Sophia, Princess Among Beasts Read online

  Then the beasts parted as a woman—thank God, a human!—approached. Her face, once pretty, was tired and careworn. She pushed the rose door open and motioned for me to enter. Eager to escape the monstrous servants, I did.

  Inside was a grand, luxurious bedroom. A blazing fireplace revealed a vast bed overlaid with velvet and furs, an ornately carved chair upholstered in purple brocade, and rich woven rugs covering the gleaming ebony floor. It was a chamber worthy of a queen. “Where am I?” I gasped.

  “Please, make yourself comfortable,” the woman said.

  I was surprised by her voice, which was soft and lilting as a girl’s. She took my arm and gently but insistently pulled me toward the warmth of the fire.

  “Where am I?” I asked again. “Why have I been brought here? Who are you?”

  “My name is Florence,” she said, ignoring the first two questions. “Please, sit. Rest. You must be tired from your journey.”

  Though I was so exhausted I could barely stand, I was also too agitated to rest. In one corner of the room, I saw a bouquet of fragrant, bloodred flowers, and in another I spied a small desk, stocked with parchment and quills. Nearby stood a harp, its gilded curves gleaming in the firelight. I almost laughed out loud: I could not escape that awful instrument, even in death!

  But then—treasure! On a table near the window I found soup, a goblet of ale, and a crusty loaf of bread, still warm from the oven.

  I almost fainted at the smell. I reached a trembling hand toward it, afraid that it was some kind of mirage.

  But no—it was real, and I fell upon it like a starving beggar. I was so engrossed that I did not notice Florence leaving the room. And I did not realize, until too late, that the door had been locked from the outside.

  CHAPTER 26

  I pounded on the carved wood until my hands were bruised and bloody. I screamed until my throat felt raw. It didn’t matter. No one heard me. Or at least, no one came.

  Later, after I had collapsed on the floor in exhaustion, I heard soft, shuffling footsteps in the hallway. They came to a stop outside my room.

  “Open the door,” I said to whomever was out there. “Please.”

  “Hush, child. You must rest,” said a voice I recognized as Florence’s.

  I put my mouth to the thin crack between the wall and the door. “Where am I? Why am I here? Am I a prisoner?” I asked.

  I heard her sigh heavily. And then I heard the click of her heels as she walked away.

  I pushed myself up from the floor and began to pace the perimeter of the room. I stopped by one of the high, narrow windows and peered out. The sight was dizzying: black sky all around, and below me, sheer cliffs that fell away to a churning bay. Icy mists swirled around rocks jutting up from the water like teeth.

  Another window on the room’s opposite side looked down on a torch-lit castle wall walk, a path along the rampart between my turret and the next. What I saw there was more frightening than the frigid waters: a dozen creatures, each more horrifying than the next, streamed across it as if it were a market road.

  Even worse, I recognized them.

  There was the Inkanyamba, a brownish, serpent-like thing with small, useless wings and a heavy, horse-like head, and the Impundulu, a black-and-white bird, as big as a man, who was said to drink blood like water. Behind them came a small swarm of silvery, furred flying spiders. All these creatures I knew from my book of mythical monsters.

  How could this be?

  I ducked back inside the room, my mind spinning in confusion. Every moment seemed to bring some new, fresh terror—but never any clue as to where I was, or why I’d been brought here.

  I walked over to the little desk. Writing was such a familiar habit—maybe I could get down a scrap of a song, a shred of a prayer, and maybe it would somehow calm me. I had just picked up the quill and gone to dip it into the ink when a flash of movement caught my eye.

  I turned and saw another beast, there in the room with me! A cat-eyed, bruise-colored monster with two curving, pearlescent horns coming out of its head. I shrieked and backed up, knocking over my chair. The beast backed away, too, its own mouth open in horror.

  I looked again at the creature: its sharp, silvery teeth, its glowing golden eyes. It wore a dress of blue satin. I took a step toward it now; it did the same. I held my breath and reached my hand out to it.

