Who: Rose & Henry What: A nice formal dinner. Where: The Beast's Castle When: Recently. Warnings/Rating: Probably at least PG13, with some nice heavy duty flirting. Note: Part II
Henry was surprised that she should have so much mastery of her magic in such a short period; his own had taken not only practice but training. He thought that perhaps this mastery over plants was more instinctive than his own, a magic that consisted of sound and emotion. His fingers itched for strings, but there was none here, and he would not risk singing if in the next second he might be cut off by a throat not his own. An abrupt change into a creature could send even the most innocent cantrip out of balance, because Henry’s magic depended on melodic phrasing.
He was surprised that she would spend time on his wishes, prideful that they were and not invested with much logic. He thought she would be more likely to resent his dislike of more eyes in his castle, as she had been before, and he didn’t think that his reaction as Beast had been more incoherent rage and teeth than anything like weak sensibilities. He watched her while she thought, willing to wait, considering the movement of thoughts on her face. When she decided the stables would be a better place for the blond Wolf/man, he was visibly relieved. “I am not sure there any horses left,” he said, admitting he spent very little time being much concerned with housekeeping. “As long as he does not threaten anyone, he may stay there.” Hopefully whatever he changed into next was not big enough to eat a lone wolf.
When Rose stood up, a steaming tureen and a loaf of bread came to an abrupt halt just at the threshold of their table. By the time she made it to his lap, the bread, floating about four feet off the floor, had just careened back through the door and out of sight.
Henry forgot himself as soon as Rose was in reach. A sharp stab of lust went all the way through him. He put out two arms and wrapped them around her as if she was the last warm thing on earth, pulling her into his lap as he slid back on the chair. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, took a deep inhale of her scent that sent tickles over her skin, and said her name with so much longing that it hurt to get it from his throat.
Rose had been born with the ability to make the trees bend and flowers bloom. Like breaking curses, it had belonged to her since she was a wild child in the woods, and it had never truly left her. She'd hidden it away when it became unsafe, during the Adversary war and her time with the merchant, but it had only been slumbering. New magic, like spells and brews, those she had a much harder time with, and she was only glad the villagers she sold potions to didn't notice when they didn't work just right. She never thought of his magic. She'd only heard his fiddle in a dream, and dreams weren't true. He might only have a passing interest in the waking world, or he might have no talent at all. She didn't associate the Beast with any music at all.
"He won't threaten anyone. I've trained him," she said of her Wolf, and she didn't care if there were horses. She knew better than to think she'd be needing them. She was young and spoiled and pouty, but she had moments of self-awareness that were as bright as the copper strands of hair on her head. If she came back to this place, she wouldn't be riding away on a horse anytime soon. "We don't need horses," she added casually, as if it didn't matter at all, not even in the smallest bit. She was even regal about it, a tip to her chin and a defiant little spark to her gaze.
She didn't notice the abbreviated progress of the tureen and loaf of bread. She was too focused on the possibility that he would cast her off or push her away. She could never tell what his morality allowed for, not since he'd refused her kiss in the mundane desert, and she had a very skewed sense of right and wrong when it came to men. But he didn't, and she knew he expected her to be a lady. But it was hard to force a wild thing into that behavior, and it wasn't her original instinct to demure.
The arms that wrapped around her made her breathe again, and she hadn't realized she'd stopped in the first place. But it was an entirely different type of exhale that passed her lips when he pulled her back against him. She didn't think it was possible for anything to be more intimate than being back against him like she was, and she'd done a great many intimate things in her lifetime. She made a soft, feminine sound of pleasure when he buried his face in the curve of her neck, and she shifted her bottom against his lap, and the sound of his voice made her want to whine in the back of her throat. She almost turned to look at him, but she resisted. "Would you like to kiss me?" she asked instead, an offering in the question.
The Beast had no music. That, in the end, was one of the primary reasons why this particular torture was chosen for him. He could no longer hear his magic, not even in his mind. When he woke, the music of his dreams was lost to him, an abstract concept, only so many events and images, all quickly fading. No sound. No magic. No life.
Even the castle’s silence was oppressive, the crumbling of its structure around him an assembly of cobwebs, as completely absent of sound as the inevitable descent of time into eternity. Henry had become a part of that silence, and the Beast dwelt in a cocoon, a stagnant isolation of a soul from the world. No pet, no horse, would have been able to survive in such a place. He did not even think of the invisible servants as people any longer, convinced as he was that they could not think themselves people and still be sane. The Wolf would do what it would do; Henry had no concern for it in his present form.
