The Beauty

by L. C. Mortimer

  “Of course,” Helena said.

  We all just stood there for a few minutes while Belle warmed up. Apparently, living in a box had been pretty icy and chilly. Once she seemed to calm down, though, and her heart had stopped racing, she looked back at us.

  “Thank you for saving me,” she said again.

  “It was nothing,” I said, which was a total lie.

  Snow White glared at her.

  “What were you thinking?” She asked.

  “I just...I wanted it to be a good project,” Belle said, and my heart kind of ached for her a little bit. She really had gotten mixed up in something she couldn’t have understood. She had no way of knowing just how disastrous touching the rose and making a wish could be. She couldn’t have known exactly what the cost would be.

  The cost.

  I looked at Helena, who wasn’t yelling or shouting. Instead, she was carefully bandaging her bloody hand.

  “Can I do anything?” I asked.

  “No,” she said with a soft smile. “I’ll be fine.”

  “But the rose,” I said, gesturing toward the little box where Belle had been held captive. “It’s destroyed.”

  “So it is,” the headmistress said, but she seemed unconcerned with this fact. The rose had shattered into a collection of petals and leaves and pieces of stem. It no longer even looked like a rose. It looked like someone had mown the lawn or trimmed the hedges and had done so absolutely carelessly, to the point where the remaining plants no longer looked like plants.

  “But it was a precious item,” I said.

  “It was quite the treasure,” the headmistress agreed. “But I do believe we all agree that your friend’s life is more important, no?”

  Belle blushed.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said.

  “Have a seat,” Helena said, and she gestured to the floor of her office. I looked down to see that there were cushions everywhere. Seriously. What was with these people and cushions? It had been weeks now, and all I wanted to do was sit in a nice, comfortable recliner. Hell, even an armchair would be better than the constant floor-sitting, but I didn’t want to be that person who whined all the time, so I sat down beside the others.

  The headmistress looked at us carefully, and she leaned back against her desk. She was comfortable with herself, I realized, and she was comfortable with her position in the school. She exuded confidence at every turn. I wondered how old she was. Not very old. Maybe 40. Maybe 50. She looked young, though, and she looked like she’d kind of seen it all.

  She hadn’t so much as flinched when we’d burst into her office with a huge, unbearable problem. It hadn’t bothered her. She hadn’t really seemed to react negatively at all. She’d just acted.

  And she’d helped us.

  And she’d saved our friend.

  “What you did was reckless,” she said calmly. “And dangerous. You put your own life at risk.”

  “I’m sorry about the rose,” Belle whispered.

  “I don’t care about the rose,” Helena said. “It’s an enchanted flower from an old story, child. Who cares? What I care about is you. I care about my students. I care about the fact that you not only went into a forbidden place, but that you made a terrible choice.”

  Belle bit her lip and looked away.

  Snow White opened her mouth to say something, but Helena gave her a nasty look. The glare was so icy that it chilled me to the bones. So Helena could be scary. Good to know. I tucked that piece of information away for a later date.

  “You knew about this, didn’t you?” Helena asked.

  Snow nodded.

  “For how long?”

  “From the first day.”

  “And you didn’t come forward until now.”

  Snow White looked like she wanted to defend herself, to argue, but she was smart enough to stay silent for the moment. I didn’t say a word. I just sat there because I realized that everyone involved had made mistakes.

  “Start from the beginning,” Helena said to Belle. “And don’t leave anything out. You’ll each have a chance to share your story,” she added. “And no one is leaving here until it’s been completely solved.”

  There was a knock at the door and Helena smiled brightly.

  “Ah, that’ll be your friends arriving,” she said. “I assume they were causing a distraction so you could get to my office?”

  “Um, yes?”

  “Very well,” Helena said. She snapped her fingers and the door to the office flew open. There stood Hook and Tinkerbell. They both looked tired and worn out and their hair was ruffled. Tinkerbell looked fairly unscathed, but Hook had the beginnings of a black eye, and I wondered how long she’d make Tinkerbell pay for that. The teacher delivering the girls shoved them into the office and left without a word. Helena just smiled.

  Tinkerbell and Hook came into the office and didn’t say anything. They looked around, taking it all in. They saw Belle, and their eyes widened, but they also saw the mess that had been created in the process of trying to save her.

  “Welcome, girls,” Helena said. “Now, why don’t you have a seat?”

  Chapter 15

  Three weeks.

  That was how long our entire group was going to be spending cleaning up the forbidden floors. Three weeks. After we cleaned Helena’s office and restored it to its former state of beauty and chaos, we were banished to the upper floors of the girls’ dormitory. The worst part was that we couldn’t tell anyone what we were doing, so everyone just thought we had detention, which was probably fair.

  Our task was to organize, catalog, and clean up the enchanted objects up there without doing anything stupid.

  By the last week, we were all tired and worn out.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that she gave us this job?” Hook asked. “Out of everything she could have given us to do, she sent us back to work with enchanted objects?”

  “They aren’t all enchanted,” I said, picking up a little red apple. I dusted it and put it back where it had been.

  “Most of them are,” Snow White said.

  “No talking,” said a voice, and we looked over to see Miss Thomas. She was one of our teachers and it was her job to sit and make sure we didn’t do anything stupid. I wasn’t sure what she had done to make Miss Hex mad, but she was being punished right along with the rest of us.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She just glared in response.

  We got back to cleaning and organizing and after three hours, we got to go home to our rooms to settle down for the night.

  Once Belle returned, I kind of thought things would settle into a new normal, but they didn’t. Instead, everything kind of reverted back to how it had been. Hook went back to lurking around the school. Tinkerbell was her usual, bubbly self. Snow White returned to being mean and snapping at anyone who looked twice at her.

  And then there was Belle.

  The first thing she did was to take down the posters and pictures of roses.

  “I won’t be needing those anymore,” she confided in me one night. We were lying in our hammocks, swinging gently, trying to fall asleep.

  Something had been bothering me, though, and I figured it was a good time to ask her.

  “What made you do it?” I asked.

  “What? Make a wish?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I think the fairytale made it pretty clear it was going to cast a curse of some sort, and from what Miss Hex said, it had never been broken before.” That was why her blood had shattered the rose. Miss Hex was the last ice dragon. She was literally the only person living who could break the curse that had been cast on Belle. She was the only person who could do anything about it at all.

  And that was the very first time in the history of the rose that anyone had broken the enchantment.

  The power of the spell breaking had been too much, and the rose had broken entirely.

  “I guess I hoped for the best,” she said.

  “I think there’s more to i
t than that.”

  Belle was quiet for a long time, but she finally spoke.

  “You know how everyone calls me by my nickname?”

  Beauty.

  “Yeah.”

  “You know how I got that?”

  “By being super pretty?”

  “By being super pretty,” she agreed. “But do you know what I really wanted?”

  “People to think you were smart?”

  “Yeah, a little, but mostly, I wanted to blend in. I didn’t want to be noticed. I wanted people to walk by me and just think I was another normal girl in the world. I didn’t want to deal with the pressure of being forced to perform in some way. I didn’t want to have to act like I had all of the answers because I didn’t.”

  “Sounds like things weren’t as perfect as they seemed.”

  “Not at all.”

  “So you just wanted some time to just be yourself, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  I wondered what it had been like, sitting alone in the glass box. I wondered if it had been scary or terrifying, but Belle didn’t seem scarred.

  Like, at all.

  In fact, she almost seemed sad to be back.

  But that would be crazy, right?

  We were quiet, lying in our hammocks, but I knew she was still awake. I knew she was thinking, and I knew she was reflecting on what was going to happen next.

  I didn’t know.

  None of us did.

  Our journeys at Enchanted Academy were twisting and turning and intersecting, but there was no way to predict what adventure was going to come next, and maybe that was okay. Maybe that was all right. Part of me felt like I should be scared or upset about that. Part of me thought that maybe I should be nervous or worried that I didn’t know what to expect, but the rest of me?

  Well, the rest of me couldn’t wait to see what came next.

  I had new friends. I had Hook, who was maybe a friend, or maybe an enemy. I couldn’t tell. I had Beast, who, despite being super handsome, had a mean streak. I had teachers who looked after me. I had teachers who couldn’t stand me.

  And I had Tinkerbell.

  And Stacy.

  And Wolf.

  And I had Beauty.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” I whispered.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’m glad everything turned out okay.”

  “I’m glad you’re safe.”

  “Me too,” she said, and this time, I knew that she meant it.

  The future was totally open and anything could happen, but one thing was for sure: we were all in it together, and everything was going to be just fine.

  We were going to get our happily-ever-afters, one way or another.

  Epilogue

  Wolf stared at the cauldron in front of her. It shouldn’t have to be this hard. It should have been easy. Neat. Nice. The world was too messy for her taste, and that was the problem. She was supposed to be big and bad and wild, but things were just...well, they were hard.

  “Rough morning?” A familiar voice said, and she turned to see him. The boy with the yellow hair and the bright red hoody smiled at her. It made her insides turn all gooey and mushy, and she hated herself for it.

  “You could say that,” she said.

  “Sorry to hear it,” Red said. He made himself comfortable on the stool beside her, and she couldn’t help but feel a little bit excited that he’d chosen her, out of all of the girls at the school, to sit by. Red could have any girl he wanted. Any girl at all.

  “Yeah, well,” she said awkwardly. “Mondays, am I right?”

  Inwardly, she cringed.

  Mondays?

  Am I right?

  Who talked like that?

  Definitely not someone brave and strong and worthy of carrying the Wolf family name. Definitely not someone like her. Natasha Wolf was a lot of things, but awkward wasn’t something she was striving for.

  “I feel you,” he said, and he looked down at his own cauldron. Red started grabbing ingredients and throwing things in as the professor started talking about their project for the day.

  “Miss Wolf?” He said suddenly.

  “Mr. Codsworth?” Natasha looked up at the grumpy little man. He’d been cruel and conniving since she met him as a freshman. He was the type of man who was mean for no reason at all except that it made him feel bigger and stronger than he actually was.

  Now he was staring at her cruelly, glaring at her. Obviously, he had said something that she hadn’t heard because she’d been too busy thinking about Red.

  “What do you think about that?”

  “Uh,” she blushed, because he wasn’t going to let her get away with it, was he? He wasn’t going to let her escape from his glare. Nope. Mr. Codsworth was going to make Natasha admit out loud that she hadn’t been paying attention, and oh, she hated him for that.

  Well, perhaps hate was a bit of a strong word.

  “Could you repeat the question, please?” She asked quietly. Her face was bright red. She could tell. The entire classroom was staring at her and Natasha wanted to sink down into the ground and just die. She wanted to disappear, to vanish from plain sight, because not only was she making a huge fool of herself, but she was doing it in front of Red.

  “Why, of course,” Mr. Codsworth said. “Were you having trouble paying attention?”

  “No, sir. I just didn’t hear the question.”

  “Well, it seems to me, Miss Wolf, that you’ve been having a lot of problems paying attention in class.”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Why don’t you see me during your lunch period?” Mr. Codsworth said. “Today, and every day for the rest of the week.”

  She slumped down in her seat and stared at the cauldron in front of her. She mumbled that she understood, and Mr. Codsworth turned his attention to someone else, but it was too late. If Red didn’t know who she was before, well, he definitely knew who she was now.

  A troublemaker.

  Shit.

  Find out what happens to Wolf and Red in ENCHANTED ACADEMY BOOK 2: THE WOLF.

  Author

  L.C. Mortimer loves books almost as much as she loves coffee. When she's not on a caffeine-induced writing spree, she can be found pole dancing, traveling, or playing with her pet hamster, Neko. Mortimer loves reading, playing video games, and spending time with her husband and kids. Please make sure to join her mailing list here.

  Hybrid Academy: Year One

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  "This isn't what I ordered." The tall man in the suit looked at the coffee and sneered. He thrust the cup back at me. A little bit sloshed over the side of the cup and onto the counter. "And you'd better clean that up."

  Biting back irritation, I managed a smile.

  "Of course. Anything else I can do for you?” I asked politely. Inside, I felt anything but polite. This guy was being a total jerk, as always. I knew for a fact that his coffee had been made perfectly. He just didn’t like me because I couldn’t do magic.

  He wanted Maggie to make his drink.

  “A free bagel couldn’t hurt,” the man said, jerking his head toward the display of blueberry bagels.

  “I’ll have to get my manager’s permission,” I said. “Please wait just a moment.”

  I scurried to the back of the café and knocked on the door to the office.

  “Come in.”

  I yanked the door open and peered inside. Tony was sitting at his desk with his ankles crossed over the top. He looked bored out of his mind.

  “What do you want, Maxine?” He asked.

  “It’s Max,” I said. “Not Maxine. And there’s a customer who wants a free bagel.”

  “We don’t give out bagels for free,” Tony said with a yawn. He was obviously bored. He was always bored at the café.

  “I know, but he said that his drink was wrong and he wants to be compensate
d with free food.”

  Tony glared at me and got up with a huff. He acted like it was my fault that he was the manager of the café or that he had to leave the safety of his office to come do his actual job. Whatever. I’d been dealing with Tony ever since I started working at the café. He was neither a good boss nor a team player, so I tried to stay as far away from him as possible. Besides, something about Tony made me uncomfortable, and I couldn’t quite pinpoint why.

  “Is there a problem, Lionel?” Tony asked the tall man.

  “Yeah, your em-ploy-ee,” he dragged the word out sarcastically. “Messed up my drink. I asked her nicely if she could fix it.”

  “Not a problem,” Tony said. He jerked his head toward one of my coworkers. “Maggie, make Lionel a new drink.”

  Maggie shot me a nasty look but nodded and started the drink. The café wasn’t busy and the drink wasn’t complicated, so I wasn’t sure what the big deal was. Actually, I had the distinct feeling that Lionel’s original drink had been just fine, but that he wanted a bagel out of the deal.

  Correction: he wanted a free bagel.

  Tony and Lionel sat and chatted while Maggie made the drink. I cleaned up the spill on the counter before starting to check our inventory. I wasn’t a magic user, so I couldn’t just summon cups whenever we ran out of something we needed. Instead, I’d have to trot back to the stockroom, find what we needed, and carry it back. It was kind of a drag for everyone, which was just another reason nobody liked me.

  By the time I left work that day, I was tired, exhausted, and spent.

  And I knew my grandmother was going to be beyond pissed that I was late.

  I RAN UP THE STEPS to the little log cabin where I lived with my Grandmother. My heart was pounding, racing, and I silently begged it to stop. Slow down. It needed to chill out, to be honest. Overreacting never turned out well for anyone, least of all me.

  I smelled sweaty and I was tired: both signs that I left work much later than I should have. I didn’t want her to give me a hard time about it. Mémère had enough to worry about. She didn’t need to be concerned that my boss still wasn’t letting me leave on time or that my customers were constantly giving me a hard time.