When I left him that evening, he was a mess. He did not attend dinner, and I felt guilty because I thought maybe I had pushed him too hard. Not only that, but he also canceled his meeting with Lottie the next day.
It gave me time to really think it all over, to let it all sink in. I was unsure if I should have told Alveary about what had happened to the others, and what had happened to Adam. But for some reason it felt wrong to tell her his truth. He had only just told me, and it seemed to have genuinely hurt him as he did.
Inside, I was a mess too. I did not know whether I should have been afraid of him or not, but even if I wanted to, I could not bring myself to feel as such. He had already been going through so much, adding the only person that he could have been close to, that he could touch without fear, also being afraid of him would have only made things worse.
I also feared that him becoming too upset might cause him to snap, and if he did, I could not have lived with myself if he ended up hurting Alveary because of me. However, I did not want to admit it to myself at the time, but Adam had grown on me, and I had started to become quite fond of him.
"That's the first time he had canceled on any of us yet. However, I think it hilarious that Lottie was the one who did not get to see him." Alveary had been laying in my room for a few hours after dinner drawing me once again.
"It is rather ironic isn't it. She had been going on and on about how she had been the one who spent the most time with him not too many weeks ago. I think it serves her right." My back had started to hurt from sitting in the same position for a while. "Why is it that you are drawing me again?"
"Oh, I had decided to draw a picture of you and give it to Adam." She looked pleased with herself and her plan.
I nearly fell off of the love seat. "Alveary, why would you do that?"
"Well, seeing as to how your face is beet red right now, I think I made the right choice." She giggled. "I told you your opinion of him would change, didn't I?
"It is not that, he and I are genuinely just good friends." I was not lying, yet I knew deep down that the term friends did not quite describe what was going on between me and him.
"Sure, we will agree to disagree." She stood up, "But, lying to yourself will only cause you grief. I will see you tomorrow, Goodnight."
She intentionally left me confused. Alveary was dangerous when it came to matchmaking.
The next day he did not meet Alveary nor show up for dinner. I had started to worry that I had caused more damage than I had thought previously. Though, I was not avoiding him this time, it was he who must have been avoiding me.
"Garna?" I called to her after seeing her in the hall outside the drawing room.
"Yes Mademoiselle Lafleur, what is it you need?" She gave me a small smile.
"Is something wrong with the Prince?" I almost called him Adam in front of her, though I did not think she would have reprimanded me for it.
She looked around and lowered her voice, "He has been in a terrible state since you left him Saturday. Though, do not blame yourself. He gets like this after, well, after the girls are gone. I know what the two of you talked about and I think it was good for him to say it all out loud for once. He has not spoken about what he has been going through for four years. It may hurt him right now, but I assure you he will come back around and this time he will be all the stronger for it."
"I did not know that he did not talk about it at all with you. I thought he would have at least opened up every once in a while, but to have held it in for four years." I let out a shaky breath, "I feel terrible for forcing it out of him like that. It must have taken a lot for him to let it all out, especially all at once."
"No, this is exactly what the young master needed. It makes me happy to know that he has someone he can be around who gives him comfort rather than places him in constant agony. I do not know why you are special, but I thank the Gods for sending you when they did. I had begun to fear there was no hope of the curse ever ending." She grabbed my hands, "But here you are, a true blessing. Give him time, and I am sure he will approach you soon enough."
"Thank you, Garna. When he does, I will do my best to be there for him." I squeezed her hands in return.
. . .
Justine was extremely mad when Adam canceled on her too. So much so, she started to show how horrible of a person she really was on the inside.
"This is absolutely ridiculous." She snapped. "I understand canceling on the two of you, but me? How disrespectful. I was born to be his wife and what does he do? He sneaks around with the penniless orphan behind all our backs."
"He does what?" Lottie shouted.
"Don't yell at me you Irish brute. I said it loud enough for you to hear it or are you just too daft to comprehend what I said?" Justine rolled her eyes so hard I thought they were going to get stuck in the back of her head.
