Reshina
Once Arthur was convinced I’d eaten until I was full, he swept his chair aside, offering his hand. I took it, accepting his countenance of gentlemanly grace, even though we both knew it to be little more than pretense.
Arthur puzzled me.
In my many centuries, I couldn’t recall encountering such a creature as him.
The Beast had undoubtedly changed whom I guessed was once a proper gentleman—boring—but proper in his acts and mannerisms. But the man I’d taken great pains to speak little with was like a man at the edge of madness.
It was as if he remembered he was supposed to bend to a Goddess, but something inside made him a bit feral instead, causing him to attempt to order me around when truly, he could do no such thing.
Asserting my power was such an effort, and for the time being, I had little desire to fight him when I truly did desire to explore the library of the Underrealm.
When we left the dining hall, Piffle caught us, asking after the meal to which I made sure to praise him exceedingly well, ignoring Arthur all the while.
It didn’t seem to irritate him as I hoped, but he smiled at me instead—the corners of his eyes crinkling as someone carefree looked out from them. I admitted then that we must share a true fondness for Piffle and his smiles were honest for the commendation of his only friend.
I walked beside the man down twisting corridors, one after the other, same as the last. “Do you ever tire of such bland halls? Why do you not outfit these corridors to easily tell them apart?”
“I spend little time in them,” he answered. “I rarely go anywhere in the Underrealm but my room, the library, or up the staircase.”
“I’ve passed other rooms. What’s in them?”
He gave a short shrug. “Dust, I presume.”
“Did your mother keep a room down here?”
“She did once. Only because my father forced her. She preferred to live in Heartstone Castle. It’s where I was raised.”
“Did you come to the Underrealm as a child?”
Silence contained him for so long, I assumed he wouldn’t answer. “I wasn’t supposed to. But curiosity would get the better of me on occasion.”
I looked him over quickly, curious again about his scar. “You rarely saw your father as human, then?”
“I rarely saw him at all. My mother made sure of that.”
“I am sorry you lost both of your parents so young, Arthur.”
We stopped before two doors meeting in an arched center. “Thank you. I am sorry for the loss of yours as well.”
It’s a strange thing to meet someone who knows so much about you.
Cursed Goddess of the Veil was not widely read outside of the Moonstone and Brackish Wood, but there was my captor, knowing well enough that I lost both of my parents at a mere sixteen—the year I became the Ravenfae Goddess and Cursebringer.
“It isn’t fair, is it? You know so much about me, but I am at a loss for what your life has been like. Though I can guess at much of it.”
He cracked a wide grin. “Please, guess away.”
I stood a little taller, my wings flaring at the challenge.
“Alright. You were born a Prince of Heartstone Castle, though you did not live the life a typical human prince would. You grew up lonely, your mother and servants the only souls around you, teaching you the manners of a gentleman, but there was always a looming absence in your life.”
His brow rose as he listened. “Which was?”
“Your father. You were the direct result of a curse placed upon him when he was a young twenty-two year old king. The curse came from the Veil, delivered by a Goddess who had no choice but to do so, or it would have grown in…severity.”
“I’ve heard of this severity you speak of. Perhaps if you had allowed it to grow, we could have avoided all of this and killed my father outright.”
“It is…uncomfortable to refrain from delivering a curse. I’ve done it only once before with good reason.”
He cocked his head, folding his arms. “And what reason was that?”
“It doesn’t matter now. All reasons were my own and it is done.” I took a step closer to him, looking over his scar. “When you became of age, you left Heartstone to take your role as Duke of Riche, where you remained a proper gentleman by day and an absolute rake by nightfall.”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Don’t deny it.”
“I would never.”
“You only returned to your mother at Heartstone when your father died. You knew that she was the last thread between you and the curse, so you took care of her, though not with a deep love for her. She was less of a mother and more of a burden in your life. When she grew ill, you grew anxious, knowing what fate would befall you. You did everything you could to keep her alive, not out of love, but out of fear of what you would become. What you saw in your father. A Beast.”
He wasn’t smiling any longer. Instead he didn’t move, waiting for more. “And when did I begin annotating poetry, then?”
A flash of heat bloomed over my cheeks.
“At what point in this decently accurate retelling of my life did I pick up a pen and write in the margins of poetry books, Reshina?”
I locked my jaw, shaking my head slowly.
“I read a book once,” he began, rubbing his chin.
“I found it after a night of debauchery. Hungover, sore, contemplating how every day and every night of my life blended from one to the other. My father had great sums of money from taxing his people, you see. He was good at that. And when he was human, he was good at getting people to do what he wanted. But he couldn’t spend his marks on anything but fine furnishings here and there—a statue of himself and the comforts my mother needed.
So I had more marks than I could ever spend, but four of them I spent on a book that could fit into my vest pocket.
“I don’t know what led me into that shop or why I was drawn to such a small book, but I bought it, sat on the bench outside in the winter cold and read it cover to cover.”
My heart pounded. I’d penned that book so long ago, copies were bound to be made, but I had no way of tracking how many or where they’d gone.
