Astrid

I am awakened by a rap on the door.

The fireplace has long been extinguished; there is no light for me to be able to look at the time on the grandfather clock. When I check my wristwatch on the bedside table instead, it warns me that the hour has bled well past midnight.

“Who is it?” I call out tentatively.

A small voice sounds: “Isabelle. Are you sleeping?”

No, I am talking as I practice for my imminent demise. I kick the blankets off my feet and stomp groggily across the room.

She jumps when I swing the door open.

“You’re not supposed to be outside your room past midnight,” I say with as much authority I can muster in order to hide the nervous edge in my tone.

Casting a gaze around the darkened corridor, she hugs her wrap tighter around her silk nightgown. “I know, I know. It’s just that the room is...uh, a little bigger than what I’m used to. I’m having a little trouble falling asleep in there.”

Every second of her standing outside in the corridor is making me increasingly jumpy, so I step aside to allow her in and click the lock on the door. While I find another lamp to light, she sits at the foot of my bed and bounces up and down absent-mindedly.

I sure would love to return to my pillow as soon as possible.

Nonetheless, I sit down next to her and let the awkward silence ensue. Kieran was right about the role I would have to play during our guest’s stay – perhaps having another person’s chambers to flee to at night might provide a slightly better experience than the loneliness of drifting off to sleep in an alien place.

Much like my own experience during my first few nights here.

“How are you enjoying your stay?” I rub my eyes and ask her the same question I have been asking her for the past three days.

“It’s pretty cool. I’ve been doing a bit of deduction myself.”

I am too lethargic to prompt her. She continues without a need for encouragement: “Imogen’s explained the story to me. You know, the one about the witch and the prince and his curse?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“If you told me this a few days ago, I would have left you by the bleachers to carry on with my laps. Now…” she shrugs.

“Now anything is possible,” I say.

She nods. “Anything is possible,” she repeats. “But what I don’t understand is why you would want to bring me here.”

The way to a woman’s heart is not by telling her that the fate of people’s eternities depends on the likelihood of her falling in love with a complete stranger, so I scrunch my nose up and offer her a timid smile.

“Call it an adventurous whim?”

She stares back at me. There is no humor in her expression; I wonder if I have offended her.

But then she casts her sights upon the shadows in my room. “Imogen and Bayorn also told me about your story. Of how he coerced you into staying here for your father.”

“He never intended to keep me for long. That is, until I touched the rose in the West Wing and inherited the enchantress’ curse.”

Isabelle’s brow arches skeptically.

I fold. “Granted, his plans are irrelevant in justifying his actions. But I see it now: that overwhelming loneliness. I cannot explain it any more than I am capable of fully understanding the experience.”

My eyelids flutter close. The image of Kieran’s haunted features while he blames himself for the massacre of the people he loved is still fresh in my memory. When I open my eyes again, Isabelle has shifted to lean against one of the beams by the corner of the bed and is watching me with sympathy.

I shake my head and chuckle. “At least he has been paying my father for my services.”

Her face goes ashen.

“Service- services?” The trepidation in her eyes grows. She folds her arms.

Suddenly the weight behind my words hit me. I hold my hands up in front of her.

“No, not that!” I say quickly. Abashedly. “Nothing of that sort. I only read to him, is all. Goodness – Imogen and Bayorn will never let such a dastardly thing happen. Kieran would never do anything of the sort.”

“You seem to place a lot of trust in someone who probably doesn’t deserve it,” she notes.

“He does.” This time, I am not trying to defend his honor. I simply tell the truth. “Just have a conversation with him, and you will know what I mean.”

In my case, it took more than one conversation, but I can gamble my hopes in his newfound sense of propriety now. I think.

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“And the curse – it’s all because you touched a rose?”

“It was a specific rose in the West Wing. That area was strictly forbidden, but I disobeyed orders because I thought the man keeps a secret weakness there. And he did, I suppose. But now it is my weakness as well.”

“Is there any way to break the curse?” she asks.

If I pretend I cannot hear her, the lie would be too obvious. So I say, “Perhaps. Only time will tell.” And then, before she can reflect closely upon my words, I add, “You really should not be out of your room after midnight, you know. It is not safe.”

“Yeah, yeah – the beast and all that jazz,” she says. “I know about the whole transformation thing, too. Yet here we are, safe and sound after all the precautions Bayorn has taken. Somehow I think you know there’s not much of a danger right now, too.”

I do not respond. Imogen would have chided me very sternly if I had admitted as much out loud. But her words are not untrue; there have been no monstrous incidents in the past few years.

Nevertheless, I still offer to walk her back to her room when she grows tired and sternly inform her to come around a little earlier if she feels inclined to in the future, lest I be forced to chase her back into her chambers again.

She returns the next night, well past midnight.

I let her in.