  I touched the cold, smooth surface of a mirror.

  CHAPTER 27

  My mind seemed to extinguish itself. But an instant later, when I came to my senses again, I knew the truth but could not explain it. By some demoniac, mysterious bewitchment, I was no longer a princess.

  I was a monster.

  They are, for want of a better word, beasts. Never, ever forget that, my father had said of the villagers. What would he say if he could see me, now that it seemed that I was literally a beast?

  Outside, gulls screamed as if crying out in shrill grief, and the ocean waves rumbled, as ominous as thunder.

  I held on to the wall to steady myself, willing my pounding heart to slow. If possible, I wanted it to cease altogether. If this was what my mother called life after life, I didn’t want any part of it. Locked in a great stone room, a monster surrounded by other monsters, the hostage of some unknown, malevolent lord—surely true death would be preferable.

  I was certain that I was going mad.

  I took up the quill again and wrote.

  My name is Sophia, and I am seventeen years old. I have been kidnapped, brought to a fortress at the edge of a world I do not understand, and locked inside without explanation. I have no knowledge of what happened to my castle, to my village. Find Jeanette deCoeur, find Odo Fflum, and tell them I need them urgently.

  I let the pen drop to the hard floor. Who did I think would transport this note? A shrieking gull? One of the flying spiders? And how would anyone know where to look for me? I didn’t know how to explain where I was. Take yourself to the very brink of death, and there you will find a carriage pulled by stinking trolls. Ask them to drive off a cliff, and then they’ll bring you to me…

  Anyone who found a note like that would think its writer unhinged. I might as well throw the words into the fire and ask the smoke to carry them away.

  I crept to the mirror again. Though I was afraid of what I’d see, I peeked into it, one eye open—

  A repulsive beast glared out at me.

  Jumping back, I upset the remains of my dinner, ruining it. I ran to the door and called for Florence, and when she didn’t come, I sank down to the floor and put my face in my hands.

  What did this mean? Why was this happening? And would it ever end? These questions—which I obviously couldn’t answer—were a torment.

  After a while, I roused myself, pinched my cheeks, and went to look in the mirror.

  Still: that horrible creature gazing out at me, teeth bared in a frightened grin.

  This went on all through the night. I didn’t sleep, and though I kept checking the mirror, I did not change back into myself. By the time the sun rose, pale and sickly, starved of warmth and light, I felt like I had always been here in this room, always been a captive, always been a monster.

  CHAPTER 28

  The sound of the lock being unlatched roused me from an exhausted stupor, and I was up and stumbling toward the door before my eyes had even focused. I couldn’t stay in this room one more instant! But if I had expected to slip past Florence, or barrel over some short, furred beast into freedom, I was wrong.

  I ran straight into the muscled torso of an eight-foot-tall chambermaid. With giant, seven-fingered hands, she firmly picked me up and set me back in the center of the room.

  Florence clucked her tongue at me from the hall. “My dear, it isn’t ladylike to run.”

  I laughed bitterly. Apparently I couldn’t escape that bit of critique in this world, either. As Florence picked up her skirts and swept into the room, I assailed her with questions.

  “What’s happened to me? Why do I look like this? Am I
bewitched? Are you? You look human—but perhaps you’re a monster, too. Was she once human?” I gestured toward the seven-fingered giant.

  Once again, Florence ignored me, busying herself rummaging through the great wardrobe. The giant chambermaid shoved me—not exactly impolitely—toward the fire as a third attendant pushed in a giant wooden tub set upon wheels and already full of fragrant, steaming water.

  Florence turned, saw my surprise, and smiled proudly. “Yes, a traveling bathtub! Our lord is very innovative.”

  “Who is he?” I asked. “Did he turn me into this?”

  Florence swept her hand toward the tub. “Go on,” she said. “You’ll find it quite luxurious, I imagine.”

  I didn’t want to accept any hospitality from my captor, whoever he was. But on the other hand—I was filthy.

