PIANOFORTE NOTES RANG out around me as I stepped from the door. Someone was playing somewhere in the castle and my curiosity had to be answered. It was rather easy to follow the echoing of the notes. All it needed was a moment of silence and an ear pressed to a door or wall, enabling me to decide which path to take.
Eventually, I had arrived into a room empty of any furniture except the large pianoforte, a man seated on its bench. From the hidden shadows of the room, I watched as he played, hands gliding along the keys.
The song he performed was sad and melancholy, reminding me of the tunes played on the Beast's wives' funerals. However, I had not heard this specific hymn prior to this moment. The notes drummed into me and I felt my heart beat harder for no reason as his fingers sung something wicked.
The notes grew closer and closer together, echoing so loudly in the room that my ears were tightening like they would burst at any moment. It began to grow unbearable, so much so that I knew I would yell out. Then, the piano player stood and slammed his fists into the pianoforte in frustration, swearing as he did.
He returned to his bench, though he did not face the pianoforte. His elbows smashed into the keys and he appeared deaf to the sound for he went on, reclining with his head turned skyward. He rubbed his face with a hand, the light emanating from the window silhouetting his bare, scarred face.
Slowly, I crept forward, emerging from my hiding. Yoann did not raise his head to look as I sat beside him on the corner of the bench. "Who taught you to play?"
"My mother." He smiled, slowly, as if remembering something. "She was an amazing woman." He sighed, something empty and bottomless.
Was. I felt my voice grow soft as I whispered, "I'm sorry." He said nothing and instead rubbed his temples. "If I may ask," I began slowly, hesitantly, awkwardly, "when did she pass?"
"She did not." His eyes narrowed, studying me, contemplating what words to speak. "Do...do you recall what you once asked me? About the West Wing?" I nodded. "The former servants have been bewitched, transformed into those murderous beasts. My mother included."
My mind fell silent, eyes fixed on a flicking glint on the wall. "I am sorry to hear that," I mumbled faintly.
"Do not be," he said, straightening up. He cleared his throat. "Free her for me."
I shifted. "How can I do that?"
"If you are so inclined, you must know that his lordship has a shelf dedicated to the scraps and diaries written in the hands of his former wives." A slow grin began to form on his face, as though if a brilliant idea had occurred to him. "I am certain you may learn something if you were to head to the library and examine their writing."
"There is a library here?" I asked, surprised that I had not come across it despite my endless searching of the castle.
He rolled his eyes. "Yes, of course—this is a castle, obviously we have a library." I contemplated stepping on his foot. "It is in the south wing, far from your rooms."
I released a breath. "But do you not suppose that these castle rooms cannot be measured in distance? It seems to me as though these walls have a mind of their own."
"A fair point." He nodded dismissively.
A silence befell upon the room and I felt a chill worm its way into my bones. I refrained from leaning against his side, from resting myself along his arm and dropping my head at his shoulder. I sat still, studying the intricate patterns of the floor, glassed beneath varnished marble. I shut my eyes.
After a long silence, he asked, "What of your mother?"
"My mother?" I shifted so that I was angled toward him. It was concerning that he asked. Has my husband put him up to it? Did he hope to gain favor from his lord? I frowned. I doubted that severely. "I never knew her for I had been raised at an orphanage. I was told that she was a common whore who had abandoned me."
That was untrue.
My true mother had died shortly after I was born, succumbing to the plague and leaving her husband to care for their child. My father had been the one to give me up, for he could not stay in the village and care for me. Nor could he take me with him—the battlefield was not a suitable place to raise an infant.
Despite that, he did his best to send word through his returning soldiers. I had long burned all of his letters, fearing that my orphaned siblings would find them and grow jealous and upset. I wished I hadn't.
"Are you saddened by that?" Yoann asked, his voice taking on a gentle smoothness.
"No, I suppose not." I rested my elbows on my knees, leaning forward so that my head was rested in my palms. "I grew up with twenty-one brothers and fifteen sisters. We were all well cared for by the women who ran the orphanage. It was a happy childhood."
He nodded. "Where did you learn to use knives?"
"One of our caretakers was the sister of a knight. He told us tales of war and adventure and taught us how to use a knife." None of my caretakers had knighted brothers.