“I left the bench and picked up a chocolate croissant on the way back to my flat. And do you know what I did when I got there?”
I stared, daring him to go on.
He moved closer, my own feet following until I could reach out and touch him if I’d wanted to.
“I read it again. The next morning, I took a walk, replaying the words—the story of a Goddess and what became of her once she’d been cursed at sixteen years of age.
I didn’t go out that night. Or the next.
Instead, I found myself back in that bookshop, asking for more.
When the clerk explained there wasn’t any, I turned to other books instead. ”
“You fell in love with the written word.”
“I did. But not just any. For the first time in my life, I found purpose in more than just what was expected of me. More than a quick fling or another ball for some duchess or princess. I found that there were books I enjoyed and books I hated. Books I wanted to write my thoughts in and books I flung across the room in disgust or apathy. But that first story. That one, I returned to time and again.”
I blushed for the second time, unaccustomed to it and dropping my head. “How interesting for you that you should capture the author into your curse.”
A hand, smooth and strong, lifted my chin. His voice dropped low, as he shook his head. “Interesting is not the word I would use.”
I was never a woman to back away from a man, but I did then.
Out of his grasp—out of the reach of his fingers that grazed over my skin, sending chills up my spine.
“Well,” I started, pulling at the sleeves of my jacket that was once his.
“We seem to have a better understanding of each other. May I see what’s behind these doors? ”
He dropped his hand, turning to them. “The thing about owning a flat in Riche is that they aren’t built to hold the collection of a true reader. So, as my mother’s health declined and I came to accept the curse that would befall me, I sent my collection here. Where it grew.”
He pushed hard on the twin doors. Brilliant light filled the room and I shielded my eyes.
I gasped at the sight, for we entered a massive round room with bookshelves rising to the domed ceiling where the shelves curved along the detailed architecture in dark wood.
A glass dome above saturated the room with the light of the winter sun.
Several ladders lined the walls on golden metal rails.
Fine chairs and small couches were placed over woven rugs, giving the circular room a cozy aura.
A great black stone fireplace curved between the bookcases opposite the entrance and Arthur headed toward it, adding a few more logs, encouraging the flames to rise higher in the grate.
I stepped forward in awe of the library, having seen many in my lifetime, but none as impressive as this. I squinted in the light, rising on my wings to get a better look at the books lining the ceiling.
Each was nestled into a bookcase with a lip of wood so the books would not fall from the rich walnut cases.
On closer inspection, dainty flourishes and fat babies with wings had been carved into the bookcases, often depicted with bows and arrows.
I lifted one book, then two, bringing them back down to the main floor, where I sat on an emerald green settee, carefully opening the pages, searching for his marks in them.
“How do you reach the ones on the curved ceiling?” I asked, setting the book aside when I found he had not written inside it.
“When I brought most of these books to Heartstone, I had Piffle place the ones I liked the least up there. He occasionally transforms into a hawk to retrieve them for me.”
I set the other two aside, more curious about the books Arthur did enjoy.
Beginning at the door to the left of the entrance, I traced my fingers over countless spines of deep burgundies, royal blues, earthen browns, and forest greens.
I circled the room, pondering where to even begin when he stepped in front of my path.
“This library is yours as well. You may come whenever you’d like. You may take whichever books you wish back with you to your room. Any others you’d like to add to the collection, you only need to ask Piffle and he shall see to it when he arrives in town weekly.”
I took another look around. There were thousands of books on the shelves with more piled on small tables and a desk near the fireplace. “How could I ask for more books than these? I’ll never be able to read them all in such a short time.”
“Reshina.” I met his eyes. “If I were dead, these would all be yours. I have no heir to leave them to. Piffle has no desire for any but a few to remind him of the man he once knew. These books are yours now. I am giving them to you. You need only take my life and you may claim them.”
A short laugh escaped me. “Are you bribing me with a curated library in order to kill you?”
“If it works,” he said with a beastly grin.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to read instead of spilling your blood all over these fine carpets. Now kindly direct me to your books on the history of faekind.”
Arthur was well versed in the eons of the fae in Revelry.
The two stacks of books he pulled were just from what he could remember he had off the top of his head, claiming he would need to search through his detailed log of every book in the library and the books he needed to re-shelve from his rooms.
I left the library after an hour, a stack of ten in my arms. Seven on the history of faekind throughout the realm, one specifically detailing the Goddesses of the Veil, and two more books of poetry I’d gathered without his knowledge—taking them from a small table near the library doors.
I declined his offer to escort me back to my rooms, instead requesting he search for more of the books I needed.
It was only when I assured him I did not need his assistance in finding my rooms that I headed to the staircase instead.
I thought of those stairs leading to the surface and the possibility of my freedom, and I stumbled upon them quickly enough.
I set the books carefully at the base of the stairs, glancing at the black door leading to his rooms.
Up I went with more strength, my body fueled and ready, knowing Arthur was somewhere in those corridors, and I had to take this opportunity.
I left my shoes at the base of the stone staircase, shifted into a raven, and flew out into the bitter cold, my wings pumping me forward as I reached for the edge of the sky, searching for my freedom.