He curled a little closer to her neck, not looking into her face, but remaining there in the curtain of her hair, his broad hands pressed into the alien fabric. “Yes,” he said, his voice muffled and the movement of his lips a hair’s breadth from her newly bared shoulder. He made a faintly agonized sound as she shifted over his lap, and his grip tightened on her hips. “You are making it very difficult to be... proper about this,” he said, as if he was literally in pain. “We should not be doing this in the Hall,” he added, in hushed tones that threatened a smile.
Finally he raised his head, and keen new green stared into her face hungrily. His next words were undeniably forced, yet determined. Amber motes in the green of his eyes snapped. “I can go about this the right way. You deserve it.”
She didn't know where his thoughts had wandered, because she was having trouble thinking about anything save the feel of his capably broad hands against the fabric of her dress. She could feel the shadow of his breath on her shoulder, and she wondered if there was magic in the heat of it, or if she was simply imagining. The agonized sound he made when she shifted was not immediately understood. She had taken many lovers, yes, but she'd never stayed with one, and the couplings of her youth were not the kinds of things that leant themselves to learning another person's body. The grip on her hips still brought those moments to mind, though, and her mind swirled with memories of dark corners and hidden spaces.
"Do you want to be proper?" she asked, her own voice lower than its normal timbre. She turned to look at him, still retaining her place on his lap as her hips swiveled. She looked surprised. Men were never proper. "You have no wife," she said of the hall, looking around and not understanding why the impropriety should matter there. In her experience, men only hid if they were wedded. He was not. But his next words brought some clarity, the confusion in her amber eyes chased away by something akin to understanding.
"What is the right way?" she asked, and she stopped just shy of telling him that she didn't deserve whatever he thought she deserved. Her reputation was incomparable in the Homelands, and she didn't want to lie to him about it. But sitting there, she very much wished she didn't need to remind him of the things she'd done. Once, she'd been engaged to a prince, before things went wrong. She'd never wanted to go back to being that girl as she did then.
The idea that he would have a wife, first a shiftless waste of a second son, then a soldier, and finally a prisoner, was so ludicrous that he was actually distracted out of his current, uniquely human dilemma. He threw back his head and laughed, a sound that literally had to be surprised from him, and came out very much a hoarse bark of disused muscles. “No,” he said, now smiling so broadly that laugh lines he did not have creased through his rough brown skin, “no wife.” His hand brushed affectionately over the strange roughness of her gown where it met her spine at the very base of her back. The movement was extremely appreciative.
She had him pinned with that look, like a butterfly to a board, and most of the laughter died out of his face as he gazed up at her. “The right way,” he repeated. “Uh,” (awkward now), “you know.” He cleared his throat. “Courting and such. The right way.” He eyed her as if she was being obtuse on purpose. His tone became faintly anxious. “Unless you don’t want to be courted. Of course. I would not want to...” he trailed off because he couldn’t think how to finish the sentence without sounding churlish.
He thought he should probably put her from his lap, and his fingers spasmed against her back and hip, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Instead, strangely enough, he leaned closer, sitting up straight so he was holding her rather than simply providing a perch. The musky fur scent still hung around his skin, clean and dusty with undertones of exertion and new sweat.
The laughter surprised her sufficiently that she turned her head to look at him more fully. She didn't associate the sound with the Beast. She didn't associate the sound with the man at her back, either. She stared, wide-eyed and youthful interest that was somehow centuries old, yet never aging. "Why do you laugh? Did you never want a wife?" she asked, and she looked around the vestiges of the hall. Once, this must have been a grand castle. All sons of grand castles took wives. And she thought he was the eldest, surely, because someone else would live here, were he not. Had his parents not impressed upon him the need to continue the line? "All sons want wives." She had been promised to a younger son, herself, until she had been deemed insufficient. Yes, all sons married. The appreciative touch to her spine made her shiver, but she didn't look away.
