Rose, Wilted: Book 1

Chapter 6 - In the Belly of the Beast

When I woke the sun was high overhead. I groaned and at the sunlight in my eyes. Sitting up, I winced. My back was sore and tender. I yawned and blinked a few times in an attempt to bring the world into focus.
"Jean?" I asked sleepily. Why was I on the floor? Then it all came flooding back to me.
The attack. The Beast. Jean. Father!
"Father!" I shouted, leaping to my feet. "Jean! Father!"
I raced outside to the stable and flung open the door. Our old Clydesdale, Bess, was chewing a mouthful of hay and snorted crossly at me for disturbing her afternoon. The Arabian was not back yet.
I sighed deeply and looked up at the sun. It was nearly noon. My brow furrowed with worry. I shut the stable door and wandered back to the house.
Realizing I was still in my nightgown I went upstairs to change. I paused at Ilsa's door. Inside I could hear her alternating between fits of sobbing and hyperventilation. Blair's door was quiet. She probably wasn't even indoors and I fervently hoped she hadn't gone and done anything reckless.
In my own room I barely comprehended my switch from my nightgown to a simple, navy blue dress, or even leaving the room and going back downstairs. I began to wash some dishes left over from the night before, but stopped when I realized I'd been scrubbing the same plate for ten minutes. I tried playing the little harpsichord we owned, but played like a sack of bricks and quickly gave up. After I'd checked the stable again for the fifth time I just paced the floor, unable to do anything else.
I jumped and nearly shrieked when the door swung open, but to my disappointment it was neither Jean nor Father. It was Blair and Mrs. Charlesdaughter.
Blair took the woman by the hand and led her past me, then up the stairs to Ilsa's room. I had barely thought of Ilsa, but she definitely needed help. At least one of us was thinking.
After a few minutes I heard muffled instructions on making an herbal tea for Ilsa to take to calm her nerves and after a quiet exchange between Mrs. Charlesdaughter and Blair the doctor left the house, giving me a sympathetic nod on her way out. Blair came down a few minutes later to fix Ilsa's tea. When I offered to help she snapped,
"I can do it myself, Beauty. You're not the only smart one in this house you know."
I left her alone after that.
My sisters spent the rest of the day upstairs. It was getting late. Should I get ready for the wedding? Jean had promised he'd be back in time. I ran upstairs and got into my wedding gown. I got completely ready, right down to the last hairpin, then took all of it off and threw it back into my trunk. Then I put it all back on and tore it off again.
I stood at the window in my navy blue dress. My dagger was belted around my waist. I fiddled absently with my silver engagement ring as I watched the sun. It was evening and the sun was about to set. Jean and I should have been getting married right now. The priest had never shown up. I think he knew what I was still trying to deny.
The sun flashed red and set completely before my eyes and I cried out as if in pain. I grabbed my cloak and ran out the door. I burst through the stable doors and saddled Bess. I mounted the Clydesdale and spurred her into a run, streaking into the forest.
In the distance I heard the door fly open and Blair shriek,
"Annalise why are you doing?"
But then the forest closed around me and I heard nothing else from the village behind me.
A mist swirled across the ground and draped over the empty shells and skeletons of the leafless, autumn trees. The trees thickened around us, bending low to the ground from ages of being battered by the relentless wind, ready to snatch us up at the slightest provocation.
Night had enveloped us completely before something large, black and unmoving loomed out of the mist in front of us. At first I thought it was a blackened tree limb. As we drew closer I realized what it really was and left whatever little I'd eaten the day before splattered across the side of the dirt path.
It was a dead horse, half eaten. Bloody flesh and scraps of hair and skin were lying strewn across the ground. Wolf tracks marred the ground heavily around the carcass.
The Arabian.
We galloped on. My heart was pounding wildly. Jean. What had happened to him? He hadn't come back when he promised and Jean would never break a promise.
Oh please Lord, please don't let him be dead!
