"Magic can be troublesome." The Beast shrugged a huge shoulder. "The pearl is more than just charmed, and could be of great help to your sister's witchery, if she chooses to use it."
"I could feel it had power. It made my hands tingle. Why wouldn't she use it?"
"Because she's received it in exchange for her sister."
"A bridewealth, paid to the whole family?"
The Beast held himself still for a breath, then released it in an exhalation that seemed even larger than he was. "I would not have said that. Since you've broached the topic, though, Amber, will you sleep with me?"
"For the Queen's sake, no! Are you going to ask me that every day? What use will the pearl be to Pearl? What can she use it for?"
"If she learns, you'll know." The Beast raised a paw. "Amber, there is very little I can tell you about…anything. I can tell you that I'm caught in a war between two very powerful and very angry people, and that I can do nothing directly to challenge my fate."
A dozen more questions leapt to my lips and stopped there, another chill draining through me. "'Directly'."
He nodded once, and I got up and left the table to chase the edges of understanding undisturbed.
The Beast was a pawn in a war. The idea of his great and terrible self being unable to guide his own fate carried twists of black humor: I, who was so much less than he—and arguably much more, being at least human—could hardly dream of managing my own future if the Beast couldn't direct his.
Could not directly affect his. But my sister was a witch, and he had given her a gift of magic. I had no doubt that was an indirect action that could affect him, if Pearl were to pursue it. I thought she would. The pearl had power, and I doubted the new-found witchery in her veins would let it lie. I didn't know what would happen then, but I had confidence in something happening.
I might be here only as an incentive, an excuse, to get that pearl to my sister. But perhaps there was more than that; perhaps my being here simply disrupted the status quo, changed the places of the pieces on the board, if nothing else. An extra piece had to change the game in some way. I found the idea oddly comforting. If there was some purpose to my captivity, then that captivity—not exactly onerous as it was—was easier to accept.
I had taken the stairs to my room. I was certain I had taken the stairs to my room, but my room was only a few steps down the corridor, and I had been walking for some time already. The palace had grown colder, as if the walls thinned and the wind came up to blow through them. I looked behind me, but the hall was gone: instead I looked at a courtyard, cobblestoned and walled with polished stone. Dirty, melting snow lay in cracks between the cobbles, but the air warmed, carrying the scent of spring rot in it.
A woman walked out of the walls, carrying a bundled infant in her arms. She was hooded in a green cloak embroidered at the hem with roses, and shook the hood back as she approached me, revealing a strongly-jawed round face and pale eyes with a ring of black around the irises. They made her expression intense, as did the hint of a sneer around her lips, as if anything I did was known to her and already harshly judged.
Then she smiled, and affection filled me, as well as loss. I embraced her and kissed the child, then swiftly turned away to mount a tall horse who wore the accoutrements of war. So did I, for that matter: chain mail that fit well, the weight of the cowl unfamiliar on my shoulders. More familiar was the sword at my hip and the leather, metal-knuckled gloves I gripped the reins with. I clicked at the horse, and we rode out of the courtyard to stand before an army of thousands, whose voices all rose as one as I came to them. A corridor opened through their center and I charged down it, letting their cheers propel me forward into war.
I fought like the mother sun who had been separated from her lover, the sister moon. I fought with the strength of grief and the resolution of sorrow. Every night I worked the spell I had been given by my lady, she who now watched over my infant son. Every night I kissed one of my husband's bones and buried it in the earth, dedicating his body to the huntress moon, and every morning I let three drops of my own blood fall where the bone had been, asking the brutal sun goddess to be our strength. Where my blood and his bones lay, a border rose, defining my kingdom so that none could ever again dare to claim it as their own. When there were no more bones to bury, I gave three drops of my blood to the huntress moon and six to her sister the sun, and built our border that way.
For three years I fought and bled and rode, until my enemy could run no more, and finally stood to face me. He had mocked my husband and then me, believing our goddess-worshiping country to be weak, and for his arrogance, died beneath my blade.
We rode home in triumph, my army and I, and I, Amber, found myself at the door of my room, as if I had never gone anywhere else. I flinched, whipping to search for the army, my horse, the scars on my fingers where I had bled and bled and bled again for my country, and none of it was there. I hurried into my room and poured wine that I hunched before the fire with, trying to clear my head of the visions. I fell asleep there, huddled around a glass of wine, and was grateful that the visions didn't pursue me into dreams.
Morning came early, and I awakened stiff and uncomfortable from sleeping on a rug. I groaned as I rolled over, and thought I heard a worried buzz from the invisible servants. "I wonder if you could have put me in bed," I said to their fussing.
The inaudible hum intensified. I creaked laughter and sat up. "I take it you couldn't, or thought you shouldn't. Well, if there's a next time, although I hope there isn't, you may. If you can."
Hairs stood up on my nape as they hummed at one another, or perhaps at me. Maybe they really couldn't lift a sleeping person from the floor. Maybe the only person in the palace who could was the Beast. My stomach turned over with nerves, and I concluded that invisible servants carrying me around were one thing but a Beast was something else entirely. "All right," I whispered. "Leave me on the floor, then. I'll try to get to bed next time, instead."