And, since she had not divided her attention, she got to fully enjoy the way his expression turned awkward. "You wish to court me?" she asked, copper bright, her features going blush warm and all youthful smiles. "You don't have to," she told him, because there was little point in hiding the fact that the gilding was entirely off the lily. "I'm not a virgin that you need to court to get into your bed," she said, the smile on her lips fading slowly, almost visibly in steps and realization. "I've never been courted," she admitted. "I was promised once, but that was for breaking a curse, and the prince's father found me wanting." It was a confession that hurt her to make, pride and years of scab over that particular wound. "I have no money, no family, no virtue, nothing valuable enough to make me worth courting." Because there world had rules about these things. Landed sons did not court illegitimate witch's daughters. They took them as mistresses, and they visited with them in poorly-hidden secret, but they didn't marry them. Snow had been adopted by a king; she had not.
Despite her elevated perch, he was able to look her full in the face when she twisted to see him, and he counterbalanced her weight with the position of his shoulders so that he could intersperse the conversation with long, serious looks into her eyes, which seemed to retain more color than he had before. Her hair seemed a brighter copper, her lips a deeper pink. Perhaps the Beast’s eyes were not as aware of color, weak in perception as well as focus. Henry stared, trying to memorize how she looked in this way. He pressed a hand to her hip so she was yet closer, and blinked several times to restore his mind to its initial track, which had become more difficult to maintain in the twists of conversation and the continuing heat of her body against his.
“I did not want a wife,” he admitted. “My parents were indulgent. And then it became... a lesser priority. A danger, even.” He hesitated, then continued, “I do not... want a temporary guest in my bed.” He visibly colored when she said the word virgin as if his mother was sitting there listening, and his dusky skin actually flushed a little darker in the flat of his cheeks and his neck. “I do not care about that,” he said, in a rush, to attempt to cut off further conversation about her dishonorable instability. “There is none to deny me my choice,” Henry gave an arrogant little tip of his chin that was unmistakably royal, then dropped his chin and gave her a keen, careful look. “Except you. We should delay, of course, until the curse is dealt with.” He worried his lower lip.
She didn't mind being looked at. When she was very small, she'd loved attention of any kind, but everyone had always fawned over Snow. Growing up with a sister who was the fairest one of all was really a huge pain, and it was only bravado and loud wildness that kept Rose from becoming any kind of wilting flower. Her mother had always said she'd been born to be a defiant weed, and Rose thought that was a requirement to survive sisterhood with someone as beautifully incomparable as Snow. There was had been a twisted satisfaction in stealing her flawless sister's husband out from beneath her nose. It had been very short lived, but the satisfaction had been there. She could deny it all she wanted to, but that jealousy went very deep. Now, she and Snow had made peace, but it all still lived beneath the surface, thorns and bright green stems. When he tugged her closer, her thoughts of Snow vanished, and her breath caught and held a moment in her throat.
She smiled when his cheeks flushed. She'd never known men to blush, and she touched her fingertips to the side of his neck, where the flush disappeared into his shirt. When he said they should wait until the curse was dealt with, she rolled her eyes. "Don't be stupid," she told him. "We can't control the curse, and we shouldn't not take advantage of whatever time we have." She looked up toward the stairs, knowing she could probably cajole him up there, should she want to. No, no, that wasn't precisely right. She knew she wanted to, but she knew he preferred something more traditional. Plus, she'd done so much cajoling in her day. Once, just once, it might be nice to not be the one slipping a dress off in order to seduce a man. She looked back at him. "You may court me," she told him, "but only if you kiss me now." Her chin tipped slightly, and her pupils went wide-black with nervous anticipation.
He didn’t like her casual dismissal of the curse, and he thought it very unlikely that she would enjoy being courted only a few hours at a time. No woman wanted to be saddled with a maddened beast for the majority of the day, he thought, but he would take her attention where he could find it. Perhaps by the time he convinced her into matrimony the spell might have run its course. He was hopeful that somewhere, time and death were finally gaining ground on the witch, by some other hand. He still wanted his vengeance, but sanity now had a stronger draw. It savored more of freedom than finality.
Henry was no fool. He turned his head when her eyes went toward the stairs, and he knew what she was thinking, or thought he did. His thoughts ran perhaps a little more visual, skipping the cajoling and going right toward the bedroom, and the imagined delights literally made his mouth water. He leaned a little closer, nostrils flaring, and showed the ivory gleam of a few teeth on the right side of his mouth. The expression made him look hungry, and he most certainly was.
The realignment of a spare few bones, a stretch of muscle, and he had put his chin aside hers and pressed his lips close. The young prince disguised abroad had grown to know much of kissing and the arts between women and men, but he attempted to be respectful. He was... moderately successful. He leaned a little closer than he should, but then, she was already on his lap and there was not much propriety left while they were both fully dressed. The kiss tasted of apples and fresh bread.
