the art…
…and the scene that inspired it
After this, Ferox brought her to the glass gardens.
“Have you enjoyed the books I lent you, Beauty?” he asked as he led her through a glass-enclosed tunnel that carried the pathway outside the castle.
“The language is a bit difficult,” she confessed. “My brother only taught me a little before he…”
“I would be happy to further your education,” Ferox said. “If you please.”
“We’ll see.” Vynasha swallowed the lump in her throat but couldn’t tear her gaze away from the glass gardens rising just head. It was impossible to contain her marvel over the perfectly fused glass panes and metal frame. Beyond the thin barrier, the snows raged angrily, building high along either side. “How do you keep the cold out?”
“Magick. How else?” he asked with a low rumble that served for a semblance of laughter and pushed the gate leading to the main gardens aside.
Vynasha gasped and drew in dewy pungent air of roses and other flora. “It’s like spring in here.” Though truly, she wasn’t sure if summers had ever been this warm in Whistleande.
His chuckle made her shiver from her fingertips clasped to his arm and into her bones. “Our former queen crafted this place as a refuge from the castle she saw as a prison.”
“It’s beautiful.” She glanced at his large, claw-toed feet as they stepped out into the root and petal strewn marble floor. Ferox was like her, a discordant between beauty and ugliness, fragility and danger.
Clusters of berries hung from the hedge lining the glass walls, gleaming like drops of blood. Dead shrubs stood in symmetrical rows around a frozen fountain sat at the center. Snow fell over their heads in waves, sliding off the glass in a heated shimmer. The castle loomed behind them. The tops of the uttermost towers were masked by clouds, yet beyond the glass walls she glimpsed white fields dotted with fir trees and rimmed by the ancient wood. The forest line was so clear she could almost feel it calling to her. What would Ferox do if she left him now and simply ran? What if she kept running until the drifts swallowed her up and prayed Wolfsbane found her again?
“Have you had any luck searching for Ceddrych?” She removed her fingers from his arm and clasped her hands behind her back as they walked toward the lifeless fountain.
“I fear we will need more time, but our territory is far vaster than you may realize. Your brother could also be hiding among the mountain folk who choose to hunt us rather than live among us,” he added with a slight snarl.
Vynasha shook her head. Wolfsbane would have told her if Ceddrych had been hiding with them, wouldn’t he?
Ferox took her uneasy silence for a different kind of fear. “I know it is not the news you hoped to hear, but these things take time, Beauty.”
“I know,” she said, a faint rasp dragging the sound through her throat.
They circled the fountain slowly together. “Would you tell me more about your family, the valley you hail from beyond our borders?”
She rolled her shoulders. “Couldn’t you just see it all in my mind?”
Ferox chuffed with a beast’s approximation of a laugh. “I was not always watching, Beauty. And I am not a mind reader in case you had any doubts.”
Vynasha lifted her chin and wondered if she could ever fully trust him, though he felt more like her friend than her captor. Ferox met her gaze and again, it was his kindness that led her to answer.
“My father had been married when he was still Lord of North Hill to a local noblewoman. They had four children together and were expecting a fifth when the king put his sword to my grandfather’s neck and cursed his line forever. My father lost his wife and the babe first. The village folk said it was the curse. Father was so brokenhearted, he left his remaining children in his mother’s care and took to traveling to oversee what little remained of the family trade. That’s how he met my mother on the road to the Eastern Eirwens. Folk later said she must have bewitched him.”
“And did she?” Ferox asked with a sharp-toothed grin.
Vynasha shook her head. “It didn’t help that while he was away, the forest swallowed up the manor, along with every soul who lived there. Folk said it was the curse, too, but I think my grandmother was tired of living so far from Whistleande and preferred the village.”
Vynasha stared at the fine boots on her feet and their overlapping, fur-lined cloaks and remembered she was the guest of a prince now. “Grandmother Mayve eventually turned the first floor of her village home into a tavern using what was left of our coffers. My father and mother helped until Mayve gave them money to buy tools and a wagon. They built our first home closer to the forest than anyone else dared dwell, but the villagers called us cursed, even after my parents were gone.”