"How dare you speak to me like that. I understand you are angry with the trash but don't misdirect your attitude towards me." Lottie huffed.
"Anyhow, I saw the two of them meeting almost every day for the past three weeks." Justine glared at me.
"Oh, do shut up." Alveary groaned.
"Do you have any proof of these accusations?" I cut in before Justine had the chance to go after Alveary.
"Are you insinuating that I am lying? I saw you two with my own eyes on countless occasions." She continued to glare at me.
"It sounds to me like you are jealous and threatened by a penniless orphan, what do you think Alveary?" I laughed.
"I agree, I did not know someone who was so proud and vain could be so insecure all because of someone lesser. How sad." Alveary was grinning at me from behind the book that she held in front of her face to keep the others from seeing.
Justine's face grew red as Lottie giggled at her, and I stared waiting for her rebuttal. She was fuming, internal turmoil written all over her face. We all watched as she stood up abruptly and stormed out of the room with the most embarrassed look on her face.
She did not join us for dinner later that evening. Nor did Adam.
After dinner Alveary only stayed in my room for a half an hour before she left me to go to sleep. I had been sitting there in one of the armchairs, that sat across the room from my bed, reading a book when I heard a light tap on the French-doors.
I picked up a candle and went to the door to see what it could have been. I thought perhaps a bird, or some sort of large bug had flown into the door because there was no possible way for someone to be out there. It was far too high off the ground for someone to have climbed, and I was sure Alveary had not shimmied her way over from her balcony just to frighten me.
As I opened them and picked the candle back up to shine the light outside so I could see, I came face to face with Adam.
"Um, g-good evening, Isabelle." He said in a small voice, then started to nervously ramble. "I am sorry if I startled you, I know this is rather concerning, since I am standing four levels up on a balcony that should be impossible for me to be on. But I assure you there is no real need to be alarmed. I, um, came to apologize for avoiding you and everyone else for the past few days. It was rather rude of me and-"
I sat the candle back down and proceeded to wrap my arms around him. "I am just glad you are alright. You should have told me that you had not spoken about your situation for almost four years, that it was going to be difficult for you to explain everything all at once. I would have respected your need to go at your own pace."
He silently wrapped his arms around me in return, tightly holding me while he inhaled deeply then let out a shaky breath. "I'm sorry, I'll do better to communicate more efficiently next time."
I took a step back and looked him up and down. He stood there in his undershirt that was haphazardly tucked into his pants and untied at the top, which showed his collar bones and a little bit of his bare chest. His hair was messy and his face unshaven which made him look wildly beautiful.
He gave me a crooked smile, which caused me to realize that my hair was messy and all over the place from where I had let it down after Alveary left. I felt my face flush in embarrassment, but I was glad I had not undressed and put my nightgown on yet. I would have been mortified then.
He chuckled then reached out to run his fingers through my hair, "Don't be embarrassed, I think you look quite lovely with your hair a mess. It better suits your personality like this." He quickly pulled his hand back and looked away. "I'm sorry this is rather inappropriate, me being here this late and all."
"It is no bother to me at all, how about you come in before you catch a cold." After he stepped in, I closed the doors behind him. "You seem to have a lot weighting on your mind. Would you like to talk about it?"
"Ah, is it that obvious?" He looked down at his feet while rubbing the back of his neck with his right hand.
"No, I just figured since you disappeared for three days straight, that you needed someone to talk to." I nervously smiled.
"You have a point." He sighed.
"Then let us sit and you can take however long you need to say what you have to say." I started towards the love seat, "However, first explain to me how you managed to get on the balcony."
I tried my best to be calm, but I had honestly been confused and internally screaming questions like, 'how did you get up here?', 'Why aren't you completely dressed?' and, most importantly, 'Why are you here to talk with me in my room in the middle of the night when you could have seen me after dinner was over?'.