She'd been born to break curses, but she'd accepted the fact that she couldn't break this one. Her childhood with Snow had been peppered with a long line of cursed creatures knocking on the cottage door, and she'd only lost her love for transforming a beast to a man when Snow left. That summer, creature upon creature had come, and she'd refused to help even one of them. From that day to this, she'd never broken another curse. Her other magic had blossomed, but maybe she could only break curses with Snow. Regardless, she believed that his Beauty had to come and fix things for him. Regardless of what Gabriel had insisted, she was not that girl. Where she came from, the Beast's fate was very different, and she had trouble making it coincide with this version. But she knew one thing; if her caring for him was the way to make him whole again, it would have already happened. Curses weren't as romantic as they appeared to be in fairy tales.
She closed her eyes when he leaned closer, and she felt his breath and the closeness of his cheek before she felt his lips. She shifted on his lap, sliding one leg over his and straddling his thighs, her red dress sliding high and no concern for the enchanted servants or anyone else that might see this. Her shoes fell to the ground, click and clang against the stone. All of the Homelands knew what she was, and she didn't have his sense of propriety. What was the point in hiding a truth that everyone knew - either firsthand or through word?
She tasted sharp and green, with a hint of a sweetness that tasted how roses smelled. She tasted slightly bitter, like magic bubbling over a hearth or dancing along the air. She sighed, and the kiss was one that asked for things. There was no shy virgin here, and her fingers slid to his shoulders and gripped there, as if she was afraid it would all end if she didn't hold onto it. If anything was a sign of youth in the kiss, it was that. Her tongue sought his out, lips parted and a plea in the way she opened her mouth beneath his.
The Beast had lived for far too long with his curse. He had tried all manner of things to break it, some of them forthright and others sly and careful. In those early years, he had none to ask for advice, and so broke the boundaries of his curse in an attempt to stretch it into snapping; this only caused his conscious mind to lessen until the animal was again within range of the castle. At other times he had done everything from attempting a permanent human bearing (even clothes, for a period) to seeking some obscure form of animals music, as wolves’ howls. Nothing worked, and eventually his schemes had faded to focus only on getting his claws into the witch long enough to do her so much damage should could not heal.
The world that Rose had intruded upon many months ago had therefore been narrow and precise, centered upon vengeance, even on the assumption that a final cost would be necessary. The Beast had no reason to expect to outlive his curse.
The metamorphosis of his form changed that. Henry had a glimpse of what it was like to be as he was, and he realized how much it was a part of him, how crucial it was to keeping him not just alive, but sane. As his former self, as his real self, he had Rose. He could put his arms around her, as he did now, and pull her as close as she could be and still have breath; he could open his mouth and tangle tongues with her like the breathless boy she made him feel like on their worst days; he could taste her eagerness for him like he was the only thing that mattered. He could have anything he wanted.
Henry broke the kiss with a gasp and only just caught Rose from spilling off the edge of his lap with the violence of his forced recoil. His green eyes had come over shadows and he was obviously short of breath, and the tower room thoughts were circling like vultures in his mind. “Stop!” he said, a little desperately, throwing his head back to get his hair out of his eyes and some fresh air into his lungs, “Or I won’t have any mind left!”
She was lost in the kiss, and his recoil was unexpected. She didn't even think to catch herself, to keep herself from toppling. It was only his grip that kept her from ending up a pile of red and copper on the floor, and she stared at him, flushed cheeks and swollen lips, without understanding. After a few long seconds of catching her breath, she finally cleared her throat and, with as much dignity as she could muster, she climbed off his lap and smoothed down her dress. She stood there, unsure of what to say. She considered seating herself in her own chair once more, but that would take a dignity that she just wasn't in possession of, despite her multiple attempts to actually move toward said chair.
She glanced over her shoulder at the table. "Thank you for the meal. It was lovely," she said, her voice gaining strength from the beginning of the sentence to the end. "If you don't mind, I think I'll retire now. I have clients awaiting me." It sounded weak to her own ears, but she managed it with poise, for which she thought she should be lauded. Her cheeks remained flushed red, possibly more red than when she began speaking, but she didn't storm out or stomp away from the table the way her shame dictated she should. Though, tellingly, the sharp green sting on the air became brighter, and tiny vines began breaking through the foundation beneath Henry's feet.
