Beast within the Beauty || A Beauty and the Beast Retelling

Chapter Twenty-Eight || To Accompany a Beast

THE GENTLE RAPPING of knuckles outside my chamber did not phase me. My lips had not even parted as to speak when the door slid open and made way for the lord of the castle. I drew my features into a mask of indifference. "Pray tell," I drawled, "what has earned me the honor of his lordship's presence for yet another evening?"

"That supposed honor has long been yours." His head tilted to a side. "I am far too impatient to await the moment you see it fitting to willingly offer your company." Metal trays and silver domes drifted in after him. "Dinner?"

He gestured for me to sit in the chair he had drawn, murmuring words of chivalry and formality. It had my brow arching. "You claim the role of a gentleman?"

A subtle curve found his lips. "Do you not consider me one?"

"Given that I would think most good-natured gentlemen to abstain from looking up ladies' skirts and offering them places in their beds, no, I do not." Nevertheless, I sat beside him.

And once he took his own place, I thought I might have known why he had chosen to dine in my chambers rather than the dining hall. "Those dealings are only limited to you, I can attest to that much." His fingers wove into the tousled hair atop his head

Only an arms breadth stood between us and if I so much as twitched a muscle, then my leg would brush along his. "Is that an attempt to comfort me?"

"Do you feel the need for comfort?" He leaned closer and firelight struck the side of his face. I fought the sudden urge to trace the hideous scar across his cheek, to ease the ridges in the tissue. "Shall I draw you near and coddle you?"

"I would rather you do not," I said. "It would ease my mind if you instead spoke with me...Raoul."

"In that case..." He wet his lips. "What do you wish to speak of?"

"You very well know what that would be." I did not think he would act on it.

"The Flux is worsening." His voice was void of emotion—somewhat dry and empty. "This castle lives on borrowed time. Soon, we will pay the price of my rashness." His eyes met mine. "We have long known where our fates lie."

A statement he uttered with no shred of doubt or hesitation.

"What of reversing the bewitch—"

"Your efforts would be in vain." He shook his head. "Worry for naught."

I pressed my lips together. "Raoul, I am not so foolish as to do that—especially if only to appease you."

"I am aware, Ismae." His eyes sealed shut as he dipped his head back, descending into the shadows beyond the reach of flickering candles. "I'm aware."

He visited my chambers that next evening—and the next. I was as if he took it upon himself as a task he would never veer from so long as the Flux has not taken him. The nights muddled together and exchanged words merged into indecipherable slurs I no longer cared to note.