ever get to see the real him.
Chapter Eighteen
The third morning after our new agreement, I woke up before Hazel could get a hold of me and went in search of the kitchen.
I headed where I thought it would be and was rewarded by the only sounds of life evident this early. The chatter and clanging of pots and pans. The smells soon followed as I descended the spiral stairs down one of the towers. I stopped on the last step, peering inside at the collection of girls and women, the youngest seeming to be my age and the oldest in her sixties.
The kitchen itself was a vast brownstone room with a high ceiling, full of teak cupboards and spread in orange-brown tiles. Open windows framed the sinks and counters and let in the tenuous morning light. In the center, a rectangular island dominated, its base full of cupboards, its surface black marble, with a wooden structure hanging above holding pots and pans.
A woman with rabbit ears matching her tawny hair, and big, flat, furry feet was marching back and forth like an army marshal. Hazel’s mother, Bryony.
Her ears perked up as she turned my way, restless nose wrinkling. “Who’s this?”
I entered, waving. “Bonnie. Hazel told me I could stop by.”
Bryony narrowed her eyes at me like she was struggling to see. “Oh, hello, I’ve been wondering when I’d get a good look at you. I can’t climb the stairs, you see.” She raised her foot. “I’m stuck down here, can only take the slope in the corner up to the first floor.”
If I hadn’t already felt terrible for them all before, I sure felt worse now.
“Is there anything you needed, dear?”
“Yes, I was wondering if you could prepare only foods that can be eaten by hand like boiled eggs and strips of bacon and muffins?”
A heavy dragging sound announced Ivy’s arrival. “Is this about the master breaking his plate again?”
“I think he needs to give up on eating like a prince. It’s only making him feel worse every time he fails.”
Ivy clicked her forked tongue. “I told him that. He insisted on the same food, and on breaking plates of a unique set rather than adjusting to his new condition like the rest of us.”
“I have a feeling he won’t object today.”
I then noticed that the kitchen had gone completely silent. Everyone had stopped to stare at me, their eyes clinging to me as if waiting for me to do something, rid them of their beastly forms right now. To them, I was their only hope for normalcy and freedom.
Ivy must have sensed how unsettled I became because she bared her fangs at them. “Stop goggling at the poor girl and keep up, the firewood isn’t going to last all morning.”
They all turned back to their tasks, and Bryony continued supervising. Ivy expanded up, setting a basket of bread rolls out of Oliver’s leaping reach. “No, Ollie. Go help Wisteria with the cheesemaking.”
“So, that’s what that smell is.” I sniffed the air, stomach awakening with a growl. “Do you need any help?”
“It’s sweet of you to offer, but you should be getting ready for breakfast,” said Ivy, trying to herd me towards the stairs.
“But I want to help,” I protested.
Perplexed, Ivy blinked her yellow eyes down at me, a hint of a third lid emerging. She looked the most transformed aside from Leander. It made me wonder just how snake-like she was? Could she unhinge her jaw and gobble me up, the way they did rats?
It was a fleeting thought, but I felt ashamed to think such a thing of such a sweet woman.
“You shouldn’t trouble yourself with the kitchenwork, dear.”
“But I want to! My father never let me in the kitchen, either cooked himself or hired a cook, so I don’t know how to do anything but serve food, and I’ve always wanted to bake, but the one time I tried to when he wasn’t there I burned my hand because I didn’t know what I was doing—”
“Breathe!” Ivy shook me by the shoulders. “By Rosmerta, it’s a wonder you haven’t bitten your own tongue talking so fast.”
I hung my head, embarrassed. “I wanted to say what I could while I had your attention.”
Ivy frowned. “Unless something starts burning, you have my full attention. Why would you think otherwise?”
“Well…”
“Now you’re at a loss for words?” She chuckled, flattening more of her tail, so she became shorter, and looked me in the eye. “What’s the matter, really?”
“I’m used to people losing patience quickly as soon as I start to speak,” I said, again in a rush. “Most cut me off, or tell me to go do something else, or in my father’s case not do something. I couldn’t go out alone, couldn’t go with him to his forge, couldn’t go to others’ homes, and at home, I wasn’t allowed to mend my own clothes or make my own food, and I couldn’t even talk about certain things.”