It was then that I heard the first haunting howl. Bess spooked and ran faster than ever before, her heavy hooves thundering across the ground like some half-mad monster. The second howl sent shivers up my spine. Then I heard the chanting, the twisted words my panicked mind couldn't decipher. I felt the power carried on them and the entrancing sway. There was anger and command and a threat thinly veiled. And the wolves set up a howl.
That sent me into a state of panic.
No longer were Bess's the only feet thundering across the ground. Growls and snarls came from all around us. Then the leader howled. I knew that cry. I'd heard it once before when a pack near the edge of the woods had killed a fawn. It was the hunting howl, the kill order. Our death sentence. I looked back. Seven wolves with green eyes and viciously sharp teeth were close to surrounding us. The look in their eyes was mad hunger.
If it were possible, Bess would have run faster, but she was tiring. The old horse was no match for the speed and strength of a wolf pack. The path was swiftly disappearing. Wolves flanked us on either side now. One lunged for my ankle and I shrieked as it barely missed.
A thought flashed across my mind unbidden.
This is how she died. And I'm not far behind.
Just as the woods enveloped us completely, a gigantic, wrought-iron gate loomed out of the darkness directly in front of us, so close that we nearly ran into it.
I screamed as Bess reared and thrashed her hooves in midair. She stumbled backwards and dropped to all fours, stamping her feet. Her eyes rolled and she shrieked again. I pulled on the reins tightly and got her calmer.
Another thought flashed across my conscious.
Why aren't the wolves attacking us?
I twisted around in the saddle and scanned the shadows.
The wolves were still there, but had retreated quite a ways. They snarled a half hearted threat, but kept their distance.
The unintelligible chanting from earlier started up again. It sounded angrier, more threatening, but the alpha let out a low whine and slunk back into the shadows. The rest of the pack followed suit with their tails between their legs until just the gleam of green eyes was left. Then even that flash of light was gone and Bess and I were left alone. Apparently whatever was inside those gates wasn't worth facing for anything, even prey. Bess didn't like it either. She kept swinging her head and stamping her hooves. I leapt off Bess and attempted to calm her. She grew a little more steady after some murmured words of encouragement, but neither of us were breathing normally. Bess kept up her heavy breaths and mine where coming shallow and fast to match the panicked thrumming of my heart.
I paused only a few more moments, then shoved the gates open, leading Bess inside. I closed the gate securely behind us, just in case any of the wolves were having second thoughts. None of them were, and that may have been the thing that frightened me most of all.
And who had been chanting? It was almost as though they were controlling the wolves. And chasing me on purpose. Too many questions and not enough answers.
But I had made it to my destination, and now I had to move forward.
It was a castle that stood behind the iron gate. The palace stood at least four stories with turrets springing up from the roof and surrounding a large dome at the castle's center. Its stone walls towered upward into the cloud streaked oblivion of the night sky, sheer as a cliff face. The stones that made it up were either weather worn grey or rain-stained black. Ivy vines the color of jade that tangled with climbing, ruby roses were the only jewels to adorn its walls now. The plants slithered upward in sinuous curves, framing windows like thorny vipers. Double doors stood grandly at the ground level, and a tongue of smoothed, cobbled stone protruded from them, passing under my feet and just past the iron gate. The grounds seemed well kept despite the castle's three year state of abandonment. I couldn't see much in the dark, but there were several trees that seemed to have somehow retained their lush, green coverage despite the oncoming winter. The grass was neatly trimmed and level as well, but thick hedges hid much of the gardens from my view.
As I approached the decorated, gold gilded doors, I shuddered. There were gouges torn into the woods, put there by massive claws, marking the domain of the Beast. Everyone knew that after that monster had killed the King and driven everyone out of the castle it had made its lair here. The castle belonged to the Beast, but few could find it. No one really wanted to anyway. Most people in the village had never seen the castle even before the Beast took over. In truth I was fortunate to have been able to find it.
Or unfortunate.