“I am sorry for the hardship you have suffered, Beauty. I, too, understand this burden. I, too, carry my people’s legacy.” Ferox lifted his wolf-like nose to the towers and parapets behind them, and something about his words sent chills down her spine. “Yet we shall have the final victory when we are wed. I have waited so long for the end to this madness, and I would wait still another age if it meant I could see this turn to ruin.”
Vynasha followed his gaze to the castle looming behind them like a dark specter. “What happened to your family, Beast?”
“Butchered like cattle,” he growled. “Others fled like cowards, and still there are some that haunt the forests.” Echoes of howls in the wind compelled her gaze to return to the black forest.
Vynasha could not later say what bade her reach for him. Her hand was upon his clawed hand, fingers wrapping around his and bringing his startled gaze back to her. “You’ve been alone,” she stated.
Like Wyll and I were alone.
Ferox’s warm hand curled around hers. “But we do not need to be alone anymore.”
She swallowed back the urge to tell him about Wyll, to explain all the thoughts she hadn’t somehow sent to him across such vast distances. How had he done it? How was such a thing possible?
Ferox chuckled, as though he had seen the questions in her face. “Come, there is something else I wish to show you.”
He led her down a different corner path that was lined with rows of rose bushes. Though they were much larger than any she or Wynyth had grown in their valley, Vynasha was compelled to step closer and brush her fingertips against the black stems.
“You know this flower, I believe,” Ferox teased.
Vynasha slipped her hand from his and knelt to the rich earth beside the path. She brushed aside fallen leaves and dirt to reach the roots. The magick in her blood stirred at the touch, the ache in her limbs a dull throb because she hadn’t turned the energy to use in too long. And the roses called back to her through the earth, a song of pain and endless sorrow. “This bush needs tending.” Vynasha blinked back tears as she whispered, “They all do.”
Ferox swept his clawed hands out grandly. “Then I shall place you in charge, Beauty. The roses of this garden belong to you and you alone from this moment forward. And if you wish, I can allow the path you came by here to remain open, so you may come and tend them every morning at your leisure.”
She turned with a start. “That is… this is too much.”
“Nothing is too much for you, Beauty.” He crouched to meet her and scooped one of her hands in his. “I promised you your heart’s desire and you shall have it and more.”
Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to marry this beast after all.
“I should like to spend my mornings here,” she hedged. “And I think I would like a moment alone, if it is agreeable to you.” As he studied her, she forced her breathing to remain even and her face to appear open. At last, he smiled and squeezed her hand lightly.
“I shall see you at dinner then, Beauty.” His shadow fell over her as he rose to watch her scatter more snow from the buds. “Here, you may use this until I have arranged for you to have the proper tools.”
She turned and gasped when he proffered an ornate dagger. The blade was marked with engravings in an archaic tongue. The hilt was almost black and studded with jewels. Vynasha breathed deeply as she plucked the blade from his hand and wrapped her fingers around the hilt. Only a fool would give their prisoner a weapon… unless he truly saw her as his ally.
“I shall be close at hand. Should you have need of me, you only need to call my name.” Ferox’s voice rumbled with the sudden thunder in the snow clouds overhead.
“I will,” Vynasha absently replied as the beastly prince turned and left the gardens with a soft, loping tread.
Her fingers clenched the hilt until the gems imprinted her skin. “I’ve lost nearly everything I ever loved,” she whispered to the dagger and the roses, to the wylderwood watching her from afar.
Her gaze returned to the dying rose bush with its black thorns and magick burned hotly in her veins as she ran her hands over the prickled stems. “I won’t let you die too,” she said as she began to nick the edges off the dead stems.
“I won’t let us rot any longer. We’re going to live,” she breathed as she crawled to the next bush and continued her work. “There’s only one way out of this now, Mother, to fight until we are free again. I will find Wyll and see him made whole again.”
Her fingers were bloody by the time she finished her row and sweat trickled down her back from the unnatural heat within the glass gardens. Distantly, the wolves howled and when she lifted her gaze, pairs of glowing eyes watched her from the forest edge. As she wiped her hands on her skirts, the stems began budding until they bloomed crimson petals the same shade as her blood.
Jennifer Silverwood 