Ivy’s frown deepened, pulling the scattered scales bordering her green-tinged face inwards. “That’s an oddly coddled upbringing for a common girl. Where was your mother, aunts, or grandmother to knock some sense into your father?”
“They’re all dead or estranged,” I said, suddenly feeling more forlorn than ever about the fact. It had to be Ivy herself. I didn’t remember much of my mother, and since her, I’d never had someone look at me in such a motherly way. “I thought my father believed girls should only worry about schoolwork and shouldn’t be troubled with housework, but when my friend moved in with us, he had no issue with taking her to his forge, and letting her do the cooking or shopping.”
“Was that friend bigger than you?” said an amused voice from behind us. Jessamine was taking the steps one at a time as she made her way down. “That could be the reason. No risk of her dumping hot soup all over herself as she took the pot off the stove.”
I was too happy to see her up and about to complain about the height jokes.
Though I got to her first, catching her middle in a hug, the rest quickly huddled around us, asking questions, offering seats and food, or in Bryony’s case, telling her to get back to bed.
“I’m fine!” she protested. “Please don’t send me back to bed. I’m going mad with idleness up there, and lying down is not fun with wings to start with, and when one is injured, it’s agony. I’ll sit if you insist, but let me do something. I can’t keep reading picture-books all day!”
Ivy contemplated us both. “We could use some help with the bakeries, especially since there’s a change to the menu this morning.” At that, she smiled down at me. “You two can make the muffins.”
I yelped in glee and jumped to hug her.
In a minute, Jessamine and I settled at the island beside a girl making the dough. I watched her mix the ingredients, committing every detail to memory. It was one thing to read a cookbook, and something else entirely to see the method for myself.
The girl let me knead the dough, and I discovered that making the mixture not look like clay was a lot more taxing on the arms than I’d thought. A steady practice of this and I’d have muscles. Now I understood why my local baker and his employees were built closer to my father and his apprentices than the cooks at the tavern.
When I felt my arms about to fall off, I left the dough to her, feeling very accomplished when she complimented my efforts.
I turned to making the muffins, and after the struggle with the dough and with my arms aching, mixing the batter wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped.
I grunted as I poked Jessamine, “So, those picture books you read. Do you prefer them to novels?”
Jessamine paused crushing the walnuts with a knife. “They’re just easier. I never finished school
and over the years I’ve mostly forgotten how to read. Lord Gestum offered to teach me the language properly, but said I had to start small, hence the children’s books.”
“That’s sweet of him, helping you learn. It seems he likes teaching people things.”
“He’s very kind, very humble.” She peered at my bowl, wincing at the mixture. “You missed some flour at the bottom, scrape it from the edges. That’s it. Maybe add some milk?”
I did as she said, mixing harder. “So how did he come to offer to teach you?”
Her ears turned bright pink as she dumped the walnut into the batter. “He caught me squinting at the title of a book he was reading and realized I couldn’t read it. I thought he’d mock me, like others I worked for did. But he only said he’d make me as well-read as a duchess. When I didn’t progress as fast as he hoped, I thought he’d get give up, but he said ‘you’re stuck with me.’ I know he meant we’re all stuck here, but still…” She trailed off, blushing deeply. “No one has ever wanted what’s best for me, or expected nothing from me in return.”
That statement made me realize how opposite our lives had been. My father and Adelaide had only wanted what was best for me, and they, and everyone else had expected nothing from me. And the two extremes had made us equally discontented.
I sighed. “Clancy seems pretty lovable that way.”
Jessamine cleared her throat, taking the muffin mixture for me. “I think that’s enough. Let’s put them in the pan, shall we?”
I stayed by the oven, watching the muffins slowly rise and take shape, all the while thinking: I did this!
Then my mind turned back to Leander, and I wondered.
When was the last time someone wanted the best for him, unrelated to who he was, or what they had to gain from it, but just for his sake?
Chapter Nineteen
By the time Leander and Clancy arrived for breakfast, I’d been examining the stained-glass windows for what felt like an eternity.
“You’re early.” Leander approached with heavy footfalls. “Couldn’t sleep?”
