Page 2 of The Beast's Broken Beauty

You were right.

Yesterday, something impossible happened. I heard piano music seeping through these stone walls. Chopin. The same nocturne Antonio played on our wedding night before everything shattered.

My body moved before I could stop it. Not the mechanical stretches I've been forcing myself through, but real dancing. My muscles remembering what my mind has tried to forget.

I danced until my lungs burned, until sweat plastered curls to my forehead, until my reflection in the window looked alive again. Then I collapsed onto stone floors, disgusted with myself.

Because my body might remember how he made it sing, but my mind knows better. My heart knows better. Three months alone with nothing but stone walls and his betrayal have finally burned away those stupid fairy tale dreams.

I don't want him anymore, Naomi. I want my freedom. I want revenge. I want to stop waking up with phantom hands on my skin, muscle memory of a touch that never meant anything beyond revenge.

The Beast played me perfectly. All that wedding night tenderness, all that gentle care with my scars. Just another layer in his elaborate charade, his perfect choreography of cruelty.

The pen splatters ink across the page as my hand clenches. I cross out the last paragraph with violent strokes, black lines like prison bars. Naomi has Connor to contend with: her own arranged marriage, her own cage across the sea. She doesn't need my mess spilling onto her pages.

I start again:

The latest draft you smuggled through Connor was the best. I don’t know you’ve managed to start writing a romcom when you’re trapped in a reality that wasn’t the one you dreamed about... I've read it three times, memorized entire passages. Funny how words taste different in captivity. Sweeter, sharper, more real than the food they push through my door.

When the news dropped that you were marrying Connor, my heart performed that dangerous dance I've been dreading. You shouldn't be paying for my father's sins, for my failures. I wanted to wrap you in a hug, whisper apologies, promise you'dsurvive this mess somehow. But they've kept us apart since they dragged you away, your pleas still echoing in my nightmares.

At least you got Connor to agree to these letters as a wedding present. And I can’t wait to read more of your stories. It's the one miracle in this nightmare. Your descriptions of Ireland's green hills and Connor's fortress are the only color in my stone and shadow existence.

My Italian's improving. Yesterday I made Signora Marta—my elderly caretaker—actually smile when I asked for more bread without mangling the pronunciation. Progress measured in crumbs.

I haven't seen Antonio once in three months. Not a glimpse, not a shadow. It's like he threw me in this room and erased me from existence. Some days I think I'd prefer his hatred to this silence. At least hatred acknowledges you exist.

What I wouldn't give to know what this damn "contract" actually means. This mysterious agreement my grandmother created that everyone values more than the people caught in its web. No one will tell me its true purpose, its power, its constraints. Another thing I'm not allowed to understand until it's too late to change anything.

I'm so glad Connor also got you a camera. Did you take more pictures? Do you think maybe he'll let you send some? I hate writing those words: "let you." As if we need permission to exist, to speak, to share pieces of ourselves.

My room's all stone and shadow, except for sunrise when light bleeds through my window, turning everything gold for seventeen minutes exactly. I've timed it. Sometimes I dance in those golden moments, pretending I'm somewhere else.

I miss you. I miss being a person instead of a possession.

Forever your friend, Bella

I fold the letter into its envelope. No address, just Naomi's name in my best ballet-school penmanship. One small act of normalcy in a world that's anything but.

The steps are different than usual. They're softer. Lighter. And there's a giggle. A child giggle?

I can't see through the keyhole.

"Signora Marta?" I call out, frowning. Signora Marta has really been kind and she has been trying to talk to me more. At first, they had one of the men bringing me food, taking me to the shower. There's a bathroom behind another heavy door that at least I can access directly so he didn't need to be there when I needed to go. But the man must have done or said something wrong—I hated the way he said my name, like a snake on my skin—and one day, he stopped coming. Replaced by the older lady with the weathered skin who only speaks Italian. She's been teaching me more words I've ever learned with my father.

"Is that you?" My heart flip flops. I try again in Italian. "Sei tu?" Still, silence meets my question. What's happening?

"Ciao?" The tiny voice comes through at last, tinged with confusion. And suddenly, a thought strikes me—what if she's by herself? Alone, with those winding stairs leading outside, where the waves relentlessly batter the mansion's walls.

"Hi!" I call out again. "Ciao."

And the child must stop by the door. "Hello?" She asks in a tiny voice. Like English is a game to her.

"I'm Bella, what's your name? Come ti chiami?" My heart pounds against my ribs, a wild rhythm cancer couldn't kill.

"Elena." One word in that small voice, but it feels like the first real thing I've heard in months.

"Very nice to meet you," I tell her. And because I need to find a way, any way to make sure she doesn't keep toddling away, I hurry back to the desk and grab a piece of paper. As I drawa princess the best way I know how, I ask her, "Are you the princess of this castle?"

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