"I'll return in a fortnight, if you still want me to." Because running, however satisfying it had been before, hadn't actually done much for her at all. She wanted to flee, but she didn't give into it, though his reaction had only made her feel as dirty in her desires as those encounters with the women of Snow's court had done, all those years ago.
Henry was occupied with controlling his own thoughts for the intervening seconds, and her long stare certainly hadn’t helped. Looking into the endless tunnel of her dark eyes, he thought he saw all manner of things, black and total, yet scalding to the touch. Far from the gentleman he was trying to remember how to be, he felt even more of an animal than before, only now he could look up and gaze at a black sky that went on forever. He stared at her and then pulled his gaze away as she slid away from him, but he could still see the dark eyes newly strewn with star motes on the back of his own lids.
Automatically, he stood himself. He was much taller than she, and though long of limb he always seemed a little akilter, with his bow arm a little stronger and higher against his body than his left. He did not allow her further space to depart from him as she thanked him for the meal; he knew the sound of a dismissal when he heard it. Displaying a deftness he shouldn’t rightly have, he came forward and caught her hand, getting a whiff of broken branches as he did so. He started to detect something wrong in her face, and he looked positively alarmed at the mention of a fortnight apart.
“You can’t go. There are eight more courses.” He swallowed and tightened his grip on her hand. “What’s wrong? You smell like you are running.” The green was so strong that he could smell it even in this form, and he associated it with her anger and fear enough to know what it meant. It made him nervous, and he swiveled an anxious gaze around the candlelit hall. His stomach was twisting sour against his spine.
She didn't expect him to rise to his feet, though she should have. It was the gentlemanly thing to do when a lady stood, and he still harbored the illusion that she was a lady. She looked down at her hand when he closed his own hand around it. His explanation that there were eight more courses took some of the tension from her frame, and she gave him an unsure smile. She opened her mouth to tell him that she wasn't running. Her? Run? Of course not. But that would have been a lie, and she thought lying might not be the best thing for new beginnings. But she didn't know how to respond in a way that she could ensure wouldn't cause a rift, and that left her at a loss.
Rose was never at a loss.
The realization that she was wilting because she feared his displeasure made her frown. That was Snow. That had been Snow. That wasn't her. She'd never been accommodating curtsies and concern about speaking her mind. Her mother had said she was the wildest of summer storms, and she straightened her back at the memory. She planted her feet on the ground with more certainty, and she tipped her head back and back, to look up at him. "Can we talk, without you getting angry? If I sit down in my chair, and you sit in yours?" she asked him, as if she was formally negotiating a court contract. "The next course can come out," she added, in case he needed appeasing.
And, honestly, she didn't want to leave for a fortnight. "I don't want to go," she admitted, softening. She stepped back and tried to tug her hand from his grip, so that she could reclaim her chair. She moved toward the chair, and not toward the door at all, so he understood that she wasn't fleeing. Some of the bitter greenness left the air, but the spark of magic was still there, thick and golden.
When she did not immediately reply to him about some imaginary, imminent danger, he looked back downward at her face. He was visibly surprised to see that she looked unsure of herself, something that did not suit his mental picture of her. No spoiled little princess was ever uncertain of herself, and though Henry had colored his image with contrasting tints of the woman in the cottage and the sorceress of the woods, he still had certain impressions that stayed with him. Perhaps it was because the Beast was a poor judge of human expressions after so many years without any variation of creature in his path. Henry on the instinct of a score of years and what his mother used to call “a civil upbringing,” returned his attention to her entirely. His grip on her fingers lessened, and he no longer looked elsewhere for an enemy.
His brows, rough dark lines speckled with gold, shifted upward in some surprise at her wheedling tone. He smiled, a somewhat dazzling spread of lips that had a boyish angle. “Without me getting angry? Are you about to tell me something you think will infuriate me?” In Henry’s opinion, he’d taken the news about the wolfman fairly well. How much worse could conversation get? His nose twitched a little, but his boring human sense of smell was not so good, and Henry’s magic was audible, not always olfactory, especially when he was on two legs.
He let her go when she pulled away from him, but only because she was not leaving his presence entirely. He moved parallel to her, then put two hands on the back of her chair as she sat down on it, leaning forward. His stomach twisted again, though he had eaten almost nothing and the rest of him was relaxed. His smile vanished, but it was over her head, and he stood there for a moment, not saying anything, before he took a stride away and sat down in his original chair, expression obscure.
