8. Chapter 8
8
BEATRICE
Eddi shocked me by taking off somewhere with friends Friday morning. As crazy as she was about flying-horse races, why would she deliberately miss the first day of races for a jaunt in the city? Her cheery scribbled note advised me not to worry—she would be back by nightfall. Although we weren’t scheduled to leave until Sunday, I sent out our clothing to be laundered, then packed my own trunk and Eddi’s with all but the next two days’ necessities, all the while stewing about what King Koldo would have to say if he ever found out that his sneaky daughter had ditched me for a full day.
She returned that evening, sunburned and exhausted, promised to explain everything once we were back home in Bilbao, then hopped into the shower.
Afterwards, while combing out her wet curls, she assured me, “If my father finds out, I’ll just tell him I kept you in the dark. I don’t intend to be trapped in a limousine or airplane, unable to escape his scoldings and lectures for a full day. He’ll get over it soon enough.” But a certain gleam in her eyes set my teeth on edge. Everything about the situation felt hazardous, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
I didn’t sleep well that night. Partly from worrying about what Eddi wasn’t telling me, and partly from happy anticipation of a full day with the Gamekeeper.
The sun wasn’t yet fully up, yet the first race fans were already trickling through the resort’s gates when I sneaked out to meet the Gamekeeper in the rose garden. This time I reached out to him as I approached, both thrilled and freaked when his shadowy hands engulfed mine.
“Beatrice,” he said, and his voice seemed to echo through my soul as he drew me so close that I felt the heat of his body. My heart pounded, and the rush of adrenaline shortened my breath.
Even though I wanted him to wrap me in his arms, I hesitated to initiate our first embrace. Some warning in the back of my mind kept holding me back. I loved him dearly, and yet I knew almost nothing about him. Even the idea of asking him a basic question like “Are you human?” had always seemed invasive or disrespectful.
Or maybe I feared the answer. It was easiest to simply go on the way we were. I vastly preferred ignorance to discovering the worst.
“Gamekeeper,” I spoke his name with warmth. “It’s our last day together for a time. I want to make it our best ever.”
“Yes.” He sounded tentative.
Determined to cheer him, I asked, “Shall we walk here or extend our horizons into other gardens? Few people will be around at this hour.”
His voice warmed. “Particularly not on fête days.”
“Good. Then we’ll start here, then maybe have lunch in the Vetrician gardens.” My heart lightened at the thought. I could sneak out into the crowds long enough to purchase food and drinks to share.
I heard him draw and release a long, deep breath. “Beatrice . . .”
Did I imagine it, or were his gloved hands trembling? “Is something wrong? Are you all right?” I asked in a rush of concern, gently squeezing hands that could probably crush mine without effort.
Could he be a giant? A troll? Such creatures might be disguised with a glamour. The unwelcome suspicion made me shiver.
“I . . .” His deep voice cracked. “Beatrice, I intended to walk with you today and visit as we always do, but I . . . I can’t.”
“You can’t?” My heart took a plunge, and every nerve went taut. Was he no longer interested in me? Had I bored him with rambling stories about my childhood and people he didn’t even know, or— “Why?” I blurted.
“Because everything depends on your answer to my question.”
His emphasis on “everything” alarmed me further. I didn’t want to ask, but at the same time I wanted nothing more than to know. “What question?”
I both heard and felt him draw an endless breath before he spoke. “I love you, Beatrice, more than anything and anyone I’ve ever known on this earth. Will you marry me?”
Heat roared through my veins in awareness of his magical authority and power, his intense masculinity, and the non-humanness of him. His voice belonged to the entity I’d sensed the first time I passed through Faraway Castle’s gates all those years ago—rich, mysterious, heartrending . . . terrifying. I longed to tell him how dearly I loved him in return, and yet . . .
“Oh! Oh, no! I can’t!” My voice sounded like croaking in my ears. I ripped my hands from his gentle grasp, burst into tears, and blindly ran.
My next memory is of standing on the lakeshore, gazing at the mountains beyond the lake and their reflections on its rippling surface. The sun was high in the sky. No one else was in sight, but I dimly heard a crowd roar.
My shoes were wet, and my feet ached as if I’d walked many miles. I trembled and gasped for breath as if I’d been crying hard, but I couldn’t remember why. A breeze chilled my cheeks, which were damp. Why did I feel so profoundly . . . sad?
Golden eyes, shimmering with love and sorrow.
I let out a moan, hiding my face in my hands as memories returned in a torrent. The Gamekeeper loved me. He’d asked me to marry him, and I ran from him in terror—as if he were a monster instead of the best friend I’d ever had! As if I didn’t love him dearly.