Kieran

Everybody practically hassles me into visiting the gardens one late afternoon. That is when I know they are up to no good.

Personally, the gardens are not a personal favourite location. The memories that flash by now and again remind me of my own failures, not as a bloodthirsty monster, but as a decent human being.

Astrid does not come by here, too. I suspect she tries to avoid another rose-related memory altogether.

Today, a new figure stands in the midst of the waist-high maze of flowers and shrubs. Someone in the castle must keep up with the task of trimming the hedges and weeding out the unwanted plants, since it has been long since I have done so myself.

I clear my throat a few feet away from her in order to not startle her.

Still, she tenses and spins on her heel.

“Fan of the roses?” I offer.

Isabelle grimaces. “Please don’t talk like that. Like you’re trying to blend in as someone from back home.”

“Sorry,” I say sheepishly and shove my hands into my pockets. “I swear I am not doing this on purpose. It’s just a product of all that time spent venturing through different places in your world.”

Her rigid expression falters and gives way to apology. “Oh. You mean, through the magic mirror?”

“So you’ve heard.”

“I’ve heard almost everything.”

We walk side by side along the maze. I hold my hands behind my back and glance up at the serene blue skies. “Did they also tell you that I transform into a beast every night?”

She nods. She does not seem afraid. This takes me by surprise.

“There is one thing nobody wants to tell me, though.” I wait for her to think before she phrases her question. “You guys are trying to break the curse within five months, right? How?”

My lips twitch. So they plan to ignore the predicament of telling her about her purpose here until it goes away. Or, at least, until I say something about it.

“The curse can only be broken when I find ‘the love I so desire’, as Lady Selaena – the enchantress – put it. They seem to think I desire the true love of another woman.”

“Oh,” she says lightly, a broadening smile stretching across her lips as she surveys the flowers around us.

Then, she freezes in mid-step.

“Oh.”

“Yes,” I struggle not to chuckle at the way her cheeks flush to reflect the colour of the deep pink roses.

She, in turn, struggles to regain control over her tongue. “True love, as in...you don’t mean – I mean, it- it isn’t…”

“You?” I help her out.

Isabelle doesn’t say anything. The poor girl looks like she wants to flee, except she doesn’t know where to go.

“Do not worry. I have no intention of obtaining your love – as you have no desire to obtain mine. In my opinion, there is no love I desire so strongly at the moment. And I have no affections to reciprocate, anyway. This, I think, is why Lady Selaena has phrased her enchantment as such; there is no love I so desire. Not anymore.”

“That sounds awfully depressing.”

“Yes,” I say blithely. “Quite like a good portion of the past couple of years, but I’ll get over it.”

She studies my face. Her fringe falls over her forehead and some strands are long enough to reach into her eyes, but I am afraid to reach out to move them lest I frighten her again.

“You’re not concerned that the others won’t be free of this curse when your time runs out?” her voice goes quiet.

“I do not need to be,” I say. “They will be free. They just do not know how.”

“What do you mean?”

I shrug. There isn’t a full need to get into the specifics right now.

“It means what it means. Are you a fan of flowers?”

Isabelle’s eyes narrow at my change in the subject, but she indulges me anyway. She casts her gaze across the garden, across the creeping vines around the stone fountain in the middle of the maze, at the distant sight of two sparrows chasing each other.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathes in the breeze. “I’ve been to botanical parks before, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this. In this setting, I mean. And these strange colours – some of the petals are almost...transparent. I’ve never seen them on flowers before.”

“That’s because these aren’t the colours of my roses.”

She turns to appraise me with a confused frown.

To demonstrate, I venture a few feet away to pick up a small stone from amidst the grass. She looks to the distance where I point, and I aim carefully at the flowers in the distance.

“Watch,” I say, and then I throw the stone.

It barely lands on the bed of flowers before the first of the butterflies senses it and takes flight, setting a cascade reaction of coloured wings batting against the air. A whirlwind of iridescence takes the garden up in a storm.

Isabelle gasps and stumbles when some of them fly too close to her face, so I reach out to steady her.

She starts to clap her hands in delight. Her peals of laughter are so childlike, so full of awe and wonder. I tilt my head up to the sky and wait for the creatures to give way to the sun.

“Incredible, are they not?” I muse. It has been long since I last visited the gardens. I had almost forgotten what it feels like to breathe in this fresh, free breeze. To have the scent of flowers fill my nostrils and persuade me to allow myself a smile.

Thankfully, there are no visions here today.

“Are you really alright with me sticking around?” Isabelle peers up at me. Her cheeks are still flushed with excitement, but some of her joy has given way to doubt.

I shrug. “You can stay however long you like, Miss Isabelle. Besides.” Glancing towards the castle, I catch a glimpse of four faces scurrying to hide from my view. My lips twitch in amusement. “They seem to enjoy having one more wide-eyed companion to dote upon.”