Warped Page 3

  His hands were clasped in front of him. His long fingers were tipped with sharp claws, but the joints didn’t look as dexterous as a human’s. Her eyes continued down to his cloth-shrouded legs, ending in paws before returning to his face.

  “Are you done staring?” he asked snidely.

  Heat filled her cheeks, but she’d seen his eyes roving over her. “You’ve been staring at me the same way.”

  He let out a huffing breath, and Jess could swear she saw a smile ghost across his face. He started down the hallway before asking, “What can you tell me about what you have learned about my curse?”

  Jess hid a smirk at the abrupt change of subject and followed him. “I’m not sure how much of the stories are true, but according to them, you were a prince, and someone enchanted you, turning you into a beast. The spell was supposed to have been broken,” she said, stopping and considering the last. Every version of this Legend she’d researched had been the same. Broken by true love — by a kiss — but here he was, centuries later, still a beast.

  He turned to her and stared down, his eyes glinting like cold emeralds. He was silent in front of her as if he were weighing her words.

  When he failed to reply, she filled the silence with a question that weighed on her mind every time she worked on an unbroken curse: “How much of that is true?”

  “Hardly a word,” he replied darkly. “It is true that I am a Prince that was cursed, and that a woman tried to free me. Nothing else holds true.”

  “I need to know why the woman failed to break your curse.” She shifted from foot to foot as the weight of his stare pressed down on her.

  “Do you not know, Mademoiselle?”

  Jess shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. A bead of cold sweat, leftover from her terrified run, trickled down her back, sending a chill down her spine. A cold draft from the hallway blew past them, and it ate through the protection of her jacket.

  “How can you break my curse at all when no other has been able to?” he asked, bitterness and distrust fully evident.

  “It’s my job. I have the ability, and I will gladly tell you all about that, as soon as we’re somewhere other than this freezing hallway,” she added. She shivered from the combination of spent adrenaline and cold.

  “Where would you prefer to go? There are hundreds of rooms in this castle.” He glanced back at her. “The dungeon perhaps?”

  She glared at him and shook her head. “Somewhere warm with a chair. Not the dungeon,” she said emphatically.

  Another smile ghosted across his face before the stoic resignation returned. Holding his hands behind his back, he started down another empty hallway. He looked at her, eyes glinting a greenish-gold as the light caught them. Quietly, he said, “If you would please follow me. Those two demands are easily met.”

  As she followed him, she looked out the window overlooking the dead gardens. He was slightly ahead of her, giving her a good view of his broad shoulders covered by his thick, black overcoat.

  “Is it still two-thousand and seventeen?” he asked.

  Her brows drew together briefly. “It is. How did you know?”

  “I keep track of the years that pass.”

  “How long have you been cursed?”

  “Years of research have not told you?” he said snidely.

  “Considering there are fairy tales of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ going back many centuries, no, I don’t know how long you’ve been here. It’s not like you’re the only Beast, either. Every story is different, each with its own cast.” She chose to ignore his sarcasm.

  “Other Beasts?” he said, disbelief hard in his voice. His steps faltered, and he came to a complete stop, staring at her.

  “One of my close friends spent a hundred years cursed as a the Beast.”

  “How is that even possible?” Incredulity colored his voice, and he looked askance at her.

  Jess sighed, not wanting to get into all the details with him in the frigid corridor. “There are multiple variations of each fairy tale, and each original story has a curse attached to it. Just like yours,” she replied. She started down the hall, slowing until he caught up to her in a few quick strides. “So you’ve been alone for over three hundred years? And no one has found you in that time?”

  After walking quietly to the end of the hallway, he broke the silence. “I was cursed over three hundred years ago. In that time, I have had only one visitor, a young woman, but I have never left these grounds in that time.”

  Jess’s footsteps were loud compared to his near silent ones. “Who was she?”

  His steps slowed for a moment before resuming their pace. “Her name was Marguerite. You may know her from the stories as ‘Belle’. She tried to save me, just like you are trying to do. She failed, just as you will.”

  Jess was quiet as she worked to remember a Breaker named ‘Marguerite’, but none came to mind, even in the previous hundred years. “When did she try and save you?”

  There was a moment of silence before he answered. “Around seventeen-twenty.”

  “If you’ve been here for almost three hundred years without anyone to help you, I think it’s time for the curse to be broken. And I’m not going to try. I’m going to do it.”

  Six

  He opened the dark cherry door for her, waving for her to enter. “After you, Mademoiselle.”

  The room was large, lined with glass-doored shelves that contained indistinct knick-knacks. After she stepped further into the room, he moved around her, shutting the door behind him.

  Picking up an oil lamp, he lit it, and the light gleamed from the glass doors. He took it to an ornate fireplace sitting in the center of a wall and nursed a flickering flame to life.

  Rising from a kneel, he looked at her. “Will this do?”

  Jess nodded slowly and walked to the fire. Standing before it, she held her hands out and basked in the heat. “Thank you.”

  At the sound of furniture moving, she opened her eyes to see him dragging a heavy chair to the fire. He nodded at it, indicating she should sit. With a hard swallow, she perched on the edge of the chair. She looked up at him, unsure of what he was going to ask.

