Kieran

I wake to the sound of hushed conversation. At first, my blurry thoughts cannot focus on a singular voice; all the sounds just eddy together like a lulling symphony.

It takes my eyes a while to adjust to the low light. Even though the last golden rays of the day still pierce through the windows in a final, desperate attempt to shed all its light before giving way to the moon, the fireplace is lit.

My fingers reach to pull the crisp warmth of the freshly-heated blanket over my neck.

“He is awake,” an eager voice says. Two palms press down on the stiff muscles in my right upper arm.

I groan. Imogen chides Eli, who removes his palms and instead pokes the side of my nose.

“Kieran?” he persists.

“Go away.” I move one shoulder in an attempt to shrug him off. “You’re so annoying.”

He pokes me again until Imogen swats his hand away.

My heavy eyelids lift further. More faces blur and then focus into view: Imogen and Bayorn sit closest to me, with Eli fidgeting restlessly on his lap. Isabelle’s crossed legs fidget absently as she finds space for herself on the mattress next to my leg. Astrid shifts from her poised stature on a chair to lean over the bed, her expression a portrait of concern.

“What happened?” I ask.

Groggily, I try to push myself to a sitting position. Every muscle in my body screams. I have to rise gingerly only to make it halfway before I give up and rest my head against the bed-frame.

“You’ve been out for a solid twenty-four hours,” Isabelle says, peering at me curiously. “Do you...remember anything before that?”

It aches to even run a hand across my forehead. “My transformation came early. Suddenly. And then I…” Brief flashes of consciousness come to me in waves. It’s like trying to remember a dream my brain just cannot place; there are no images. Only the remembrance of how I felt.

For some reason, looking at Eli’s heart-shaped face sends a wave of familiarity over my brain. A memory of drifting in and out of the shadows.

“So, you really were a beast for three days,” Bayorn’s voice interrupts my struggling thoughts. He rubs at the whiskers on his chin, deep in speculation. “Your transformations are becoming more and more erratic.”

“There was no warning,” I murmur.

“And you did not transform last night; you merely slept,” Imogen chimes in.

Isabelle chews on her lip. “Can the transformation be put off as long as he’s unconscious?”

“No,” Bayorn says. “He always wakes before then. We have tried sleeping drafts before.”

“Perhaps something a little more potent?” she asks.

“We have tried everything. Even medicine from beyond the mirror.”

“We can try something again. Maybe now that the rules are all topsy-turvy…”

Astrid, who has been a statue throughout the conversation, finally cracks a faint smile. “Perhaps we can just give him a good knock over the head right now.”

Eli giggles. Isabelle grins. “He just looks so peaceful sleeping, doesn’t he?”

Beside me, Bayorn cracks a smile.

“Do not jest,” Imogen scolds, the only one unamused by their discussion. “We must take turns to keep vigil tonight. Anything could happen.”

One by one, they all start to push the task to each other. I roll my eyes and let my head fall back onto the pillow as they continue to struggle not to stray off-topic in their discussion.

Slowly, I slip into restful slumber. The very last coherent thought that crosses my mind is of how strange it feels to finally feel safe in this castle.

Astrid

I have not returned to Ainsfrel since Kieran went missing. How could I go, when everyone else was spending all their time searching for him? Though it rationally was not so, leaving them to their efforts for even a split second felt like a lax in my duties as a decent person. As a friend.

I leave before lunchtime in the hopes of avoiding another tedious sparring session.

As usual, the mirror takes me to my own bedroom. The same rays of sun stream in, the way it did every morning I arrived before. The way it always will, regardless of whether or not the curse is broken.

My worn-out cloth shoes pad against the creaking wooden floors as I check my father’s bedroom. He is not here; he must have woken up by himself in my absence.

Making my way down the staircase, half my mind prepares a proper apology for my absence to my father. The other half mulls on how the curse can be broken. Could it be really true that Isabelle will never fall in love with Kieran? What then? What of his bargain with Lady Selaena, and how many more transformations – and possible deaths – should be risked until the ‘price’ is fully paid?

“Papa?” I try not to raise my voice too abruptly, lest I startle the poor man.

No reply. I scan the empty kitchen and then make my way to the study in the back. All doors are opened wide to reveal the house’s vacancy.

“Papa?” Perhaps he has gone out for a walk. Is he with Lady Tremaine?

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I make my way to the front of the house, pulling the hood of my oak brown traveler’s cloak over my head. Just before I reach what is our humble version of a drawing room, I see it.

All the furniture has been upturned into chaos. A broken chair lies on the carpet, one of its legs across the room and stained in a dark colour. The front door is wide open. Its hinges have been torn out and the entire door has been dislocated.

Someone had barged into the house.

My heart jolts. The wintry draft that enters the house makes the hairs on my arms stand. A queasy feeling starts to sit in my stomach, brewing into an anxious storm.

I rush out the door.

The whole town has somehow gathered outside my house. At first, I think they have just shifted the marketplace to a different road, but there are no stalls. No noise.

Hushed murmurs pick up. One by one, they rise in the air and reach my ears.

“Is that…”

“...such a terrible thing indeed…”

“...remain safe…”

Several eyes start to turn on me. My hood does not do much to hide my face in broad daylight.

Several feet away, the town’s physician orders a man to pull a white cloth over something on a cart.

My blood goes cold.