Oh, yes, I had romantic feelings for him.
But how could I marry someone I’d never seen? I didn’t even know his real name— “Gamekeeper” was his job title. And the unfamiliar magic laced through his marriage proposal was so powerful that it panicked me. If marrying him would be good and safe, why had I run for my life? Was my subconscious warning me?
Suddenly dizzy, I sat down hard on the rocky shore, and the sharp pain in my backside shocked me back to reality. I had just run from my dearest friend. I must have hurt him deeply, and I needed to make amends.
It would be dreadfully awkward, but I couldn’t just leave the resort tomorrow with this between us. As I turned back toward the castle and the gardens, a sense of urgency pushed me into a run. Music, a brass band, and the roar of crowds from the playing fields told me the races had begun.
I was breathless when I entered the topmost garden terrace. “Gamekeeper?” I called softly, then twice more in louder tones. I knew it was useless; he was nowhere nearby. Yet I kept trying. “Please contact me before I have to leave.”
I glimpsed Lady Gillian just before she hurried down the steps to another level on the arm of a broad-shouldered man. Otherwise, the gardens were nearly deserted. I didn’t sense the Gamekeeper anywhere.
As the race noise intensified, I returned to the resort lobby and approached the front desk to ask Sten if he knew how I might contact the Gamekeeper. “You wish to speak with him?” he asked in evident surprise.
“Yes, we’re friends. But I can’t seem to locate him.” I swallowed hard.
A light glinted in the dwarf’s dark eyes, and his mouth twitched behind his gray-streaked beard. “If you’d like to write him a note, I’ll make certain he receives it.” He drew out a sheet of paper and offered it to me, but I wasn’t sure I could put a coherent sentence on paper. I pushed it back. “Please just pass on my request for him to meet me in our usual place tomorrow morning. It’s . . . it’s urgent.”
Little did I know that while I was breaking my heart and worrying over the Gamekeeper’s absence, Princess Eddi had somehow finagled a way to not only compete in the prestigious Faraway Castle Cup race on a borrowed horse but also win.
That evening passed in a blur. I tried to rejoice about Eddi’s amazing success, but my heart wasn’t in it. I had a sinking feeling that her father would blame me for his daughter’s escapade.
At the celebration that evening, I hovered on the sidelines, worrying until I could hardly think straight.
Arabella
Late Saturday night, I received a message from Sten by way of a nightjar: Beatrice asked me to tell the Gamekeeper to meet her in the rose garden in the morning. I’ve been trying to reach him all evening with no success.
I crushed the handwritten note and dropped my fist into my lap. The nightjar waited, twittering softly, but I had no idea what to tell Sten. On prior occasions when our Beast had chosen to vanish, he’d been thorough about it. He’d most likely retreated to his home. I jotted a quick note of thanks for notifying me and promised to handle the matter, then slipped the scrap of paper into the tiny container strapped to the bird’s leg and sent it back to Sten.
Sometimes I wondered how much of the Gamekeeper’s story the dwarves and brownies knew. Many of them might have been alive back then, or perhaps their parents had told them the “Beast” story when they were young. For whatever reason, many decades ago, when he opened this resort on part of his family’s ancestral lands, magical people and creatures had flocked here to help him, and here they remained. Whatever his faults, the lunkhead was beloved.
Beatrice
King Koldo arrived at the resort Sunday morning, filled with a dangerous blend of pride and fury regarding his daughter’s racing victory. He located me as I exited the breakfast room, right after Eddi headed for the stables.
“Miss de Callen,” he began after herding me into a private corner of the lobby, “I am grateful for your faithful service to my daughter these many years. Overall, you have been a positive moral influence and a true friend. However, yesterday’s events revealed deficiencies in your control of her behavior. Aside from this, the royal family’s situation has changed, as you know, since my remarriage. In short, I believe the beneficial time of your service to Princess Edurne Zuri has passed.”
His words only confirmed my suspicion that he viewed my presence in his household as an impediment to Eddi’s relationship with his new wife. The king obviously felt guilty about letting me go with no notice—he promised me generous severance pay—but when all was said and done, I was out of a job. I accompanied my luggage and the bulk of Eddi’s to Bilbao that same day, and on Monday, one of his chauffeurs delivered me and my possessions home to Castle Iker. I was offered no opportunity to so much as tell Eddi goodbye.
