Page 28 of Beauty Reborn
Straight-backed and unyielding, the seat was framed in gold. It was too tall for any person, yet taller still was the banner hung above it: a snarling black wolf’s head on a purple background. Somehow, I doubted Beast had chosen the crest himself. He seemed more the type to prefer a swan.
Beast was not seated on the throne; he was not on the dais at all. He stood at a table below it, and he flinched when my eyes found his.
He didn’t speak, so that duty fell to me. It was never such a struggle in the past.
“It’s my crops,” I said at last, the only words I could scrounge up.
“What?”
Though we were separated by only a table, both of our voices echoed in the expansive room.
“I sought an audience with royalty, didn’t I? It’s my crops, Your Highness. That’s the problem.”
At home, I would have expected an eye roll. Maybe a dismissive gesture or a resigned nod allowing me to do as I pleased. But Beast generally surprised me in his responses, and I was hoping he would surprise me once more.
He did not disappoint.
“Oh,” he said evenly. His gaze darted in my direction as he added, “It must be serious.”
“Terribly serious.”
“What seems to be the problem?”
“They’ve run away.”
He turned aside, hunching as if he could hide his tall frame behind the table, but I thought he might have been smiling.
“Serious indeed,” he said.
One of his hands was curled over the edge of the table, and for a moment, I lost myself staring at the thick, black claws below the lace of his sleeve. Then I forced myself to look at his face, even if he wouldn’t look at mine.
“I’m sure you know this is very rare for crops.” I shook my head. “My neighbor’s wheat never makes him chase it down, yet my potatoes have been unruly from the moment of planting. Shifty-eyed, every one of them.”
Beast gave a quiet cough that must have been a laugh, and if he wouldn’t turn, at least he hadn’t disappeared.
“How can I help?” he asked.
A strange prince indeed.
“I thought you might order them back to my fields. Perhaps a royal decree that, in this kingdom, the desertion of potatoes from their rightful plantings will not be tolerated.”
“Maybe I support freedom of potatoes in this kingdom.”
Teasing again. I smiled. Without thinking, I stepped to the closest edge of the table, and when my gaze took in its surface, I raised an eyebrow.
“What’s this?”
A long scroll had been pressed flat across the table’s length, held down by small weights in each corner. I thought at first it might be a game because it was littered with chess pieces, until I realized each piece bore a pennant—some purple, some green—and the scroll itself was patterned with the curves of hills and the paths of rivers. The pieces moved by an invisible hand, grouping and separating.
Beast said, “Military strategy, I think.”
“Military?” My eyes widened. “Is there a whole army stashed away in some corner of this castle?”
Would it be any more surprising than the rest of it?
I watched the pieces slide across the map. There was no sense to my eyes, and I wondered if the meaning was clear to him. But his yellow eyes watched the table without betraying any more of his thoughts than when I’d had only his voice in the air.
“Ah,” I said at last, rapping my knuckles against the table’s edge as if I’d hit a discovery. “Sothisis how one is meant to conduct an assault against unruly potatoes. Very helpful, Your Highness, thank you.”