A soldier by the name of Devereux had been the one to teach me to fight—at the command of my father. A smile tugged on my lips. I still remembered the look on his face when he discovered that I was the 'bitter little kit named Ismae' that his commander spoke so fondly of. I had greeted him with a kick to the shin after he had eaten my portion of custard tarts.
Devereux had been sent back to our village under the pretense of recovering from a sword wound. However, in the winter he spent with us, he had read to me the letters my father had written for me. One letter for every day he spent at the battlefield. I had been five that winter, barely able to read the messy and lengthy sentences he wrote.
"Did her brother teach you how to kiss as well?" he asked, taking me aback and breaking through my thoughts.
"What? No!" I sputtered as I shot to my feet, my face flaring with mortification. "He did not do any of that!"
The guard snorted, displaying his disbelief. "The lips I kissed were not virgin."
"Of course they were not," I said, crossing my arms. "My lord husband would not settle with that."
He stood as well. "But unless you had spent every minute of the past week in his lap and kissing him, I do not see how you would have become so...adroit."
Flames rose to my cheeks. "I am not inclined nor obliged to share that with you."
"Now, you have made me curious," he said and neared me. I did not step back. "If you tell me, I will give you something in return."
I recognized the offer for what it was and knew that it could be used to my advantage. "Like what?"
"What do you want to know?" he asked, his voice easing from between his lips with calculated effect.
"Tell me about how you escaped the curse," I said, it being the first thing to cross my mind. However, when I saw the willing expression he wore, I knew it was a question with an unworthy answer.
"It was quite accidental, honestly," he replied with a slow tilt of his head. "I was not included in the curse for I had not been present at the time. That is the reason that I am visible and can speak more easily of it." Seeing my disappointed expression, he said, "Were you expecting something else?"
"Yes, I had," I told him. "For someone titled a trickster by his lordship, you had not impressed."
"Ah," he sighed. "My sincerest apologies that I had not met your conjecture."
"I had expected it," I stated. "Any question that you can answer is not worth my while."
"Very well then." He looked up, eyes filled with interest meeting mine. "Are you going to tell me who taught you to kiss?"
"Yes, I will." I was not one to break promises. But this...this was rather delicate. I ran a fingernail along the back side of my neck. "Among the woman who cared for us was a former mercenary. She taught those of us interested in the...arts of seduction—so that if a situation arose, we would be ready."
He nodded, listening intently.
I continued, unable to spin lies into the tale. "She had instructed us to...smash our mouths to our wrists, practicing kissing like that. A group of girls and I would do that while we were washing our clothes or sharpening our knives. Eventually, we had become proficient at sucking on our hands and so we—"
Roaring laughter filled my ears.
I went on without batting an eye, "We would sit and listen to her explain how we should best move our mouths and what to do with our hands. After her lessons, we would turn to whoever sat beside us, grab ahold of their face, lean in and then—"
His howling cut me off.
I scoffed and slapped his arm as to stop his cackling. "That is no laughing matter."
He was doubling over, barking out laughter as though he had lost all sense of rationale. After long, he stood and wiped his eyes. "Mon dieu," he uttered, his chortles stealing his breath. "I cannot imagine that—a group of girls amateurishly osculating. That must have been quite the sight."
I looked away from him in annoyance, wondering why I had ever disclosed that bit of information. I should have twisted the truth, as I had with my prior answers.
He caught my chin between his thumb and pointer finger, eyes scalding into mine. I fought to keep hold of his gaze, my eyes narrowing at the sudden change of his demeanor. "Was there a man involved in teaching you?"
"Is there a reason you ask?" I wrapped my fingers around his wrist but did not pull his hand away.
He cupped my jaw in his palm, tilting his head to the side as he murmured, "I would want to know exactly how many men have been graced with the chance to kiss these lips." And with those words, he stroked a finger across my lower lip.
The movement lit my chest and made my breathing uneven, a sensation I dared not call desire filling me. It reminded me of my husband, except I knew he would not settle with stroking my lips with his finger.
"Make it worth my while," I insisted as I pulled his hand away, all too aware of what that movement entailed.
He paused a moment as if thinking about what he shoulder offer. "I will tell you where his lordship is when he is not dining with you."