"Well," He moved so quickly all I saw was a blur of his figure pass by. Then before I knew it, he was sitting on the love seat even before I had the chance to sit myself. "I have come to find that as it grows closer to my twenty first, things I can only do in my cursed form are becoming permanent. Like she said, the beast is becoming all that I am, and I fear it won't be long before I am completely gone."
I took a seat next to him, "So you're saying you jumped?" I tried to break up the tense atmosphere.
He let out a light laugh, "No, I hung off the balcony above, let go, then grabbed the railing to yours and voila there I was."
"I must say, that is more practical than you being able to jump four levels. I have no idea what I was thinking." I giggled out of embarrassment.
"I can jump, but not that high." His smile faded, "Would you like to know why I had to request another 'Offering' so soon after the last?"
"Only if you would like to tell me." I was secretly happy that he had started to open up to me on his own and felt a bit guilty that I was relishing over something that caused him discomfort.
"She, Camille Dupré, did not die like the others." He looked at the table in front of him. "She fell to her death off of the east wing tower."
The guilt written all over his face broke my heart. No one deserved this sort of punishment, not even Sebastian.
"I chased her up there. Somehow after dinner she tripped and scraped the palms of her hands on her way back up to her room. I was still in the dining room, so after I heard the thump of her falling, I went to see if she was alright, but once I opened the door the smell of her blood hit me and it sent me into a frenzy. He awoke and I watched as we hunted her down." He rubbed his mouth and then chin, "She pressed her back against the railing which ended up being loose after years of no maintenance, and I watched as both her and the railing fell over the side."
"I'm so sorry Adam." It was clear that he was distraught because she had died after only a week. But I could also tell it bothered him less than the others. Yes, he caused her death, but this time he did not have to watch himself eat her. "However, I do not think you should feel guilty for feeling relieved that you did not have to watch yourself kill her like you had the others."
He looked at me startled but also as if a large burden had been lifted off of his shoulders. "How. . ." he exhaled in disbelief. His voice trembled and broke, "How can you not hate me? How can you be so understanding and accept me no matter how terrible I am or what terrible things I tell you I have done? I just cannot grasp the idea of you accepting me for the monster I am."
"How could I possibly blame someone for something they have no control over? It would be another thing if you had chosen to become a beast that willingly devoured people. But Adam, you did not do anything wrong to be cursed like this. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and the son of the wrong Emperor." I felt my eyes begin to water as I watched him while he tried desperately to keep from crying.
"The worst part about all of it is my father does not love nor care a single bit about me." He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "He sent me to France, not to rule over it, but because his new wife was pregnant with a boy, and she told him to bastardize me. To make her son the legitimate heir to the Empire and to get rid of me so I could not take his birthright away. He did not even hesitate, he just agreed and shipped me off as soon as the castle was completed."
"To think, the Witch thought I was precious to my father, that I could have been her Trojan horse and got rid of him so easily. But I am nothing to him. It is as if my whole existence is to suffer, to be hated by everyone. Yet, you see past the title, the familial ties, and the curse and see me for who I really am. A broken, pathetic, lonely man who cannot catch a break."
He was crying, tears running down his beautiful face. Those dark blue eyes full of pain and yearning. I wanted to take it all away so the only thing I would ever be able to see when I looked into them was happiness and content. I pulled him in and comforted him while he cried into the crook of my neck, as he let go of all the things that he had been holding in for far too long.
His hold was so tight, but he ended up comforting me as well. I silently cried too, I understood what it felt like to be so full of frustration, anger, sorrow, confusion, and to constantly blame oneself for things out of one's control. I too had been bottling up my feelings, my grief, and needed to let it all out, to accept it was not my fault and stop blaming myself for Papa's death.
We were alike in many ways. We needed each other more than we knew, and it was starting to become clear how much we meant to one another. How much we had already begun to heal each other.
It felt nice to hold someone and to be held, to need and be needed.
To want and be wanted.