I looked back at the gate. It was almost like a choice of deaths. I was wolf meat if I chose the part of the coward and ran back into the woods. I was essentially a martyr if I entered the castle and attempted to save my father and my fiancé. If Jean had indeed survived the wolves and come here. And if the Beast had not simply killed father somewhere out in the woods. Alone. In the cold. With the life blood leaking from his-
I chose the nobler option.
The mighty, oak doors swung open with a cavernous creak. Every sound set my nerves on edge.
"Stay Bess," I told the faithful old horse. "I'll be back soon."
I hope.
I slipped inside. I kept my cloak wrapped tightly around my shoulders and walked cautiously down the corridor in front of me. Only a little ways in, the hall opened up into a large room. There was a staircase in front of me draped in red velvet that appeared as though it were ever-shrinking half circles stacked on top of each until it reached a landing. From there it branched off into two staircases that headed off in opposite directions. Both were edged with marble handrails. The floor was white, polished, marble and if I looked up I could see a handrail around each of the four separate stories. It was beautiful, or it would have been, if not for all the statues. They were lithe angels with elegant wings and lions caught in mid-roar. They would have been breathtaking, but most had been viciously crushed, the angels especially. Their delicate features were marred and most had at least a wing broken off, if not most of their limbs. There were headless lions and some with flurries of claw marks raking their sides. Some were so smashed that they were little more than piles of rubble. That alone was almost enough to make me want to run home, were it not for the sakes of my father and Jean. Two corridors branched off from where I stood now. That gave me four choices: the two stairways and the corridors. Five really, if you counted going home, but that wasn't an option.
I stood there, indecisive, for a moment, before I heard the voices. They were more of whisperings, unintelligible mutterings that I couldn't quite make out, but they were a good sign, weren't they? I didn't dare shout for Father and Jean, not in this eerie, foreboding silence, but whispers were better than nothing. My feet took me down the left corridor.
My feet echoed as I walked. There was no red velvet to coat the floor here. Instantly the whisperings ceased.
"Wait!" I said in a near shout. I began the walk faster. The whispers started up again, intensified and quickly fading. I began to run, not caring anymore how loud I was. My feet skimmed the ground and I had to grip my cloak by the pin to keep it from flying off as I ran.
The hall ceased to exist and I skidded to a stop. Ahead of me was a spiral staircase made of stone. Everything was so dark, and a cold chill had settled over the entire hall. I shivered and pulled my cloak closer around me. I took a tentative step onto the first level of rock. Numbing cold traveled through my shoe and into my toes. Fingers of cold crawled up my ankle and I gasped. It was almost unnaturally cold here. I could see my breath in front of me. It hadn't been that way in the main hall, just here.
There was no other way the voices could have gone, and so I began to ascend the stairs. Each slow, cautious step took me farther from the bottom of the stairwell and closer to whatever was above it. The stairs seemed to carry on forever, as if they were trying to climb all the way to the stars' cold sparkle and the black oblivion of night.
"Father?" I asked the silence. "Jean?"
Father? Father? Father? Came the ever dwindling echo. Jean? Jean? Jean?
I reached the top of the stairwell. No longer was I trapped in the darkness of the staircase. It wasn't magnificently lit by chandeliers and candelabras. Instead, checkered moonlight filtered into the room through a grate that open into the freezing, outside air. That was why it was so frigid. The cold had permanently seeped into the gray, stone walls. But the room was devoid of nearly everything but shadow. The contrast of the harsh moonlight illuminated a chilling sight. A block of wood with a shallow depression on one side was placed in the center of the room. There was an ax leaning up against its side, glittering cruelly in the moonlight. Everything else was exquisite darkness that seemed almost naturally impossible.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up and my gut twisted.
An execution tower.
"Father? Jean?" I dared to call again, a little louder.
"Annalise?" was the weak reply. In the shadows I heard a slight rustle and a groan.
"No, no, Annalise, what have you done?" It was Father's voice.
