Beasts and Beauty by Soman Chainani

Author:Soman Chainani
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2021-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

He wants her company.

For Mei, that is worse than death.

You are my prisoner now, he bellows. You can never go home again. You will live here forever.

We’ll see, she says, walking into his house.

The castle is so rich and beautiful that it doesn’t seem forged by humans. Statues smile down at her; the window curtains draw a little wider to light her path; a mirror even says, This way!, as if it knows what she is looking for. Because it is the library she cares about, and when she finds it, she drops to her knees, because it is higher than the highest house in Mont de Marsan and as vast as a royal ballroom, with magical ladders that bend to the floor and scoop her right up, whizzing her from romance on high to mysteries down low to fantasy in between, each shelf like an exotic land because men back home only hoarded books about shipwrecks and jungles, but here are so many books, too many books, and she doesn’t know where to begin. That’s when she notices the Beast peeking from the door, still holding his chocolate hearts, and she thinks this is the moment where she should kill him, so she can read in peace—

Try this one, he says.

He plucks a book from the lowest shelf and puts it on the table.

Then he’s gone.

The mirrors point her to her room, which is outlandish in size and has three closets, filled to the brim with dresses and shoes she’d never wear, but the bed is comfortable and she curls up with pillows and gives the book a try. It is not about shipwrecks or jungles but about a man named Bluebeard who is so handsome and rich that he takes wife after wife, testing each one to obey his rules and cutting off their heads when they don’t, until finally one girl escapes and a dark, handsome prince rescues her before he stabs Bluebeard in the heart. The End.

She snaps the book shut, loud enough to spook the mirrors in the hall, which whisper, My word! and Oh dear!, as if they’ve gotten too used to silence.

Dinner is served at six, and she picks a dress from the closet that is heavy and silver and looks like a suit of armor.

The table in the grand hall glistens with truffle lobster salad, pheasant confit, hen egg custard, chateaubriand, salted shortbread, and raspberry lemon curd—but Mei just asks for some broth and rice, which the Beast goes and fetches for her without delay, and she wonders who is doing the cooking.

The castle is enchanted by fairies, he says, reading her mind. They found me wandering in a forest and brought me here. Fairies have always liked me. They see beneath the surface. They see who you are.

A new wrinkle, Mei thinks. Will the fairies like her? She doesn’t want to be an unwelcome guest in her own house. Perhaps she should wait to kill him until she gets these fairies on her side.

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