Arabella
When Sunday morning dawned, Pukai immediately joined me in searching, by means of our sahira magic, for the Gamekeeper. I already knew the effort was useless; he could elude even Pukai’s detection if he chose. “But he can’t leave the mountains,” she muttered, eyes closed.
“Obviously. He isn’t here at the resort, so he’s either at his home or wandering somewhere in these mountains.”
“We should try visiting him at home first. What have we got to lose?”
“Quite a lot,” I grumbled. “We call him the Beast for a reason. For all we know, he’s in a towering temper.”
“He hasn’t thrown a tantrum in decades,” Pukai observed. “You know, I’ve always suspected his parents must have either spoiled him rotten or been tyrants for him to turn out so wild.”
I shrugged. Not being a parent, I felt ill-qualified to judge. “They did the best they knew, just as our parents did. In retrospect, I don’t think it’s fair to condemn him forever for one selfish impulse. The shock and loss changed him for the better.”
Pukai looked pensive. “We’d better stop speculating and find him.”
Easier said than done. Even using our combined sahira magic, we could approach the palace only as near as the estate’s magnificent brass gates, which looked completely out of place in their wilderness setting.
“Now what?” Pukai asked.
Before I could answer, the gates opened. And as soon as we stepped through, two glossy-black winged horses stepped forward, ready to carry us to the palace. Now, physically flying is not on my list of approved travel options, but the driveway was ridiculously long, and we couldn’t bear to insult the considerate creatures.
Once my mount’s wing-flapping climb leveled out, I rather enjoyed viewing the property from above. Looming mountain peaks dwarfed the huge estate, and the enchanted palace itself, set against a mountainside, looked like a child’s toy bristling with too many towers and pinnacles for good taste. Its vast gardens bloomed in all seasons, and its glacier-fed lakes reflected the blue summer sky.
Locals who knew about it called the Gamekeeper’s home the Forbidden Palace, which sounded ominous. But it was basically the same oversized royal estate I remembered from long ago—although much quieter now—dropped into a verdant mountain meadow. The fterotá—the proper name for winged horses—carried us to the palace’s front doors, where the Beast prowled on the marble steps.
Here, at his home, he didn’t bother with cloaks or disguises. “I’ve been expecting you,” he growled without meeting our eyes. “I proposed marriage, and Beatrice declined.”
“And then she ran away, we know. But she spent the entire evening trying to contact you again,” Pukai informed him without a trace of empathy. “Why did you tuck your tail and run?”
He turned away, and I saw a tremor run through his powerful body. “What more could she say after ‘No’? I was an utter fool to hope she could ever love and choose to marry an evil monster in a beastly form.”
“If she had no feelings for you, she wouldn’t have cared how you felt,” I observed.
Pukai added, “Much less attempted to meet with you again.”
Gazing toward a distant hillside dotted with grazing unicorns and winged horses, he said, “She cares for me, but as a magical mentor or father-figure, and the very idea of marrying a Beast horrifies her, as it should. I don’t want her pity.”
“You must not give up.” Pukai spoke with the authority of a queen. “You are essential to this world until you can train up a replacement. Although that prince from Auvers seems promising, he is very young and rather wild, I’ve heard. You are the mentor he needs.”
“Prince Briar is much like I was but wiser and more responsible. He’s brilliant, and so is Rosa. She accomplishes more with her carovna magic than most sahirae I know. Between them, and with your help, they could protect the world from ambitious mages or magical invasions.” I heard desperate hope in his voice.
“They’ve both accomplished great things, but they have no political experience whatsoever,” Pukai pointed out. “As Trollkarl, you’ve dealt with human mages along with the magical peoples and creatures in this crazy world for many decades, all without ever leaving these mountains. They need the benefit of your experience. My responsibility to my kingdom takes precedence, and Bella is too flighty to be of much use to even the most talented novices.”
Ouch. Why hold back your real opinions, girlfriend? But I could hardly object—she was right.
He faced Pukai directly. “Briar is learning to speak into other minds from across continents and to listen in on distant conversations. He is immensely talented, powerful, and honest. And unlike me, he and Rosa can leave these mountains. With you two veterans to share your experience and wisdom, they”—he gave me a nod—“along with Bella’s former pupil, Ellie, could handle almost any crisis. They will learn on the job as I did.”
His optimistic tone somehow sent a shiver of apprehension down my spine. “Hmm. Time will tell,” I said. “Until the younger generation is ready to take over, we’re still responsible. This is no time to give up. Go ask her again.”
He lowered his head. “I cannot. She has already left Faraway Castle.”
“What?” Pukai and I exclaimed in unison.