The Beast by Alianne Donnelly Read Free Book Online

doing.
    Nothing is the same in this ever perfect,
ever cursed castle. When servants whisper now, it is with
scandalized excitement. For the first time in a very long time,
they have something to gossip about. It seems that is enough to put
smiles on their faces. Every duty they perform these days they do
with joy. I even hear them singing sometimes.
    My family, too, is different. Marguerite is
gone. Jacques tells me she ran away that night and has not
returned. He’s sent a messenger to our village in disguise to seek
her out. Thankfully, she’s made it home unharmed. Jacques assures
me she is well, if a little unsettled. With the eldest away, Amalia
is flourishing. She spends most of her time in the grand ballroom
where Francois teaches her to dance. Perhaps in another time,
another place, Amalia was meant to be a princess. Dancing becomes
her.
    Father is not so easily distracted. Though he
smiles at me and speaks with me the way he used to, there is a
heaviness in his gaze. He strolls in the gardens and his shoulders
seem weighted down. I ask him to confide in me but he waves my
worries away, smiles, and tells me he loves me. He is not easy
here, I know. It must unnerve him, sleeping in the lair of the
beast, knowing that one of his daughters is bound to him. And now
with Marguerite gone…
    Aimee let slip today that Father went to see
my Beast. He’s never done that before, not willingly. Aimee will
not tell me what they spoke about, even though I am certain she
must have overheard. Father and the Beast will not tell me, either.
Both deny having spoken at all.
    My monthly visits with Bastien are making me
paranoid. Whenever I catch my thoughts straying more toward the
ridiculous, I go to the library to read. But these days my hand
reaches not for the works of Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Dante,
but the more obscure names, oft times scrawled across the book’s
cover with a quill and chafed almost clean off.
    What I read in these volumes can hardly
compare to the classics. It is crudely worded and poorly written
but this lack of polish reveals stories far truer than any poem
from Rome. Rather than pretty, they are heartfelt. Letters and
passages recounting lives filled with love, hate, envy, greed,
pain, suffering, and incredible joy. I read about men going out
into the world to make their fortune. About the wives and children
they left behind.
    I read these things and they shock me with
their poignancy. So much raw emotion, written into books by people
whose lives were distinguished not by grand deeds of heroism or
martyrdom, but by the silent tears they wept late at night when no
one would see them. By the heartsick sighs hidden behind sociable
smiles, while their coveted love flirted with another. By the cries
of joy torn from them in those secret moments shared with their
lover.
    I seek out these book because I crave those
feelings I’ve hardly experienced. I’ve never felt love so deep it
cut me to the quick. I’ve never known anguish so great I thought to
end it by my own hand. Though I’ve felt joy, it has always been
tempered by other things.
    It shames me to admit that the stories which
captivate me most are ones of passion.
    The very books I’ve blushed over in Bastien’s
chamber are ones I have read again and again, seeking meaning in
the minutest details. I can hardly admit even to myself that more
and more now I steal away from company to hide where no one will
see me read such shocking things. Though I am careful, always
keeping a proper book nearby, I’m afraid I could not tear my gaze
away from those pages even long enough to cover my indiscretion. I
would not even notice anyone nearby.
    This is how I while away the time until the
moon rises full again. I tell myself it is merely to be prepared,
so that next time I will not blush so fiercely to read such things
aloud. I tell myself that if I can only show Bastien that his
tactics no longer shock me, we can find some common ground.
    I tell myself