  “Don’t stand there staring, child,” Florence said. “You must bathe, dress, and go to breakfast in the Great Hall.”

  My legs nearly gave out beneath me. That sentence was so familiar! Hadn’t Jeanette spoken a version of it every single morning after prodding me out of bed? Oh, how I missed her! I longed for Odo, too, and all my ladies in waiting, and my poor murdered father most of all.

  And what of my mother? Seventeen years after her death, I had seen her, I had touched her, and it was the most wonderful moment of my…

  My whatever it was. Life, death, heaven, or hell—I had no idea. I felt tears coming, and I fiercely wiped them away.

  I was afraid I’d never see her again.

  But Florence was growing impatient. She reached for the bodice of my gown, and I thought she was going to unbutton it. But instead she pulled a knife from her waist and quickly raised it toward my neck.

  I stumbled back and flung up my hands. “What are you—”

  The giant chambermaid caught my shoulders and held me still as Florence, clucking her tongue in remonstrance, slit the front of my dress open with a knife. “There’s no saving that old thing,” she said brusquely, as it fell to the floor at my feet. She picked it up and tossed it into the fire.

  And there I was. Naked. Monstrous. And yet I was supposed to bathe and be dressed like the princess I had once been.

  “Go on and get in,” Florence said, backing away. “I can smell you from across the room.”

  And so I sunk my wretched body into the bath. The water was briny but perfumed with the essences of orange and lime. I quickly turned it a muddy brown. Florence looked at me disapprovingly but made no further comment as my hair floated around me like seaweed.

  The last time people tended to me in my bath, I’d been telling them that everything would be all right. That Bandon Castle was impenetrable and could withstand any attack. How wrong I had been! It had taken just one man to enter our castle and kill my father. I wanted desperately to know what had happened. Had Ares come? Were Elodie and Adelie safe? And what of little Faye, the chambermaid? Did our castle stand? Had our enemies breached its walls or laid siege from the meadow below?

  I sank all the way under the water, wanting to wash away the scenes that haunted me—Sacheverell’s ghastly face, my father’s blood, the way the stranger’s knife had nicked my own neck. I wished, instead, that I could see how things were now, both in the village and inside the castle walls.

  Would they be worse than when I’d left?

  There was simply no way to know. I stayed underwater until my lungs burned.

  Florence finally pulled me up by my hair. “You won’t drown yourself on my watch, Princess.”

  The giant chambermaid glared at me and I lowered my gaze and began to wash myself as best I could. Then Florence snapped her fingers, and a girl who seemed perfectly human except that she had no mouth came forward with linen undergarments she’d warmed by the fire. I stifled a gasp of horror as she blinked dumbly at me.

  “Velvet for you today, I think,” Florence said, more to herself than to me. “You still may not be clean enough for silk. Plus, I’ve not seen your manners, and judging by the state of you, they are not very refined. That is your dinner spilled on the carpet, yes? So let’s find something dark. Something that won’t show stains.”

  As I rose from the bath and slipped the linen over my mottled skin, the giant attendant held out a velvet gown, its violet color so deep it was almost black. It fit as if it had been made for me. Then she handed me a necklace of wrought silver, set with a stone I’d never seen before; it was pale and seemed to change with the light, sometimes pink, sometimes blue, sometimes flickering as though containing a tiny flame. It was beautiful, I thought as I fastened the clasp silently, but I would not relish wearing it. It lay close about my throat like a collar. Then came a cape lined with white rabbit fur and a thick bracelet of pearls.

  “Mind that’s still on your wrist later tonight,” Florence said. “I’ll not have it lost or… borrowed.”

  I shook the wrist it encircled; it was heavy. “Just because your master is a kidnapper doesn’t make me a thief,” I said quietly.

  Florence looked at me out of the corner of her eye, but said nothing.

  “Who is your master?” I asked. “Why did he bring me here against my will? When will he let me go?”

  Florence turned her face to the window, where the cold, gray sea swelled below. “You’ll know soon enough, I expect,” she said.