  “You don’t use this room that often, do you?” she said. The shelves were dusty, and the furniture bedraggled. Her fingers trailed over a thick crack that ran lengthways down the arm of her chair, clearing a track in the thick layer of grime over the wood.

  “No, but I will not have a stranger come into my private quarters,” he replied, an edge returning to his voice. “Not until you answer my questions, Mademoiselle.”

  Nodding, she grimaced and wiped her dirty fingers off on her jeans. “What do you want to know?”

  He stood before her, hand braced against the ornate, pale marble mantle. The fire flickered in the hearth, illuminating the tips of his mane. Turning, he stared back at her, with eyes a haunted green, shot through with streaks of gold.

  “How do you break curses, Mademoiselle?” he asked.

  Beside the fireplace was a tarnished silver firewood rack, holding large pieces of dried logs. He grabbed the topmost log, and bits of bark fell to the floor when his claws tightened around the brittle wood. When he put in on the fire, it caught immediately, giving the room a burst of heat and warmth.

  Jess stared at the fire engulfing the wood. “It all depends on the curse, because there are always multiple ways to break one.” She leaned forward, elbows on knees, and paused to collect her thoughts.

  “How can that be? It was set one way, therefore there should be only one way to break one.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that easy. Sometimes, it’s a case of the cursed person being in the right place at the right time — such as standing outside, in a moonbeam made from a full moon on the winter solstice. Sometimes, there’s a prophecy that needs fulfilled — such as self-sacrifice, but that’s more common with curses requiring redemption. If none of those work, then I can force a curse to break, but that can be very dangerous,” she s
oftly.

  “And what of mine? What will you do to break my curse and free me?”

  “Give me a chance to actually work and figure out what needs to be done, and I might be able to tell you. It might take weeks or years. I know people who have been working on a specific legend for decades. If that’s what it takes, then that’s what I’ll do. Until I get close to a curse, there’s no telling what it requires. The stories don’t have that level of detail, full of asinine things like ‘the prince put the glass slipper on her foot, and her curse was broken’ or ‘true love’s kiss woke the princess from her death-like sleep’,” Jess said. She snorted and shook her head.

  After rising from her chair, she walked to the window across from the hallway door. Not five feet from the fire, her breath fogged the air. With a shiver, she wrapped her arms around her chest. A thick layer of grime obscured the glass, and she used her arm to clear a small section. and she used her arm to clear a small section. Below was the domed-glass roof of a conservatory. A thin layer of snow covered the thick glass, spiderwebbed with cracks, and she could barely make out the dark woods that lay beyond the building.

  There was a rustling of heavy fabric behind her, and she turned to see him walking to her. Her pulse sped up, and she fought against the spike of fear. Deliberately, she stared out the window, ignoring his imposing height beside her. As she watched, tongues of frost grew from the corners of the window. She gasped and took an involuntary step back.

  Her foot caught a chair, and she stumbled. Before she could do more than lose her balance, he grabbed her elbow, steadying her. When he release her, she saw an ivory pendant swing around his neck.

  “S-sorry,” she stammered. Her eyes flicked back to the window where the frost quickly grew to encompass the dirty surface.

  He followed her gaze and shrugged, clearly unaffected by the sudden sight of the curse manifesting. “It likes to surprise you.” He picked up a poker and shoved the logs further into the hearth. Rapping the tip on the floor, he said, “The stories call for Beauty falling in love with the Beast — is that your plan?”

  A delicate dripping noise brought her attention back to the window. Icicles grew from the marble sill and melted. Swallowing heavily, she turned her back to the curse and glared at him. “You nailed it. That’s what I’m here to do. I’m going to just give you a bit of love and ‘poof’ — all better," she said with an elaborate wave of her hands. “If it was that easy, do you think you’d still be cursed after three hundred years?”

  He stilled, and only his slowly swishing tail betrayed his emotions. “Of course not, Mademoiselle. I only thought —” He stopped his words with an abrupt shake of his head. “I apologize.”

  Jess sighed walked back to the fire, peering up at an ornate vase filled with dried flowers that sat atop the mantle. Although dust coated the curves, she could still make out painted roses and delicate curlicues of vines winding down the slender stem to the base. “I wish I could tell you exactly what it would take. For the last two years, all I’ve had to go on is what the stories say. But now I’m here with you, and I need you to tell me what really happened, so I have something real to work with.”

  Placing his hands behind his back, he stepped away from the window. “And yet, I doubt you will break my curse, even knowing the truth, Mademoiselle. My curse is more vast than you may realize; in the three hundred years of living in this prison, only two have made it through the wood and to me. The first is dead. Will you fare any better?”

  She knew he had every right to doubt her. It was never easy to convince a cursed person of her abilities. Since his curse muted her abilities, she had nothing to physically show him, and she knew it would be that much harder to convince him. Keeping her voice calm and even, she said, “I know your curse is ‘vast’. Your curse has been messing up my life since I started working on it — only a powerful curse has that much reach.”

  “‘Messing up your life’? Why would you even want to work on something that was already affecting you?” he asked blandly. His clenched fist was the only sign of the tension that ran through him.