Reassured by this return of civility, a new cut of bread bounded enthusiastically out of the kitchen, smelling of rosemary, followed by several more tureens.
Henry attempted to return to conversation. He asked after her sister (though he could care less). He tore at the bread and touched soups with his spoon, but he didn’t actually eat anything. When a sliced roast appeared, he went a little pale and avoided looking at it. “Are you still hungry?” he asked, smiling faintly over at her three courses later.
She didn't immediately jump into her desired topic of conversation. Instead, she tore at the bread and sipped at the soup. She ignored the roast, when she noticed his pallor, and she shook her head when he asked if she was still hungry. "I generally do one meal a day. I'm not accustomed to court life or court meals," she explained. Her fare was usually a porridge, some dried meat, some crusty bread, and nothing more. "Snow is well. Unhappy, but well. But perhaps neither of us is made for happiness," she suggested. It was thinking aloud, and she really shouldn't have said it, but it was done and there was no swallowing back the words. She followed the statement with a deep breath, and a deep sip of the sweet liquid in her cup, and then she sat back and regarded him.
"I'm not like Snow. I'm not quiet and made for a castle," she said, motioning at the ceiling overhead, crumbling as it was. "I'm not what you think I am. When I came here, you thought I was some gently reared merchant's daughter. That's who's supposed to break your curse. I'm a witch's daughter. I have no known father. I grew up without shoes and with brambles in my hair. I'm not quiet. I'll always make you angry. I distrust men, and I'm terrible at holding my tongue. I'm not even very nice. It's easy to think that I am, maybe, beneath all of it. But I'm not. When my sister wronged me, I got revenge. I didn't hide away and cry. I planned. A thousand years ago, and I was just a child, and I still went to her court at fifteen and seduced her husband. I'm not innocent. I don't need you to court me."
She took a very deep breath, and she the cup she'd been worrying between her fingers, the air growing more green with each twist between her fingertips. "What I'm trying to say, is that you have no need to court me. None would blame you, least of all me." The smile she gave him then was young, the eternal teenager who would never truly understand the workings of a grown mind, even should she live another thousand years. "I want you to, but you don't have to. You can take me to bed and make me your mistress, and you'll still be free when the right girl comes along to break the curse."
It was, all things considered, the most unselfish thing she'd said in her entire life.
Henry was discovering that the mere smell of cooking meat was making him physically ill, so much so that he couldn’t properly focus on where he was while it was sitting there. Fortunately, the servants noticed that neither of them had it, and somebody with brains back there managed to make the rest understand to hold off on the meat. More chopped fruit and elaborate vegetables made their appearances instead, and Henry’s color improved. Rather than eating, he watched her. He kept picking up the juice and putting it down, watching her reach for bread and tasting the soup. It pleased him that she ate well at his table, even if he was off his feed himself. He was grateful when she did not mention it.
Henry listened when she began to speak in earnest. His nose twitched at the increase in sharp new green in the air, but he did not refer to it in any other way. In an effort to continue his focus, he leaned forward and set his arms over the table, which was now being slowly cleared by invisible hands. The green eyes glinted like new mint under the heather. “There is no court here. The castle... is but a stone monument to the past. Perhaps the curse cannot be broken.” It pained him to say it, and it was visible in the grim lines of his face, but he said it all the same, pressing the flats of his fingers into the cross of his forearm and his elbow. “There is none here to judge me, nor you. It is the kind of freedom I wished for myself when I was young, without understanding what I must pay for it.” His mouth twisted, then eased as he looked at her once more.
His look was warm, even affectionate. “If you want me to pursue my suit, why do you attempt to dissuade me?”
"There is no court here now," she clarified. "The castle won't always be a monument. The curse will be broken, and you'll rebuild. You'll want your old life back," she explained, and she leaned forward after he did, going so far as to rest her chin on her folded arms atop the table. She turned her head, amber eyes bright and intelligent as she regarded him. She looked for weight loss, now that she knew he wasn't eating right, and there was worry there, shining in her gaze. "When the spell is broken, you'll forget," she said, and there was experience in that statement. Hadn't she been betrothed to a prince once, only to be cast aside when a spell was broken? "When this is wonderful again," she said, looking around the hall without sitting back, "I'll look like a sad choice to sit at your table."
