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)
The townspeople did not have the means to fight the dark witch and her magic. Neither did I, but I was the only one among us valuable enough to speak with her. No one else had more power or standing than I did. Although I asked my closest allies if they would come with me, they wished to stay behind. I could not blame them. As I would learn, she had come for me.
There was no wall then, so I crossed through the trees on the way back to the castle. My home had been turned dark and forbidding by the witch’s magic. The clouds followed me through the forest and spiraled above the castle. My heart thundered. I could hardly breathe when I reached the entrance of the castle and went inside.
I found the witch in this very spot, the highest floor of the tower. From here you can see the slope of the forest toward the village and the smoke from the houses rising into the sky. You can see the green country beyond. The witch had taken my power over that country for herself and turned with a gleeful smile as I came into the tower. I could see from her twisted features that she was satisfied with the fear she was causing to my people.
“Well, little prince,” she said. “Have you come to bargain?”
I am not little now, and I was not little then, but I was the prince. I straightened my shoulders and my spine. “Yes.”
She smiled, slow and deadly. “What do you have to offer me? I have already taken your home and your power. I have driven away your people and could chase them even farther, if I chose.”
I knew at that moment that she was right and would take pleasure in terrorizing my people until they were too afraid to ever return to this countryside. She would have no qualms about destroying the village next just to hear the screams of the people who lived there. She was in control of my treasury and all my gold as well as my stores. She already had the power that surrounded such places, like royal castles, and allowed us to live in comfort, and she would take more until there was no more to take. The only thing she did not have at that point was me.
“I will trade myself,” I said.
I had almost expected her to refuse, to tell me that I was not worth the bargain, but instead the witch beamed as if I was offering her something truly rare. Indeed, I did not understand fully what she meant to do with me. I thought death. An ending to the pain. I was a fool.
The story that the villagers tell is that I was fed to the beast, but the truth is that it was the other way around. He was fed to me, forced into my body from one of my own goblets. The edge of the cup cut into my mouth. I did not want to drink the bitter liquid that she had made from wine from my own cellars, but I had no other choice if the village was to be saved.
“A sip,” she said, and I dared to believe it would end the misery. As if a soul like hers could have mercy.
The curse burned inside me. I remember the sound of the witch laughing wickedly, louder and louder. Her laughter blended in with the thunder and cracks of lightning from the clouds she had summoned. She was triumphant, and I thought for a few moments that it had all been a waste because as the curse took hold, I felt as if I was being torn in two. I was sickened by the magic itself and fell to the ground in a delirium.
When I awoke three days later, the witch’s reign had already ended. Her greed had been her undoing. The other witches, who would have stopped her from seizing the castle at all, had heard what their sister had done. I have a faint memory of her screams as they bound her in the courtyard and lit her aflame, extinguishing her evil soul.
The damage had already been done.
I was doomed to a life of madness and animal urges. In the beginning, the beast was stronger and I was less able to fight him. The magic would enforce the power of the rose.
So long ago, I did not think of what would happen when the last petal fell. I thought I would go mad long before then.
In time, I’ve realized I might live long enough to see the last petal fall from the rose. “If you do not find your fate before the last petal falls…you will become nothing but the beast inside of you.” The witch had warned.