"I don't understand, I- I came here to save you. I came to bring you home. Father, where are you?" I peered into the darkness ahead of me and took a few steps forward.
"Father?"
"No! No, you can't have her, you can't have Anna!" Father shouted wildly. Was he delirious? There was no one else here. I kept walking forward until I was totally immersed in the darkness. As my eyes began to adjust I saw a darker heap slumped in the corner.
"Father!" I exclaimed. I hurried over and knelt beside him. I couldn't see any more than an outline of him in this darkness, but I found my father's hand and took hold of it.
"Father come on, we have to leave before the Beast finds me here. Is Jean here?" I asked urgently. His clammy hand grabbed my forearm.
"Anna, you've got to get out of here. I- I lied about everything."
My gut twisted horribly.
"Wha-"
"The ship was beyond repair. Almost none of the sailors made it, and they threw everything overboard to make the ship lighter. What was left was confiscated. It was a disaster. I made nothing off it. And then I got lost and I made a deal that I shouldn't have. It will take you if you stay here much longer!"
He lied. He lied to us. But where did the gold come from? And what deal?
"Father, whatever you did and whoever you made a deal with doesn't matter right now. We have to leave. The Beast could come at any moment."
"No- no it's too late for me to run. I never should have picked that rose..."
"Father, we have to leave. The rose doesn't matter."
"It's too late already," he groaned. I opened my mouth to respond but the sounds stopped me.
A heavy huff of breath.
The brush of fabric against stone.
The scrape of claws.
There was something behind me, something large and looming and beastly. Something that had come to kill. I stiffened but forced myself to turn around.
A massive form prowled in the shadows.
No one needed to tell me what it was.
"Why are you here?" the voice was full of malicious power. It was halfway between a growl and a harsh, grating voice.
"I came here looking for my Father and my fiancé. Please, just let them go," I begged. I knew it was the Beast that prowled the darkness in front of me, but the monster itself couldn't be the source of the voice. The man speaking must be behind it.
"I will not." There was force loaded into every word, "Your father made an oath that he must keep."
"What about the other man, Jean? He's my fiancé."
The shadow stopped its furious pacing and there was a pause.
"He's dead."
I gasped. No, it couldn't be true. Jean, he couldn't be, he just couldn't. It would be my fault. I'd let him go after the Beast and Father. He'd been injured. I should have made him stay and recover. I should have gone after the Beast myself in the first place. Jean shouldn't have- he shouldn't-
This was my fault. All my fault.
The room was a blur of bleak, cold colors, twisting together in my blue eyes as tears of pain and guilt and sorrow began to fill them.
"Are you here to fulfill the deal?" the voice asked, heedless of my grief.
"What deal?" I asked with contempt.
"He didn't tell you."
"Didn't tell me what? I demand to know what is going on!"
The Beast roared and the thunder of its echo nearly deafened me. Having once been to a fair when we still lived in the city, I had heard lions before. It was the only thing I could compare it to, but the twinge of fear I had felt when I heard the lions was woefully inaccurate. This made me want to cower, but I knew I couldn't.
"You are not in any position to be making demands, girl," the voice growled. "Your father stole from me. Two chests worth of valuables and rather handsome stallion. But that's not what I care about. I would have let him go. But he stole something else. A little bit of my life. A white rose."
He'd stolen. My father had stolen from this place. The deserted palace. The Beast's den. So that was where the gold came from, and the rose. But who was this? Who was speaking? The Beast was the only other living thing in the castle. So was this some kind of sorcerer who had controlled the Beast all along? Had he killed the King and driven everyone out only to make some sort of secret lair here with his monster? But if that were true then why had he set his monster on the village? And a rose? He was upset over a flower? And part of his life? What was he talking about?
"What has this got to do with your deal?"
"In return for stealing part of my life, he must pay with his own. I granted him the things he stole and another month of his miserable life to say his goodbyes. And since I was in a gracious mood I gave him a second option."