  CHAPTER 29

  I’d begun moving toward the door, but I suddenly stopped. I realized that the thought of leaving the room terrified me. Freedom meant… showing myself. Revealing to the lord—whoever he was—the beast I’d somehow become.

  “I don’t want to be seen like this!” I said, pressing myself against the wall.

  Florence frowned. “Like what? Don’t you like your dress? It fits you perfectly.”

  I pointed to my cat’s eyes, my little horns, my fingernails like claws. “Do you not see what’s wrong?”

  Florence calmly looked me over, head to toe, and then shrugged. “I have seen princesses more graceful,” she said, “as well as more careful with their food. But you look perfectly fine. You no longer smell, which is nice, and the velvet suits you. Perhaps some vermilion for your cheeks, though, as you look a bit sickly…”

  “But Florence, I need to know—”

  “Begging your pardon,” she said firmly, “but stop talking this instant and follow me to the Great Hall.”

  I wasn’t used to being spoken to like this, and I opened my mouth to protest. But the giant chambermaid quickly stepped to my side, signaling quite clearly that she was ready to pick me up and carry me should I fail to make haste and follow Florence.

  I shrunk under her look, and she, perceiving my new obedience, turned away from me. There was a lump under her dress that looked suspiciously like a thick, heavy tail.

  Florence led me out of the bedchamber and down the vast stone hallway. A bear-like beast carrying an armload of laundry passed by, bowing obsequiously as it did. Pages—most of them human boys, but some far wilder, stranger creatures—scuttled here and there on errands for their knights.

  Whoever owned this castle must have scores of noblemen under his command, and great riches, too, to feed so many, and to live in a keep ten times larger than my own.

  Not that it was altogether luxurious. A cold, salty wind whistled through loopholes and narrow windows; beneath its briny tang was the scent of rancid oil and horse manure. Spiderwebs hung like ghostly lace from the ceiling.

  Florence hurried me along, though my shoes pinched my feet. A maid trimming candlewicks in a hallway stopped to stare as we approached.

  “Is she the one?” the maid whispered.

  Florence silenced her with a look.

  Was the maid referring to me? Was I the one what? But Florence would not tell me the answers if I asked—I’d learned that quickly enough.

  We wound down a series of spiraling staircases and passed through a dizzying maze of dim hallways until Florence finally stopped in front of two huge iron doors. A pair of armored wolf-men hauled these open as we approached.
The way the iron screeched against the polished rock floor sounded like a woman crying out in pain.

  “Go on,” Florence whispered, nudging me in the small of my back. “Inside.”

  I took a deep breath and entered. The room was even larger than the one I’d seen the night I arrived. It was windowless, but lit with thousands upon thousands of candles, and the air was thick with smoke.

  I could immediately tell who commanded the room. My captor stood in the center with his back to the door. He looked human from what I could see, though large and powerfully built. I had expected a king’s robes, but instead he wore armor of tooled leather, studded with brass knobs. His glittering longsword lay unsheathed on a table near him. A curved knife hung from his belt.

  I knew, suddenly, that I did not want to see his face.

  Stay there, I thought. Don’t turn around. Just stay.

  I reached for Florence’s arm. “He seems occupied,” I whispered. “I will come back—”

  The man’s shoulders tensed. His hands curled into fists at his sides and then released. Slowly, silently, he rotated toward me. I saw his forehead, high and cruel; his hair, a tight cap of black curls; his cheekbones as sharp as blades; and his eyes, the clear blue-white of ice.

  His lips twisted into a sneer as he spoke. “I am Ares,” he said.

  My knees buckled.

  My father’s greatest enemy… and the cruelest of men. My captor.

  CHAPTER 30

  I clung tight to Florence, who grimaced but did not try to shake me off. “This can’t be happening,” I whispered.

  “Ares is the lord of this domain,” Florence said out of the side of her mouth, “as well as your host. Stand up straight.”

  “You are surprised?” he asked me. He sounded almost… amused.