Astrid

I lie on the floor for so long, it almost feels like I have gone back in time to my first days here. Oh, if only time could be rewound. Would I have touched the flower then?

After sometime, hunger gets the better of me. Somehow my legs regain some ounce of strength and I wander to the kitchens like a ghost before dawn even breaks.

Nobody is about. If the beast escapes again, it might as well kill me.

The way it killed my father.

I stay in the kitchen long after an invisible housekeeper carries my empty cereal bowl away. Outside, the black, starry skies give way to a tinge of blue. A promise of another long, hollow day.

Perhaps being in the castle is a better thing than being in my empty house, forced to face the aftermath of the attack. Forced to hear the rumblings of the crowd. I wonder who else has been claimed victim; how many other children have lost their parents, or parents their children.

At some point I find myself retrieving my sword – one of the shorter, more curved blades with sapphires embedded into the sides of the hilt – from the armory.

Making my way to the empty arena, I seek out one of the wooden pillars. Several other logs are lodged into the wood at clever positions, so that they shift and move when they are struck.

I raise my sword and swing the blade into the central pillar.

It lodges itself into the thick wood, but only slightly. There is not much damage.

A flicker of dissatisfaction ticks in my chest. I hack again. And again. And again.

My father is dead. Not because he has been battling a disease – no; if it were so, he would have lived longer.

Heat flares up my shoulders and arms, seizing my muscles as they double the push behind each swing.

My father is dead because the beast found him.

The blade clatters to the ground. My hands ball into fists and I launch them into the pillar and the logs. Some of them hit back. I do not care.

And we let it escape the castle.

An outraged bellow reverberates in the air. I kick at the pillar with so much force, it should topple right over. But it does not. It stays still, untouched save for the minor dents my sword has managed to cause.

“Your posture is all wrong,” a gentle voice causes me to jump.

I whirl around, still panting and my nostrils still flared.

Imogen folds her arms and rests her weight upon one hip. Today she is dressed differently, in a pair of loose brown cotton trousers and an aquamarine tunic. The surprise of seeing her in anything other than skirts melts some of the anger away.

“I know it is. I do not care.”

She walks over to pick up two wooden swords. Then she stands in the middle of the arena and simply waits.

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Reluctantly, I join her. She tosses one to me and I discard my own. She does not swing her sword in anticipation, the way the others sometimes do. She does not need to test the feel of the blade against the weight of her arm. She is sure.

“If you want to get angry, best to focus your anger into practice. That way, everything you unleash feels somewhat productive. Distracts you. Come,” she resumes a defensive stance and lifts her makeshift weapon.

“Raise your sword.”

I obey. She beckons for me to approach, so I try to take her advice and focus all the building fire into calculations of how I can best surpass her defenses.

To my astonishment, she feints and parries with ease. Her brief attacks help me to stop worrying about hurting her. Clearly, I cannot do so very easily.

After some time, I run out of breath. We part.

“You can fight,” I say, the shock in my tone nearly offensive.

“You and Isabelle are not the only ones prepared for attacks against the beast. I, too, have something to defend, though I have little love for this art.”

The memory of her falling face-first onto the floor after the beast spared her son that night rings clear in my mind.

I raise my sword again. But before I can launch myself at her, my breathing falters. My heart stops racing.

It seems to have stopped altogether. Whatever fire that was in me turns to ice just as quickly as it burned; it seeps down to my extremities like a cold fever.

My arm loses its strength and lowers the sword. I let it fall to the ground.

“How did you do it?” my breath is raspy and hushed. “How did you care for him, knowing what he did to the one you loved?”

Imogen, too, unguards herself. Her shoulders rise and fall with the effort of having kept up with me.

I expect her to remind me that Kieran is not the beast, that its crimes are not made by his choice, that he is very much a victim as we are.

She does not say any of that. Instead, she just shrugs.

“I do not know,” she admits. “I just admitted I was in pain until I could see clearly enough that, so was he.”

Kieran

It is the falling night which plagues what little nightmares my mind can conjure in the few hours of sleep I can find each day. Every time twilight makes itself known, the trepidation of my uncertain state seeps into the edges of my soul like poison.

I prepare early. I always prepare early; no one but Bayorn sees me by nightfall. Even then, staying out of the dungeons at any time of the day is a gamble – but my guard insists that I do not waste the last days of my life.

Tonight, three hours before midnight, I tarry for just a moment on the grand staircase.

There is no pain. Sometimes this is a good sign: I won’t transform until much later in the wee hours of the morning. The beast still retreats by dawn. That four-day incident hasn’t repeated itself.

Sometimes it just means I’ve lost a bit of sensitivity to when the monster will emerge.

Soft footfalls from behind prick at my ears. The idea of shooing that person – probably a hungry Isabelle – away is tempting, but I decide against it. There is too much friction in the air these days.

Out of the corner of my eye, the figure plops down one step above the one upon which I sit.

Her scent catches me first. It’s not really something I can place. She doesn’t smell like flowers without her perfume, or like the earth or anything else. She just smells like her.

When she exhales softly, I know not to turn my head and look.

We haven’t been alone since her father passed.

Since I killed her father.

Between us, in the vacuum silence of the castle, she doesn’t need to speak for the words to echo off the high walls.

I hate you. I hate that I cannot blame you. I trusted you despite everything. It’s your fault I’m even here in the first place; throwing a weak, frail man into a prison just so you could punish him for petty theft – that is more than cruel. It’s despicable.

It’s what she should say. She should have just thrown knives into my chest until I bleed out and wake up as a walking corpse. She should plummet me with her fists. She should scream, shout, curse.

Anything is better than this silence.

I wonder if she’s depending on me to break it. What am I supposed to say? Another apology? To plead for more undeserved mercy?

“I…” I try to start, but the words die prematurely in my throat.

“I know,” Astrid says, her voice hollow and cold.

The gap between us both stretches further and closes in.