It seemed that he expected me to say something, but I kept silent, waiting for him to continue.
"Instead of his own death, I told him he could hand over one of his daughters to suffer in his place."
"I told you I would not! I told you you could not have her!" my father shouted.
"One daughter in particular," the voice continued, ignoring my father. "I wanted the youngest. You. But your father was unwilling to take that second option. A month passed and your father had not returned so I dragged him back myself. And now here you are. Interesting how things work out, isn't it? So, what'll it be? Your life, or his?"
It was horrible, too horrible to consider. I couldn't stay here with a sorcerer and a Beast. I couldn't. Of course, he'd promised that I wouldn't live long. He'd probably let the Beast kill me, and that would be messy. Messy and prolonged.
But I couldn't just let them kill my father.
Who would take care of Blair and Ilsa if he was gone? And Jean was dead. If my father died I would have no one left who cared about me. Even if he had lied to us about becoming rich and stolen his way back to wealth, he was my father. He was old. He couldn't be the hero anymore and sacrifice himself for me. He couldn't protect me. It was my turn to protect him. Besides, there was no one who was going to miss me. Father would grieve if I gave myself up, but other than that? No one.
My sisters sneers came back into my mind.
Beauty. Beauty. Beauty.
That was what decided it.
"Take me."
"No Annalise, you can't! I forbid you to do this!" my Father's voice came from behind me, but just like the night of the attack, I ignored him.
"You would give yourself up for him?" the voice softened slightly, but only for a moment.
"Yes." I heard the word escape from my mouth.
The Beast growled. It sounded different from anger but I couldn't detect the emotion behind it. If indeed the monster had feelings.
"Are you sure?" the voice asked. Something he said stopped me. He had said, 'I dragged him back myself'. But the Beast had been the one to take my father so who-
I blanched pale at the realization. No. No, it was a monster. It wasn't even something remotely human. It was evil, it was malicious. It couldn't be-
"Who are you?" I asked. My voice shook. My answer came as an action.
The monstrous shadow stepped into the illumination of the moonlight.
The Beast looked like an enormous cross between a lion and a wolf. The moon revealed every hue of brown and gold with thick, shadowed, fur everywhere. A ragged tail swept the harsh lit stones and its legs bent backwards like a wolf, with sharp, curved claws protruding from each foot. Its body was thick and massive, covered in the same matted, dark fur with a giant mane of it hanging around its ghastly features. Its arms were muscular and the fur was slightly thinner. Claws sharper and longer than the ones on its feet jutted out from its paw-like hands. Nothing, however, compared to its face. A maw of sharp teeth was rimmed by black lips pulled back in a snarl, revealing four, sharp, canines that were longer than the others. Its green eyes were like cold, dark emeralds filled with malice and hate that burned with despair and anger that seemed to pierce my soul itself. Pain had transformed into anger and shame had turned to hatred, all melting together into one, twisted conscience exhibited plainly in those cold, stony eyes.
I gasped and recoiled.
This was the source of the voice, and it was more monster than ever imagined.
I took a deep breath. I remembered something my mother had told me before we moved to the countryside, barren of prospects or even a glimmer of wealth left. She told me the same the night she died, the night she had gone off into the forest and never come home. It was something that Father quoted in a whisper at her funeral so that only the two of us could hear.
Fear is less important than doing what must be done.
There was something more important than fear at this moment - Father's life.
I looked straight into the Beast's eyes.
Six, whispered, trembling, courageous words changed my life forever.
"I will take my father's place."

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So sorry it took me until Thursday to update guys!  School got hectic, swim team started and things have been a general mess.
Also, there might be some big dialogue edits in this chapter as I am still not quite satisfied with it, but right now I'm just focusing on getting all the necessary scenes in and then I'll go back and figure out character arcs and stuff like this.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. What did you guys think of the chapter? Any thoughts on the Beast? Anna's father?
Please vote and comment and hopefully I will be seeing you guys later today with another update!