His question about dissuading him made her turn her attention to him once more. "Because I wouldn't have you made a fool. My reputation here, it precedes me. All the way to Briar's kingdom, people know who I am and what I've done. Having me here, now, while you're still cursed, it doesn't matter. Charming was spreading tales that I was sleeping with the Beast, and they were readily believed for a reason. They'll forgive you it now, like this, but not when you're restored permanently." It was the truth of their world, and perhaps he'd been living in ruins and fur for too long to remember just how cruel life in a court could be. But she hadn't forgotten; she'd never forget that.
She sat back. "Do you still want me to stay?" she asked him, golden eyes slightly damp with the possibility that he would tell her to go. A fortnight, which had seemed to plausible moments early, now seemed long, and she wondered if she would ever stop being so completely changeable. She tucked a strand of copper behind one ear, and she fiddled with the hem of one red sleeve.
Henry’s stomach twisted around inside of him like a cold eel trying to find something at the base of his spine. For the first time, the twisting became something closer to pain, and Henry felt cold where his muscles met his skin. He suppressed a reaction, shifted in his chair, and faintly smiled at her once more. It was a true smile, even if he had to work harder to find it. He gave up all pretense of eating; he did not look thin, but there was not much opportunity for contrast. An iron teapot floated gently to Rose’s right shoulder and dipped forward to pour a delicate stream of steaming chamomile tea into a thick clay-fired mug.
“Rose,” he said, very seriously, very intentionally, as if each word had to be sent directly at a clean target for it to mean anything at all, “My old life is gone. There are none of my blood left living except myself.” His expression became bleak, as this was very old pain. “The men I fought with are nothing but old bones in that black moat. The people who worked this valley are gone. Those that return may not even be their children, and their children’s children, for there are none that would remember me.”
He leaned closer, and then put his palm down on the table and stood. He did it with ease at first, and then halfway wavered a little bit on his feet. “I wish you to stay. If I am myself again, if I rebuild this place, it would be with you and only for you. Otherwise it is not worth it.”
He swayed slightly and touched his fingertips to his stomach. The teapot dropped with a clang. Anything floating or moving retreated with haste. Henry became pale under his tan. “I... you should... go into the kitchen.” He glanced over his shoulder at the door to the kitchen, stout oak. His hand made an abrupt movement, and the juice splashed over the old wood under the dishes. Something... crunched. Henry sat back down abruptly. “Now. Please.”
She knew what the death he spoke of was like. The Adversary war had raged for hundreds of years, until the dead outnumbered the living, and until the living that remained were all working for the warbringer. The Mundane world that had served as an escape for so many residents of the Homelands was a world away for those left behind. She understood about moats of dead and a world with no hope, but she didn't think that meant he couldn't rebuild. The castle could be repaired, and it could be filled with servants from the villages, and he could have children and bring back his family name. Even if he wasn't human often, it had to be enough for procreation. She began to explain this, but then he leaned forward and she was swayed by his proximity, just as she always was when he looked like this - handsome and charming, and she was still a young girl in so many ways.
She watched him stand, head tipped back and copper hair falling in waves along the bright red of her dress, and his declaration left her speechless. She blinked those unnaturally amber eyes, and she began to say something. Lips parted, and then he swayed.
She stood when he touched his stomach, her chair scratching against the floor in a slow drag that was, at first, questioning and not fearful. She watched the teapot crash slowly, as if time itself had begun to turn thick and molasses. Green kissed the air with enough ferocity to almost turn the stomach, and she looked back at him when he ordered her to the kitchen.
"No," she said stubbornly, understanding what was happening. Instead of leaving, and instead of crowding him, she sat down upon her chair again, as if this was the most normal thing to ever occur. Only the pallor of her hands against the armrest gave away her fear and worry. She didn't look away.
Henry looked at her over the remains of the dishware. The room still smelled of fine cooking things, of forest moss, and now of harshly cut branches and new brambles. Henry’s color was the same, but his expression had become unrecognizable, newly twisted with pain. He was repressing it through practice, his jaw standing out against his skin, the fringe of his hair falling down over the shuttered green of his eyes. He pinched his lips together and pressed back into the chair. Another bone cut itself into a different shape with a wet crack that rent the air so thoroughly that not even the rattling of the retreating servants in the kitchen overcame it.
He was starting to slide down in the seat, and then he wasn’t sliding any more at all, but shrinking. He looked up suddenly at her and his gaze met hers with a snap that was nearly audible. “Please. Please I... don’t want you to see this.” He thought she likely didn’t care, and he thought briefly of her all-consuming curiosity, but then his embarrassment and rising shame was quickly taken over once more by newly rearranging bones. Things inside him began to crunch and rearrange themselves, and the pain stabbed a few more times, but then began to distance as nerves shifted.
