Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 74631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
No, the castle is not shrouded in darkness completely, though the mist still clings in the enchanted forest and my forced solitude has felt like darkness at times. There are parts of the castle that have fallen out of my mind, unvisited for years in a row. I have no knowledge of their state. There have been many days when it did not seem worth the effort of getting out of my bed and the castle may as well have been as dark as the stories say.
In this room, the darkness is real.
It is not a space meant to be seen by visitors, and so is not finely decorated, though the circular room contains carpets and a table and a chair that is well-enough built. On the table sits the glass cloche that contains the rose that bears the remnants of the curse, just as I do. Because of the nature of it, darkness crowds the room like a tapestry on the walls, translucent but not transparent, making the moonlight from the waning crescent seem dimmer and less potent.
I have grown used to the darkness over the years, and even become accustomed to the fact that the rose and its petals are here, a physical representation of what remains of my life.
Staring at the rose in its cloche feels different now.
I sit back in the chair with a sigh and let my eyes linger on the rose as if I have never seen it before. The stem has not changed in appearance since the day the witch cursed me, and the petals are as pink as if freshly bloomed. Its physical state has not changed much since the day I dragged myself back to the castle, beaten and bleeding, and brought myself to this tower to lie on the floor until I could summon the strength to pull myself upright and go down to my bed chambers. I know that must seem senseless, but at the time, in the haze of my wounds, I thought that proximity to the rose would help with the healing. To this day, I have no idea whether it made any difference at all. I only know that climbing the tower steps nearly killed me and when I arrived here, I thought the tower walls would be the last thing I saw before I died.
Clouds must cover the moon, because the light coming through the tower window dims further. The glass still shines, as there is much magic in the tower and the cloche and, of course, the rose itself. It is as if the moonlight is stored within the glass and twinkles whenever the moon itself is not strong enough to shine off it. It makes it difficult to look away from the rose and remember my sentence.
No magic will save me. That has been obvious for a long time. Magic can only extend the curse, in its way, since without magic I would have starved to death or bled to death many times over by now. I have been under this curse for twenty long years. I have been battling the beast for what feels like an eternity, unable to stray far from the castle, as the magic weakens with distance and cannot protect me as I need, even in the village.
The truth is that it is the isolation that blackens my soul far more than the curse. It turns me into a man I do not recognize, even accounting for the beast that steals half my waking hours and perhaps more. The loneliness has been like a noose around my neck, and now I feel I have slipped out of it. Yet there it hangs, for me to witness.
But now Elle is here, and the castle is no longer empty. I can feel her presence through the beast’s senses and the magic of the castle. Her bright spirit is undimmed by sleep, and she slumbers deeply in her bedroom, safe under the covers while I am up here with the rose.
As I watch, one of the petals trembles on the stem as if stirred by a breeze that only moves within the cloche. It is such a small movement that a man without the beast’s senses might think he had imagined it, but I know I have not. It may not be the first sign that another petal is about to fall, but it is the first one I have seen from this petal, and I know well enough what will happen in due course.
Many years ago, I used to believe that the act of looking is what hastened the petals in falling to the bottom of the cloche, but that was a superstitious thought and one that I eventually stopped having. If it were real, I could stave off the effects of the rose seemingly forever, simply by locking it in a room deep within the castle and never allowing it to see the light of day.