"I hoped it would comfort you." He sounded pleased that I'd noticed, and I clung to his shoulders a few moments before sighing, "A chair, I think."
Only when he carried me into the sitting room did I realize we weren't in my rooms at all: there were no perfume potions anywhere, and the decorating was in different colors. My confusion showed, because the Beast said, "These are my rooms. I found you outside my door, the morning after my bath," as he tucked me into a chair.
If that polite description was how we were to refer to that evening, I would gladly accept it. "And I've slept all that time? I was…dreaming. Not dreaming."
"I told you the enchantment might try to kill you, if it couldn't make you fit into its story. I brought a few things from your rooms. Your rose water, and your amber mirror." The Beast fetched a platter that had appeared while he tucked me in. It was my usual breakfast, with a pile of bacon taller than my hand, and with my hand mirrorr and a vial of the rose water placed neatly on its side.
I touched the mirror's back, but didn't pick it up. "I doubt I want to look at myself." Nor did I wish to conjure up images of my family, not right now. Instead I offered the Beast some bacon. Somewhat to my surprise, he accepted. For a while we sat together and ate, before I finally pushed the plate away. "I'm not sure it was trying to kill me. Beast, my mother's name was Eleanor."
I had never seen him swallow before, not the way a human did when they were startled or afraid. A long, cautious silence passed, before he said, "My mother banished her."
"My father fought in the Border Wars."
The Beast came to his feet in a swift motion, knocking his chair backward. He caught it with one quick hand, settling it before stalking the outskirts of the room as if it had suddenly become a cage. Nervousness twisted my stomach, but not the fear I'd once had of him. When he reached the window, he asked, "Do you know what caused them?"
"The Border Wars? No. I mean—no. I know the queen…" I knew a great deal more about the queen now than I had the last time I'd been awake, and spent a moment determining what I had known. "Everyone knows she fought off invaders after the king died, and that the borders were safe for decades after that. But forty years ago they began to weaken again, and by thirty years ago they had to be re-established in the Border Wars. I know they say some of our enemies weren't human, that they were faeries, but I never used to believe that. There are hardly even any witches, how could there be faeries? But now I know that there were faeries. Beast…I have to leave. I have to go talk to my father. I need to know…what he knew about my mother."
"I need to show you something." It wasn't a refusal, though in truth, at this stage I didn't expect to be refused. Too much had happened, here and between us. I put my hand out, and he returned to not only take it, but once more scooped me gently into his arms. He brought me to his balcony, and I saw immediately what he wanted me to.
Roses had run amok, in the days that I slept. They were no longer fighting the forest at the estate's perimeter: instead they swept toward the palace like a pernicious weed. The long drive and the beautifully maintained ponds were blanketed in greenery; if that greenery hadn't been spotted with color I would have thought it to be greedy, grasping ivy. It covered the ground in the same way, layering tendrils that stuck to the earth and cement and stone. Ivy, especially new ivy, could be torn up relatively easily, but I knew from experience that the rose vines were protected by vicious thorns.
I caught motion from the corner of my eye, but it stopped when I looked directly. I glanced away again, watching side-eyed, and saw pieces of encroaching roses being scraped away from the palace walls in swaths, like someone was running the edge of a spade along the building and loosening them. No one was there, or at least, no one visible: the servants fought to keep the palace safe in whatever way that they could.
Their handiwork had not, though, been able to disguise the roses' trajectory. They were growing purposefully, coming from all directions, and from the shrinking circle where they had not yet reached, it was clear that their destination was where the Beast stood with me safe in his arms.
"They've been coming for me since you fainted," he said softly, but I shook my head.
"They're Nell's roses, Beast. They're not coming for you. They want me to finish her story."
"No." The Beast released me when I made to squirm away, but his deep voice reverberated despair as he did so. "Amber, no. You said yourself that the roses didn't like you."
"That was before they knew who I was. Before I knew who I was." I took a shaking step to the balcony's rail, leaning on it. I extended my hand, and we could both see the leading vines grow, adding six inches as they tried to reach me. I closed my fingers again and they faltered. "You see," I said quietly. "I'm sorry. She found a way to get to you. I'm the villain, Beast."
He growled, "Really," but I knew the growl wasn't for me. "Did you deliberately lose your family's fortune? Set fire to your home? Plan to force eight people to a remote hunting lodge? Conjure a snowstorm so you were driven to my palace? Then you are not the villain." He closed a massive paw on the balcony rail. "At worst, you're a pawn, like myself, Amber. A victim of someone else's game."
"But she was my mother."
"She was all but mine as well, and more." The Beast shuddered, and I forgot the threat approaching us to put my hand over his.
"I'm sorry, Beast. For what she did to you. That was wrong."
"I should have known."
A little smile crept across my face. "Now, you can't have it both ways, Beast. Either we're both innocent of being victim of her manipulations, or neither of us are, and you seem determined that I am."
He looked down at me a long moment, then turned his hand under mine, clasping it. "Very well. I have…a great deal of unlearning to do, if that's how it's to be. I've blamed myself for—"
"A very long time. Over a century, and yet Irindala still reigns beyond this forest. How?"
"Enchantment." A brief smile curled his mouth at my exasperated look. "Beyond that I don't know. I was not…thoughtful…in the aftermath of Eleanor's curse. The magic has told me time and again how I was brought here, but it can't finish the story. It can only try to make the pieces it has fit the story it knows so far, and it doesn't seem to know what happened after the curse struck."
"Which is why I must go to Father. He must know something. He knows my mother—and Maman, for that matter—both knew the queen, once upon a time. He must know something more."
The Beast looked askance at me. "Both his wives knew my mother? Your father moves in high circles, Amber."