Henry slid off the chair entirely, not able to suppress more gasps of pain, and he disappeared out of sight under the table with a dull thud.
She didn't know what to do. She could try a spell, but that might make it all worse. She wasn't good at spells, even with all her practice. She didn't move toward him, either, worried that he'd turn into something dreadful that would harm her, and that he'd have to live with the knowledge after. But, stubbornly, she refused to budge. The only thing she conceded to, in order to soothe him, was to close her eyes when he begged that he didn't want her to see him as he was. After all, she couldn't run and hide every time he shifted, could she? Not if she was meant to live at the castle. And so she sat, a copper-haired waif in red, her fingers knuckle white against the arms of the chair, and her eyes screwed tightly shut, as if she was a small child keeping out night terrors.
Through the noise and the sickening crack, she remained still. She was caught between wanting to open her eyes and rush forward, and the childish desire to not look. She was afraid, and her ankles twitched and her feet jumped, and there was tension in her shoulders and in the lines that formed around her young mouth. She winced when he gasped in pain, and she whimpered when she heard that thud. And, finally, after a few moments more of finding her spine and setting it back where it belonged, she opened her amber eyes and looked at the empty chair.
She moved immediately, no hesitation out of fear or concern, and no scanning of the room to seek out a new, large and dangerous creature. The floors had cracked under the strain of her fingers on the arm of the chair, vines sprouting up and lifting the corners of the table. The vines kissed the hearth, and the brambles bloodied her knees as she slid to them in order to look beneath the table.
For a little while there was some muffled sounds, the crunching of bones that sounded like pebbles grounding themselves into nothing on an very old beach, an age on fast forward. There were no more human sounds, no more Henry at all. That was the nature of the new curse, and somehow, impossibly, it was worse than the old one.
A pair of massive amber eyes swiveled into existence to stare at her from the depths of the shadows under the table. They were at least a couple fingerlengths’ thick, and they burned around wide night-black pupils, inhuman in their perfect roundness. The thing started, the glowing orbs twitching in size and reeling away, and an ear-splitting screech cut the muffled air under the table. There was a muffled impact, like a bundle of sheets hitting a wall, and a massive gray thing flopped out on the floor beside Henry’s chair, then attempted to take to the air.
A huge owl with feathers spotted rainwater grey fell out of a shortened flight onto the table. The feathers were the same color as the Beast’s massive wings, only they were thicker and of varying lengths. The owl’s head was slightly tufted and the amber eyes were cruel and absent of understanding, not like the Beast’s at all. The owl glared at her, then around at the mess as it sprawled on its wicked claws, scarring the table. It gave another experimental screech that should have shattered glass--then it took off, making for a slitted stone window and knocking several plates off the edge of the table. The wingspread was nearly the length of Rose’s entire body, and the white shadow veered away from the window when it realized it was too small to fit through and escape. The amber eyes disappeared into the grand buttresses that upheld the great hall’s ceiling.
She didn't know what she was expecting, but it wasn't an owl.
Rose had grown up wild, and Snow had been her only friend as a child that didn't possess fur or feathers or scales, and there was no fear in her when the owl landed unceremoniously on the table. Though, and she noticed this immediately, he looked back at her without a man's understanding. The cursed things of her youth had looked back at her like men and women, truth and life in their eyes. He did not. This was an owl, and none of Henry to be found, even when she edged to the end of her chair and peered into his amber eyes with her own golden eyes.
"Do you understand me?" she asked, looking for a bear's intelligence or a wolf's recognition. That glare, however, was entirely animal, and she scooted back when he screeched and spread those wide wings. She followed its movements with her gaze, her feet up on the chair's seat now. Up, and she was glad he couldn't escape. She couldn't imagine what would happen if he could flee, and she realized her first task upon returning would be to reinforce the small and weaker places in the castle, so that he couldn't escape in future, regardless of his form. It helped, something to concentrate on, and she settled back in the chair.
She had no idea how long this would continue, but she would remain until it was done, even if she needed to doze in the chair. Her cottage, suddenly, seemed very far away. She pillowed a cheek on the chair's arm, and she closed her eyes.
"I'm not leaving!" she called up to the great hall's ceiling, just in case he could understand.