"My first kiss," I began, needing no further encouragement. "A boy of eleven years held me by the shoulder beside the pigpens and kissed me. I kicked him between the legs and ran to one of my brothers who beat him to pulp on my behalf." I recalled the event vividly since it had been Emil's tenth birthday that evening.
He was howling once again, so loudly that I clamped my hands over his mouth lest we are heard. "Someone will think you mad," I hissed.
He snorted, raising his eyes to mine as he nipped on my finger so that I pulled my hand back with a start. "Are you confessing to me that you had kicked a twelve-year-old boy in the bollocks because he kissed you?"
"I was nine! And he forced it on me!" I defended.
He shook his head, the smile fading. "I take it he hasn't forced a kiss on anyone since."
"He won't have children either," I muttered under my breath.
"Why not?" the guard asked me, his interest piqued.
"His pants tore at the seams when I kicked him. He started bleeding as well." I shut my eyes, briefly recalling the sight. It was not so horrible until I learned he would hold me to it—if only because of what happened that next week. Those subsequent days...I had not even a whisper of an inkling that he would turn up at my orphanage as my newest brother.
"My, you were vicious," he noted. "What did his parents do?"
"His...father...spoke to my caretakers who gave him a brutal tongue lashing on how he ought to raise his son better and drill it in his head not to touch a girls lady bits," I told him. "But one of my caretakers took me aside and chewed my head, telling me that next time I should have hit him elsewhere."
"Did the boy ever apologize to you?" The features of his face were not so blurred for light has begun to penetrate the drapery.
I shook my head no, for that was true. But then I said, "Avoided me like the plague."
He breathed out a short and quiet laugh. "I assume he was not the only one you had castrated?"
"I had not castrated him!" I hissed defensively. "And no, he was the only one to ever make acquaintance with my knee."
"And his lordship?" he asked, his brows raised with an ever-growing smile upon his mouth.
"I did not quite get the chance to do so," I replied flatly.
He grinned widely, his scars wrinkling with the lines the expression brought. "Given that you are his bride, I can only assume that you one day will." He rolled his shoulders and let out a yawn. "Anyways, it seems that I must escort you to your chambers." He turned.
"Wait," I called out. "Your end of the deal?"
"Ah, I have forgotten," he claimed. Then he said, "After dining with you, his lordship retires to his bedchamber. He has always been an avid reader and I would not be surprised if he stayed up with his nose buried in a book. At noon, he calls on me to report the conquests of his armies. I bring him whatever information I receive. Otherwise, his lordship is in his chambers. However, he always keeps an eye on you."
"What?"
"He possesses a mirror through which he can watch his brides," he remarked nonchalantly.
"Even when I am bathing?" I asked slowly.
He gave me a look that suggested that should have been the least of my worries. "You are his bride and he knows that you are here with the intention of killing him. There is nothing for you to hide from him. Try not to think too much of it," he suggested.
"Fair enough," I grumbled though I was still caught on that prospect.
Yoann stepped forward, implicating that I follow him. "My lady..." He glanced over his shoulder. "Ismae, it has come to my attention that you volunteered to be this year's sacrificial maiden. I am curious, what has pushed you to that?"
I pressed my lips together, my mind drawing black. I could not tell him of the letter I had received from my father, the one I had burned only a year ago. So I told him half the truth, "Is it not enough that hundreds of women have fallen dead at his feet?" I leveled my chin. "It is an injustice that must be stopped."
"An honorable sentiment," he murmured and went back to taking his silent strides.
When we arrived at my door, he turned to face me. I lifted a brow, expectantly. It was late—rather it was early, I could see the dawn breaking through the partitions in the drapery behind him.
He reached for my hands, which had been at my sides, fingers clasping mine. For a moment, I was certain he thought to kiss me. But he did not. In the dimness, I could see as his eyes met mine; boring into me, studying me...reading me.
"Ismae." He squeezed my hands. "I trust you."
And by that very fact, I thought grimly, you have damned yourself.
Author's nonsense
I have asked, and you delivered. ;)
Beast within the Beauty will always update on Friday, however, I am likely to throw in bonus updates in the next couple of weeks (winter break). If it will ease your mind, think of it as a gift for all the support you're giving both me and this novel.
Happy holidays, BWTB will be back on Friday! <3