  With a huff of frustration, she put her hands on her hips and stared at him, head cocked to the side. “No matter what curse I work on, it would affect me. Yours was just working extra hard to make sure I couldn’t find you, and it failed miserably. Your curse is difficult, strong and old: three things that make a challenge that I can’t resist.”

  “Most people would run from a challenge such as the one you are facing.”

  “Maybe,” she said dismissively, “but not me. I won’t stop until I’m dead or your free. Preferably the latter.”

  “Have you considered that my curse was not made to be broken, Mademoiselle?”

  “Prince, I live by one rule: any and every curse can be broken. I have never seen a curse unbreakable. Hard to break, yeah, but not plain impossible. I have resources that I doubt Marguerite had,” she added emphatically.

  “You do not even know the parameters of my curse, and yet you are arrogant enough to believe that you can break it. How can I believe you when you have done nothing to show me that you can?” He sat in the chair across from Jess and stared at her expectantly.

  With a sigh of frustration, she ran a hand through her hair. “I can’t show you something I don’t have. Your curse removed all of my abilities, so I can’t demonstrate. The only thing I can do is tell you what I’ve previously accomplished.” She took a deep breath and mentally went through the list of everyone she had saved. Her eyes met his, and she smiled. “I’ve broken over a dozen curses that other Breakers started but couldn’t finish. In the midst of finishing curses for others, I broke two without any assistance from anyone.”

  His eyes narrowed, glinting in the dying firelight. “Two —”

  “Two by myself, but over a dozen challenging curses,” she reiterated calmly, “including three that every other breaker thought were impossible. I broke them, Prince.”

  His eyebrows rose at her statement, and he stared at her. “Are you that good, or are the other breakers that poor?”

  She couldn’t help the bark of laughter that escaped. She shook her head and curtailed the laugh. She stretched, noting the stiffness in her legs from the harried chase. “I’m that good, Prince. I’ve been training my entire life to break curses, and I have broken every curse I’ve come against.”

  He leaned against the wall beside the hearth and considered her words. “Perhaps you can share one of the impossible stories?”

  Jess nodded and relaxed slightly. She looked at the window and stared at the window now completely covered with the frost that snaked from it, coating the damask wallpaper. While her eyes followed the thick tendrils, she asked, “Have you heard the story of Sleeping Beauty?”

  "Of course I have," he said. When he found what she was staring at, he said, “Please, ignore it. The heat of the fire should keep it at bay until we leave the room.”

  She deliberately turned her back to the frost and faced the fire. “So you know the way it goes. She pricks her finger on a cursed spindle and falls asleep, and the prince wakes her —”

  "With true love's kiss, and they live happily ever after. How sweet," he said with a curl of a lip.

  She lifted both eyebrows. "Are you done interrupting?"

  “Continue, please. I will attempt to keep my comments to myself.”

  "Thank you,” she said drily, unable to fully suppress a smile. “Now, as I was about to say, that story should end there. But it doesn't. Everything past her falling asleep was fabricated.”

  “What was the truth about Sleeping Beauty?” he asked.

  The logs shifted in the fire, and one rolled to the edge of the hearth. He kicked it back into the embers with the toe of his black boot.

  The room was growing colder as the frost slowly consumed the heat. Jess glanced at the frost, slowing spreading over the walls and ceiling. She shivered and moved closer to the fire.

  “Her name was Helaine, and she wasn’t a prin
cess. She was just a wealthy farmer’s daughter. There was a noble son who’d decided that the only thing he wanted was her. Not that he loved her — no,” she said, disgusted, “he just wanted to bed her. Unfortunately, he was engaged, and his fiance was upset that he was going after another woman. The fiancee bought a curse aimed at Helaine. It worked, and when Helaine started to turn the wool into thread, she pricked her finger and fell asleep.”

  “How long was she cursed before you freed her?”

  “She was cursed for just over two hundred years.”

  The fire crackled before them, chasing away the frost from this small area. He moved, and his greatcoat opened, exposing the pale silver silk lining. Underneath it, his linen shirt was thick, and there were floral patterns embroidered into the collar, trailing down the lacing beneath his chin. Metallic threads reflected the firelight, drawing attention to the details.

  “What made this an impossible curse? It seems simple enough.” He looked away from her to glare at the frost that snaked too close to them, now only a few feet away.

  “No one could find out what object the curse was tied to,” Jess explained. “They tried destroying the spinning wheel and the bobbin of thread she made, but that only weakened the curse.” She smiled, remembering the victorious feeling of her discovery. “I discovered the object still tying the curse to her: a dress and a pair of lace gloves that had been made with the bobbin of cursed thread. The dress was in a museum halfway across the country, and the gloves were owned by one of the nobleman’s descendents. Once I destroyed them, the curse was broken and she returned to her own time. That’s the goal of breaking a curse — to reunite the two realities.”

  “Two realities,” he repeated. He tilted his head as he looked at her, his gaze so cat-like it almost brought a smile to her face. She didn’t think he’d appreciate that thought, though. “How does something like that even happen?”

  “When a curse happens and a legend is made, like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty —”