Unbeknownst to the two who sat quietly in the garden, they were being watched by a pair of eyes. A pair of amber colored eyes that were full of a great hatred and contempt. Teeth were gnashed and hands were gripped into tight fists.
"Well sister it would seem that your recent attempt at sabotage backfired on you." Came a voice from behind the one who owned those hate filled eyes. The vile woman turned around and saw her green eyed sister sitting across from her. She quickly put on her best fake smile.
"Why Rosie whatever do you mean?" She asked.
"Play the fool all you wish Katie but I know that eagle who attacked Charlotte the other day was you in another one of your more vicious forms. Although I'm very surprised by what you did. Normally you wouldn't make such an impulsive and obvious attack. Either you're becoming more desperate or age is finally catching up with you."
"I haven't the faintest idea of what you are talking about."
Rosie sighed.
"I find it very amusing how after all these years you still try to deceive me even though you always fail to do so. I would recognize your handy work anywhere. You've been interfering with the curse."
"Well aren't we being a bit hypocritical? If I recall you paid that girl a visit in her dreams."
"Only to assure her that she had nothing to fear."
"I say that counts as interfering."
"Maybe so but I only interfere because I know for a fact that you never play fair. You always have to cheat."
"I wouldn't have had to cheat if you hadn't of revealed that the curse could be broken."
"Liar. You would have cheated either way."
"True."
Rosie stood up and proceeded to gaze upon her nephew just as Katie did.
"You know his soul is so very much like Marie's. So clever, so charming, and so full of woe."
"It sickens me to my very core that, that beast has our little sister's blood flowing through his veins. We shouldn't have just merely cursed him, we should have just split open Marie's belly and annihilated that atrocity! Prevented it from ever being born! Oh why did you tell her how to break the curse?"
"Because I pitied her and I regretted what I had done."
"Regretted?"
"Katie we made a mistake."
"We made a mistake?!" She hissed. "Marie is the one who made the mistake! She fell in love with the filthy human who took her from us and then she decided to birth that abomination he implanted in her!"
"I'll never forget the look in her eyes when she gazed upon that man's dead corpse. I'll never forget the sound of her cries as she held his body and then pleaded with us not to let her child be born under a curse."
"It needed to be done. She needed to understand her foolishness. But she never understood, she never learned, and in the end she died a very pathetic death."
"Because of us."
"Because of love! Love made her weak! Love made her view those inferior creatures as equals to us! She was always so naive and trusting. We should have schooled her better on our superiority."
"She died hating us and she died believing we hated her. We ruined her life and I'll never forgive myself for that."
"Guilt is another thing that causes weakness you know."
"I know there's nothing I can ever do to make up for what I did but at the very least I can try to give my nephew the happiness we had stolen from his mother."
"What she had with that mortal fool was not real happiness."
"Then why is it after we killed him and cursed his child, she never wanted to see us again? We were wrong to do what we did."
"The years have softened you Rosie. I never thought you'd ever feel regret for causing harm to a mortal."
"I regret everything I ever did that caused my sister pain. I loved Marie. I loved her more than I ever loved anyone in my entire life and I only wanted what was best for her. I was so sure that she could never be truly happy among the humans but it turns out when she was with him it was the happiest she had ever been."
With each word of regret she spoke, Rosie slowly fell to her knees and began to shed tears of remorse as she recalled when she heard of her younger sister's death. She had screamed and sobbed bitterly. Cursing both herself and her older sister because she knew the both of them were partially responsible. Had they never turned their nephew into such a hideous creature, one so hideous that most humans would prefer him dead than perhaps Marie would still be alive.
"Thirteen years and you still grieve." Katie said.
"How can I not? How can you not?"
"Our kind does not make such strong attachments. We're not like humans you know."
It was true. Fairies typically did not form attachments to anything not even their own species. This was to avoid developing any kind of potential weakness that their human rivals could use against them. But poor Rosie had allowed herself to become very attached to her little sister. She too was a fairy who had succumbed to love. Family love. That's why she felt regret. Because she loved Marie and Alastor was all that remained of her. So she watched over him after his mother died and she would do everything she could to make sure that he had a fair chance at breaking the spell.
Katie on the other hand was full of pride and she felt that the union between her youngest sister and the human prince had besmirched their kind. She would not stand for such an obscene union nor would she stand for any child of such union to live. She would have killed Alastor years ago when he was still just a fetus although she had hoped that once Marie saw how ugly her child was it would shock her back to her senses. But that didn't happen and by then Marie had already cast a spell that prevented all fairies from harming him. So she could never kill him but that didn't mean she couldn't find another person or another way to destroy him.
"You know she'll never love him." Katie said. "She only pities him. She pities him as any human would pity an animal."
"For now maybe but I've seen the girl's soul. It is gentle, pious, and truly beautiful. From an early age she mastered a very special technique that so very few humans learn."
"And what is that?"
"To look with both her eyes and her heart. She sees the dreaded beast but she also sees the tortured man inside. If she is a true beauty than in time she will see less and less of the beast, and more and more of the man. If she sees him as a man than eventually she may love him as a man."
"Impossible. He's too ugly and all humans only care about what's on the surface. She is no different. She's nothing special."
"If that were true then Alastor would have eaten her the day she arrived but he couldn't do it and if you had ever taken the time to pay attention to him like I have then you'd know that he can't bring himself to harm someone truly innocent and good. That's why he's never eaten the village children who sometimes wander off into the woods."
"She may be more sympathetic to him than the other humans he's encountered but her sympathy will never turn to love. She still can't get past the fact that he eats human flesh."
"Then he'll just have to change that. Love requires compromise you know."
"And since when has he been the compromising type?"
"I'm not saying it'll come easy to him but I suspect that he's beginning to care more about her wants and needs than his own."
"So?"
"So I don't know much about falling in love but I'm certain that's the first step of getting there. Two hearts beating for each other, two confessions of love, and one kiss. That's all it takes."
"It will never happen sister."
"We shall see. After all you never really know when love will blossom."
With that said Rosie disappeared.
"Love? Ha!" Katie scoffed. "If love should somehow bloom between this very unlikely couple I will personally make sure that it withers on the vine."