The Beast & His Beauty by Willow Winters

Author:Willow Winters [Winters, Willow]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Romance
Amazon: B0DF6BFYDV
Published: 2024-08-23T22:00:00+00:00

THE PRINCE AND THE BEAST

The highest floor of the tower is the place in the castle where the darkness dwells most deeply.

I know that the people in the village gossip about the darkness that has enveloped this place, and there is some truth to those tales. In the first days after the witch cast her curse, the darkness from the storm of her magic seeped into the walls and clouded all the windows, making it dark as night outside even when the sun was high. It drove me to madness; I’m sure of it.

Gradually, as the years passed, that darkness faded. No villagers tried to breach the walls after the mob came after me and failed to kill me, but I assume the rumors stayed stuck in their minds as rumors tend to do.

No, the castle is not shrouded in darkness completely, though the mist still clings in the enchanted forest and my forced solitude has felt like darkness at times. There are parts of the castle that have fallen out of my mind, unvisited for years in a row. I have no knowledge of their state. There have been many days when it did not seem worth the effort of getting out of my bed and the castle may as well have been as dark as the stories say.

In this room, the darkness is real.

It is not a space meant to be seen by visitors, and so is not finely decorated, though the circular room contains carpets and a table and a chair that is well-enough built. On the table sits the glass cloche that contains the rose that bears the remnants of the curse, just as I do. Because of the nature of it, darkness crowds the room like a tapestry on the walls, translucent but not transparent, making the moonlight from the waning crescent seem dimmer and less potent.

I have grown used to the darkness over the years, and even become accustomed to the fact that the rose and its petals are here, a physical representation of what remains of my life.

Staring at the rose in its cloche feels different now.

I sit back in the chair with a sigh and let my eyes linger on the rose as if I have never seen it before. The stem has not changed in appearance since the day the witch cursed me, and the petals are as pink as if freshly bloomed. Its physical state has not changed much since the day I dragged myself back to the castle, beaten and bleeding, and brought myself to this tower to lie on the floor until I could summon the strength to pull myself upright and go down to my bed chambers. I know that must seem senseless, but at the time, in the haze of my wounds, I thought that proximity to the rose would help with the healing. To this day, I have no idea whether it made any difference at all. I only know that climbing the tower steps

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