The Beast of Rose Castle

-= 7 =-

The Beast stared at himself in the wide, golden mirror. He contemplated his reflection with an air of questioning and worry. One girl... one girl, he thought. Is it her? Have I failed as she knew I would all those years ago? The beast asked himself over and over the same questions that left his mind reeling and whirling. 

Dinner was drawing closer and he found himself dreading the empty table and the void of conversation. Though he had grown used to the silence, the girl had changed his mind. She had welcomed back the memories of the conversations he once held with his parents and all sorts of politicians. 

He growled as he strode in several long strides to his leather-bound book. His fingers flipped carelessly through the pages until he had reached nearly the end. Writing covered most of the pages when he flipped through it. His emotions were bled into every curve and line the quill tip had pressed onto the page with ink. Or rather, was it his own blood he had taken by so easily pressing his emotions down into words? 

The Beast had poured his own heart out, unwillingly, onto the thick sheets bound with leather and twine. 

He brushed his hand over the empty page. Before he could go down, he felt the need that made him have to write. 

I've seen a girl. 

It wasn't that I just observed her through the rose-covered iron fence. Rather, I touched her. I held her wrist in my hand and felt the fury of her heartbeat. It pounded underneath my fingers, so full of life and youth. 

This girl should have never come. 

It will undoubtedly be the death of her. 

...

She is quite beautiful. You would have to be blind, and deaf not to admit as much as that! 

Her eyes are wild, like the ever-growing forest surrounding Rose Castle. They are like a sea of grass on a cool bright summer morning. Her hair is weaved from the sunlight's gentle and blinding rays. It is dazzling, as she is to me. She stuns me so easily, and it is hard to find myself once more once she does. 

The girl has a wonderful temper. How I think a temper wonderful is beyond me. Never before have I met a girl so ready to fight against every word I speak, and it somehow makes her more beautiful to my eyes. 

Whenever she is angry her the skin at her cheeks flushes a dusty-rose color. Embers are lit in her eyes, making me want to know what they look like when she is happy, excited, and so many more emotions. 

Her name is something that was not told to me. Yet, I cannot help but call her Beauty. 

Oh... I will be the death of her. 

Beauty will be slain by the horrid Beast, and I shall be trapped within the walls of Rose Castle forevermore. 

Oh... Oh, dear Beauty, why did you not stay away? 

Did I not try? 

Have I failed you so horribly? 

I believe I have failed you, Beauty. I believe I have, for the second time in my existence, destroyed something as precious and breath-taking as a Winter Rose. 

The Beast took his hand away from the book, the quill following. He set it down with a frustrated shout. It echoed throughout the castle, warning the Baker's family that had been spirited into the dining room below. 

Minutes before the family found themselves in the dining room of the giant estate, they had been faced by the iron gate to Rose Castle. When Liyor tried to grab the iron, thorns seemed to prick and slice the skin of his hand.