Astrid

“Eli, what is that?”

Eli is perched atop a high chair against the square table planted in the middle of one of the kitchens. I sit diagonally across from him, stationed to ensure he finishes his breakfast in place of Imogen this morning.

He scoops up some candies of a sort together with the milk in his little bear’s-head-shaped bowl. “Si-reel,” he pronounces, jabbing a finger at the colourfully painted box on the table. Upon it is imprinted a very strange, highly unrealistic painting of a bird.

“Are you supposed to be eating candies this early in the morning?”

“It’s not a candy. The Master gifts a box to me every year on my birthday. Want to try?”

I have already eaten my fill of eggs and bread. Being here has made me marvel more and more at the unlikely gift of always having enough to eat. Back at home, if my expenditure had stretched itself thin while my father was still on a voyage, I would have skipped a meal or two each day.

Sinful as it feels, curiosity gets the better of me. I reach out to take the spoon from Eli’s hands and scoop up a single candy. It is sweet and crunchy and nearly melts in my mouth. The milk is a nice addition, making the broken pieces swirl easily down my throat.

My eyes widen. Eli beams at me.

“I see you’ve discovered cereal,” the Prince – the beast – enters from under an arched doorway.

He is no longer dressed in his robe: today, he wears a loose, scarlet cotton shirt tied at the waist with a leather belt over simple riding trousers. His still-damp hair is as disheveled as ever, though at least he made an attempt to wash it today. I wonder if he always greets the witch with this much formality.

As he was last night, he resumes a somewhat relaxed posture save for the slight limp in his left leg.

“Eggs and bread, Your Highness.” I offer him the plate that sits obediently in front of me.

He shoots me a deliberative look before taking it from my hands. He sits at the corner farthest from Eli and me. When he lifts a hand in the air, one of the drawers slides open and a spoon flits through the air to meet his touch.

I watch him eat as if he has never eaten before. In the soft morning light streaming through the windows, he looks completely docile. Yet Eli averts his eyes and falls completely silent.

He is halfway through the eggs before noticing the little charred bit under the whites. Surprised, he looks up at me.

“Did you cook this?”

“Yes.”

“You know the kitchen will do it for you.”

“Sir, if I allow the entire castle to do everything from me, I fear I may have no more use for my arms and legs.”

Eli’s head perks up in shock at the way I have answered his Master. I pretend not to notice. The Prince appraises me for two full heartbeats before he clears his throat.

“Thank you,” he says awkwardly.

I smile.

He eats the eggs first before mauling into the bread separately, which I find very strange but deign my grace to refrain from commenting on it. Eli finishes his meal quickly, as if trained, and then sits up with rapt attention.

The poor boy.

“Have you seen Bayorn?” I ask him. “I hear he might have some use for a sparring partner today.”

Sparring always entices the boy, and I suspect now more so than ever. Immediately he jumps off his chair and excuses himself – more to me than to his Master – before fleeing the kitchen.

“So,” I turn to the last person in the kitchen. “We are meeting with Lady Selaena today, are we not? When?”

He rolls his eyes. “I am not sure, Your Majesty,” he murmurs sarcastically. Several crumbs have fallen upon his beard and I struggle to ignore them. “She’s not a servant for hire, you know. She’s an enchantress. And a very powerful one, at that.”

“How do you arrange a meeting with her?” I press stubbornly.

“That is an affair of which I am to know, and you to keep your nose out.”

The urge to chuck a spoon at his head has grown immensely. He speaks through the food in his mouth. If Lady Tremaine were here, she would rap his knuckles – beast or no beast.

“I see you two have grown to barely tolerate each other,” another voice sings to my left.

We both start.

Lady Selaena stands by the entrance to the kitchen, twirling a lock of her deep raven hair in one long, slender finger. Her scarlet lips press together and curl upwards, as if she hides a secret.

“Lady Selaena,” the Prince greets her begrudgingly and finishes his last bite. The plates fly to the basins in the corner of the kitchen. We stand.

The enchantress wrinkles her nose. “Oh, Kieran. Brush those crumbs off your face, won’t you? You stand in the presence of two ladies.”

He shoots her a genuinely perplexed look. “Ladies? Where?”

Her green eyes flash dangerously, but she chuckles. “In a sour mood today, are we?”

“No more than usual. Please, join us in one of our guest halls,” he gestures to her. She turns on her heel and I hear the click, click, click of her shoes against the marble floor. The Prince – no, Kieran – runs a hand across his mouth before following her.

She makes her way towards one of the larger doors. When she waves a dismissive hand in the air, the doors hinge open and give way to a massive hall.

The floor is polished white, save for a strip of glistening black which leads all the way up to stone steps at the far end of the room. Atop the elevated floor stand four large, beautifully carved chairs, adorned with dust-layered jewels that still manage to gleam faintly under the natural light coming in from the tall glass windows on our left.

Thrones.

Wherever Selaena saunters, an invisible wind clears the dust off her path.

Kieran hesitates halfway down the path to the throne. He glares hard at something to his right, but I cannot make it out from the distance I stand away from him. I follow them inside.

Lady Selaena sits on the largest throne in the middle and crosses one leg over the other, revealing the slit that runs up the side of her skirt. A strange fashion for this day and age.

“This really is one of the most comfortable seats in the castle,” she muses.

This seems to trigger Kieran’s irritation.

“That was what you wanted, wasn’t it? To sit upon my father’s throne and take what was mine.”

She rises to her feet, her expression a masked storm.

“If I wanted to take your kingdom, I would have taken it. Do you not think I had the power to do so?”

He laughs bitterly. “Of course you did. You just wanted to attach puppet strings on its subjects, to set terror upon every soul before you burned an entire kingdom to the ground.”

The tension in the room has multiplied by a hundredfold. When they last met, their banter was playful. Today their moods have worsened without warning. I creep up behind Kieran, but Lady Selaena, too, makes her way towards us. I suddenly feel the urge to turn and bolt.

“Is that why you asked me here, Your Highness? To throw your frustration out on me? To blame me for your sins?”

She stops two steps away from Kieran. I remain unmoved an exact distance behind him.

For once, he stands tall.

“I want you to give the innocent a fighting chance to be free of this curse.”

Her laugh is short and cutting. “You want only to take this advantage to break this enchantment for yourself.”

“Astrid touched the rose,” he says without answering her. “The only other person to touch the rose was me. Surely it must mean something new entirely.”

They both face each other off, frozen. For a moment I wonder if any of them will budge.

Then, she cocks her head to one side. Those emerald eyes focus sharply on my face. I swallow hard.

Just like that, the terseness in her jaw dissipates. She shrugs.

“It may change some things. I’ll have to check, of course; but it is likely Miss Astrid has become a wild card in this game. Might buy you… Oh, I don’t know, about a year.”

She says it so colloquially, I barely register the hope in her words at first.

A year. A full year to find some way to undo this curse. A year to buy my ticket home.

“That’s not enough,” Kieran interjects all of a sudden.

Lady Selaena’s eye glints in irritation. She smiles sweetly at Kieran, and this seems to anger him more.

“You have so little faith in yourself, Your Majesty.”

“You know I will fail. That’s only a fraction of the time you gave me initially. At least return her freedom if I should fail again. Or better yet – relinquish the curse’s hold on her. She has done nothing to merit this.”

The enchantress studies her nails. “Hmm. I don’t know. She does seem to annoy me so. Something about her…” she gestures to her own face. “You know. And she’s lacking so much, hasn’t she, but she doesn’t even know it yet. Perhaps it may be a service for her to wait out her father’s demise in this castle; spare her the pain of witnessing his final days, no?”

Everything in the room suddenly blazes red. An unspeakable fury propels me forward.

I raise my hands to strike the witch, but the roar that echoes off the walls is not my own.

Kieran has already lunged at her, all composure shed. All pretense is gone. He is no longer the man who sat by the alcove with me; he is the beast, wearing the skin of a dead prince.

It all happens so fast.

Lady Selaena pushes him with a force so unlikely for a woman of her build. He ends up sprawled across the floor.

No – she did not even touch him. The air between us ripples with the effect of her magic.

Kieran’s horrifying screams begin to pierce my eardrums.

My hands clap over my ears, but the sound of it amplifies by the second.

I stand frozen, watching in terror while the enchantress extends an arm towards him. He struggles to his hands and knees. His back arches in a way I did not know a human being could do.

Something cracks loudly.

“Do not assume that just because I grant you favors and pay you visits, boy, this renders us friends,” she storms, moving to step closer to him.

“You will do well to respect where you and I stand.”

To my right, Bayorn appears at the door. He unsheathes the sword from its scabbard and darts in our direction.

She snaps her head up towards him.

“Stop!” I scream.

Bayorn, ever the soldier, obeys. I run towards Lady Selaena and yank at her outstretched arm as hard as I can.

In a flash, the screams halt.

“Stop it!” My breathing is ragged. Kieran rolls over to his side and coughs blood.

“Please stop.” The tears are running freely down my face now. “I’ll do whatever it takes. I will accept my part in this. Just…just stop it.”

A little bit of the fury in her expression melts. She appraises me.

For a split second, I fear Kieran’s punishment will be shifted to me.

“One year,” she says instead. “One year for His Majesty to find the love he so desires.” To my right, Kieran’s face contorts in bitter anguish as he conceals his eyes with a bloody hand, as if uselessly shielding himself from the sound of the same words that have haunted him from the very beginning.

“One year for you to win your freedom.”