Page 63 of Beauty Reborn
“Astra, don’t!” I grabbed my sister’s arm, but she shook me off.
A spark of life entered the fairy’s eyes. When she smiled, she showed small, pointed fangs. “Any wish is available. Only name it.”
“I wish to be so beautiful, wealthy men propose at the sight of me.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Beast said. But our protests fell on deaf ears.
“Wish granted.”
The fairy twirled, her gossamer dress shedding flakes of blue that coated Astra head to foot in a glow.
My sister had always been beautiful. When I was little, I would ask to brush and braid her hair, admiring all the while how the shining auburn caught the sun just like Mother’s did, while mine was an earthy brown unable to hold the light. Her true smile was rare, but it was radiant, full of mischief and mystery, scrunching her eyes and nose.
But at the fairy’s spell, she became almost inhuman. Her skin was more like porcelain than flesh, smooth and shaped like a doll’s. Her hair took on volume and shine, but it was no longer from catching the sun. Now it glowed from within. Her once-auburn curls now turned a slightly different shade at every moment, mesmerizing and unnerving. Her cheeks held a perfect light blush, her lips a perfect red hue, her eyes an unavoidable gaze.
It was terrifying to see in her everything that was Astra and yet nothing of my sister at all.
Astra looked at Beast expectantly, but he held me closer to him.
“It didn’t work,” she said to the fairy. She must have tried for a scowl, but even her petulance was beautiful, her perfect lower lip pushed in the slightest pout and not a wrinkle on her forehead. “You lied to me.”
“He,” the fairy said pointedly, “is not wealthy.”
Astra stared around at the grand ballroom with its gold ceilings.
“Three years ago”—Beast spoke to me, not her, and there was color in the tips of his human ears—“I hunted down a fairy and wished to be prince of my own kingdom. She gave me everything a prince would have: a castle and grounds, fashion, wealth. But I became a monster, unable to go out in society, surrounded by an impenetrable forest. And although the castle kept itself as if run by a hundred servants, I was alone, a prince with no one to see or know, with a kingdom that quite literally belonged to only me.”
The fairy nodded, apparently pleased with herself.
“I regretted my wish almost instantly.” His voice had lowered, and he looked at our clasped hands rather than my eyes. “But when I asked to go back, I was told ...”
“Fairies can’t rescind wishes. Only completion can,” I said.
He nodded.
I narrowed my eyes on the fairy. “So you forced him to propose to everyone?”
She only puffed up her chest. “Every wish has a completion. To the one who wished for solitary luxuries, he must accept sharing poverties.”
“You could have shared with Astra.” I remembered telling him how he would do better to marry her. She’d said yes.
He gave a small smile as he tucked my filthy, windswept hair away from my face. “I didn’t truly want to.”
If you need me to be a beast,he’d once told me,then I’ll be a beast.
How long had he loved me while I was still battling ghosts?
I looked up. “But the castle is still here.”
“It will be until you step outside,” the fairy said. “And the gardens and gates will be there until you step outside them. The forest will remain, but it will be ordinary, as it was before.”
“Well, Beauty.” Astra tried for what I imagined was a cruel smile, but her new face could only make a dazzling one. “You lost after all. He’s nothing but an ordinary man, poor as an empty flour sack.”
Beast lowered his eyes again, and I squeezed his hand.
“Nevertheless,” I said, “I think he’ll make a good cabin boy.”
He kissed my fingers, spreading warmth through every bit of me.