People murmur louder as I push past the crowd, their glares like ice picks against my back. But I ignore them. I ignore the mentions of my name, the questions, the speculations. All I can see is the distantly familiar sight of a body lying very still under a white sheet on a cart.

Before a man about Bayorn’s age can pick the handles up and wheel it away, my hand lashes out to still his arm.

He starts. I pay no heed to him or anybody else.

The white sheet lies there under the winter sun, waiting for me. Daring my hands to touch it. I want to pull it off, to see the face of someone else and scold my overactive imagination. To be done and over with these few seconds before I go to find my father with Lady Tremaine.

“Astrid?”

This voice, my mind singles out from amidst the crowd. I barely remove my hood and turn when a figure comes rushing to pull me into an embrace.

“Lady Tremaine,” my shaking words are drowned out by her wailing. She clings onto me like I am the only warmth in this winter.

“Astrid. Oh, child!”

“What? What is it?” my hands come around her shoulders and head. “What’s happened?”

“Your father. He...he…” I have never heard such desperate, sorrowful gasps come from Lady Tremaine before. Such a loss of composure.

She releases me and tries to wipe her tears fruitlessly. Around us, people spectate as if we are putting on a show.

I am so numb, I cannot even feel my own heart break.

“He was fine the last time I saw him,” I say, as if that changes the fact that my father is dead. “He was ill, yes, but not any more than the days before. Did he ingest something?”

“He was perfectly fine. I saw to it myself just last night. I…I was the last person to s-see him.” Her face crumples again. “I was the only one to see him yesterday. He spoke only of you. Kept...kept asking for you.”

I do not want to hear all this.

“But the physician gave him six months,” I argue helplessly. “We have two more months left. We...we have time. He was fine.”

She dabs her handkerchief over her reddening nose. Slowly, her sobs come under control, long enough for confusion to mix with the sorrow in her expression.

“No,” she sniffles. “He… The animal broke into the house and, and attacked some of the townsfolk.”

Suddenly the stench of blood amplifies by a thousand times. I start to taste metal.

“What animal?” I demand.

“The one they have been hunting,” her lower lip wobbles, but there must be something about my face that stops her from bursting into tears again. Instead she looks more concerned for me.

“No. No, that’s not what happened.”

Her forehead creases. “Astrid…”

“No. No, no, no.” I shake my head. “There must be some sort of mistake.”

She tries to reach out for me, but I push her away roughly. Something rips the road out from beneath my feet. The world starts to spin. People’s faces start to blur.

My body lurches against the side of the cart. I can barely see clearly. My fingers shake violently as they creep up against the white cloth, now turning a slight shade of burgundy where I press it against the body.

I wrench the cloth off the body.

The scream dies halfway up my throat. Only a strangled whimper falters in my ears, too faint for anyone else to hear.

My knees buckle. Someone catches me and holds me up, calling my name, but I cannot hear anything anymore. The sun is too bright. The pastel skies are too blue. Too normal.

Lady Tremaine’s wide, grief-stricken eyes come into view. I can only hear my own breath in my ears when she mouths my name.

“That is not him,” I try to tell her, but I am not sure she hears me, because she keeps pressing a hand over my forehead.

People surround me. Strangers I recognize. They try to explain, to tell me to sit down or something. A sudden rage fills my chest. They do not understand. Why can’t they understand? That is not my father.

I shove past them. When someone tries to grab my arm, I twist out of their grip and run.

The room in the West Wing greets me like a breath of fresh air.

I wheeze and gasp for all the stagnant air until it is not enough. When my breath runs out, I search for more down the staircase.

Spinning. Everything is spinning. Slipping between my fingers. I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe.

“Astrid!” Kieran’s voice calls out. I pause and turn.

He jogs up the steps towards me, sweat forming little droplets all over his face and travelling down his neck into his deep red shirt.

Red, like the colour splashed all over my father’s torn body and ravaged face.

“You know, fleeing to the mirror won’t exempt you from training every day,” he grins.

Behind him, the others make their way up the steps. Someone tells me to get ready for lunch.

They are acting too normally. Have I just been dreaming?

But when Kieran reaches out to touch my shoulder, I know the things I have seen were not fictitious. They are as real as him.

They are as real as the beast.

I flinch away from his touch. His smile falters. Lady Tremaine’s worry appears in his expression.

“What’s wrong?”

I turn and flee to the East Wing. My head is pounding, the ground is shifting. They are all calling out my name and it suddenly feels like I am back in Ainsfrel.

My room welcomes me with an open door that slams in the face of whoever it is who has caught up with me. I press my back against the door and sink to the cold floor.

“Astrid?” Kieran pounds against the door. “What happened? Tell me.”

Another voice, farther away, sounds: “Kieran? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. She just locked herself in the room.”

“Go away.” My head hurts. It hurts so much. I press my palms against my throbbing temples, but the pain only amplifies. My pants turn into gasps.

“Astrid -”

“Leave me alone!” I scream at the windows in a volume that startles even me.

Abrupt silence.

The sound of footsteps retreating calms my racing heart.

Finally, my soul breaks. The deafening silence settles in the air and closes in on me, hollowing my chest out and yet digging a pit that plunges deeper and deeper.

When I cry out, it is not like the angry howl of the beast, nor the mournful sobs of Lady Tremaine’s.

It is my own. My own lonely, empty keening.