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)
I hold out the note and let it fall.
It tumbles through the air, and for a moment I think it will land on the grass. If it does, the rain and morning dew will turn it to mush and it will fade into the earth, never to be delivered or read by Elle’s father. The thought offers me peace. I imagine it’s what the magic will do.
At the last moment, just before I think it will hit the grass, the wind gusts, picking up the letter and carrying it away. It flies out over the wall and disappears.
It’s only then that I second-guess the decision. But what’s done is done. And one thing I know is that no one will take Elle away from me. Ever.
ELLE
There are moments when I feel completely at peace in the beast’s castle. I don’t have a single worry or care, and it seems like nothing could disturb me. At times I am so content that I almost feel as if I’ve lived here forever and never known another life. It happens many times when I’m reading, lost in a story, my body warmed by the fire, drinking perfectly brewed tea, and in the back of my mind I can imagine having done this as a little girl in this castle and being loved and provided for without struggle. I imagine my mother not suffering like she did. Her with me still, and my father’s heart never broken.
Of course, eventually I resurface from the story and that vision disappears, and it suddenly seems odd to feel like I belong here. There’s a great loss that I cannot avoid.
Although he fills it. The beast.
It shouldn’t have happened so fast, should it? I know it has been weeks since I first arrived at the beast’s castle, but that is not such a long time when you’re a captive. And I am a captive. I cannot walk out the doors of the castle and go to the village and talk to my father. I’m not allowed to leave, and that means I don’t belong. I wasn’t born to the castle, and I didn’t agree to marry the beast. I was stolen from my father’s house and brought here without warning.
And yet I can’t say that I’ve been hurt. I can’t say that I’ve been treated poorly. I’ve been given a life I didn’t know could exist in my wildest fantasies. And with that, comes guilt. And loneliness, apart from the fantasies I read throughout the day.
I look up from the book I’m reading, my eyes tired. I must’ve been reading for hours and hardly noticed the time passing. I’ve noticed the days have stretched easily like this. With peace and ease and entrenched in books. I would never have been able to lose myself in a story like this when I lived with my father. There was always work to do at the bakery or wood to gather for the fire or floors to scrub at the cottage. There was shopping to do and a tiny amount of money to count and stretch as far as it would go. There were meals to prepare, using as few ingredients as I could at a time to make it last a few more days. I could not have sat down and read until the only thing stopping me was that I needed a break for my eyes. Even if I had the light to read in bed, I would fall asleep, exhausted, before I could immerse myself in a book. But candles are hard to come by in the village and quite expensive. They’re a luxury. So this…all of this? I refuse to take it for granted.
Reading was something I did only as a girl when my mother was alive. Back then, it seemed there was more time in the day and more things to do for pleasure. I know part of that was simply being a child and not knowing how harsh the world could be.
Although part of it was that I could not imagine a life of luxury like the one I live in the beast’s castle. The beast stole me from a life of hunger and cold and uncertainty, and now I am reading in front of the fire in a dress finer than any my mother ever owned with slippers waiting on the rug to put my feet into that are likely more expensive than anything she owned, either. They’re exactly my size, and they haven’t been worn down by walking down the rough street in all kinds of weather.
This is the only time in my life when I have not wanted for anything. There aren’t even rough underclothes in my wardrobe, nothing that would irritate my skin. If I think about wanting a bite to eat, a tray floats through the door.