"He used to. You can come with me, can't you?" I asked, suddenly eager. "You protect this forest and its beasts, don't you? So you must be able to leave the palace grounds."
"No longer. It is your world, a world apart from mine. I used to be able to." The Beast reached toward the roses, which surged toward him with thorns sharp and wicked at the fore. He pulled his hand back again and the vines settled. "It's been like this since they began their attack. I think they cannot kill me, but I believe they can bind me. Keep me here. And that they will kill me, if they can. Which is another reason I don't believe you're the villain, Amber. The roses have always fought the forest, never coming for me. Now they've turned their focus inward, and—can you walk?" he asked. "You should see this from the observatory."
"I think I can. Wait." I collected my mirror and the rose water, though the mirror seemed more likely to be useful. We might be able to see beyond the forest with it, or find a way through the roses with it. The rose water went into my bodice, but I had to find a reticule for the mirror, and tied the purse at my hip before we left the Beast's rooms. I meant to ask him why he had brought the mirror, but between my weariness and the obvious answer—that he knew its properties, and always had—I couldn't muster the effort. Even without wasting energy speaking, I tired halfway to the observatory. The Beast unhesitatingly carried me to its narrow stairway, which I had to ascend myself; his bulk was too great for him to climb the stairs carrying anything. He stayed just behind me, in case I fainted, but we reached the glass dome in safety, and I saw at once what he meant.
It wasn't only the roses racing toward the house. The lands had shrunk beneath the forest's encroachment as well. In places it was clear a war was being waged: swiftly-growing saplings were being throttled by roses, but their branches bent to scrape the vines from the ground. Here and there they'd reached a stalemate, horrible tangles of roses and trees no longer trying to reach the house, but instead growing higher and higher, each trying to dominate the other. "All this in ten days?"
"The snarls are from when I ventured out. It seemed to help: the roses stopped where I was, and the forest was able to catch up, to hold them in place. But staying still in their midst that long…" The Beast exhaled. "As I said, I think they can't kill me, but they could bind me. And I was afraid what would happen to you, if I let them take me. So I came back." He was silent a little while before saying, "I am not certain whether I am a coward or not."
"Beast! No! Of course not. If the roses did take you, she'd have won, wouldn't she? And if she won, the palace would go to ruin and I would die too. It's not cowardice to leave a battle you can't win, not if retreating saves lives. Even one life." I considered that. "I suspect I may feel especially strongly about the matter when it's my life."
That earned a chuckle from the Beast, which was all I wanted. "I have to go see Father," I said again. "If it was the full moon I could wait on Pearl conjuring a mirror-spell again—"
The Beast, cautiously, said, "Have you learned anything of your mirror?"
"I have. Oh!" I pressed my palm against the mirror's purse, then sank onto one of the low cushioned seats, putting my face in my hands. "Of course. That's why it worked for me, isn't it? We're all Eleanor's daughters. Of course Pearl's witchery didn't awaken out of nowhere. I knew—I knew, once you said the stones were bespelled, that the pearl was magic, that you hoped she would learn to use it and be able to break the enchantment here. If I go to Father I can bring her back, Beast. She can help you. She can fight the curse from within."
"She cannot." The Beast's voice was strange, and I looked up at him with fingers pressed against my mouth. "The breaking of the enchantment is quite specific, and I cannot imagine Pearl succumbing to its requirements in any usefully timely fashion."
"But she's a witch," I said helplessly. "I don't understand." And then I did, Irindala's amelioration of the curse coming back to me: the form could be undone by a lover's willing touch. I stood, swiftly, and the Beast, with a desperate ache in his voice, asked, "Amber, will you sleep with me?"
I opened my mouth to cry yes!, and rose vines smashed through the observatory windows to snatch me away.
Thorns sank into my skin as the roses held me, kept me from writhing away. Within a heartbeat I didn't dare struggle, as the runners reared back from the palace and fell toward the ground. Roses, even enchanted roses, weren't meant to hold a human's weight four or five stories above the earth, and all that kept me from plummeting were the numbers of runners rising to catch me. I felt them weaken and buckle beneath me, and others take up their slack. Those that pulled away left scores in my dress and across my limbs, though the pain wasn't as great as I would have imagined. It stung and tingled, but the roses I'd picked had caused me more discomfort.
I glimpsed the Beast leaping through the broken observatory windows and pouncing after the runners, his claws glittering sharp and his roar so loud and endless I briefly mistook it for the wind. He skidded to a halt at the roof's edge, slate tiles shattering and flying free beneath his weight, but I was already out of reach. Screaming, reaching for him, but out of reach. A runner wrapped around my face and lodged in my mouth, muffling my screams. I bit it, trying to catch a breath to scream again, and felt leaves tickling the back of my throat. I bit down again, tasting bitter sap, and a story exploded inside my mind.
I was Eleanor, and I never left the borders to Irindala's country, always testing them with my thwarted rage. They could not hold: Irindala had spent too much magic in altering my curse. I knew it, and yet they held. For years I paced, hatred sustaining me, and then it came to me that an active enemy lent strength to any magic. I gathered power into myself, transforming until my roots ran deep and my blooms rose to the sun: a hedge of roses that crept along the border, adding beauty as it searched for weakness. I grew tenaciously enough that in time the area I patrolled became known as the Rose Border, and it was at the Rose Border that the Border Wars both ended and began.
She ought not have lived that long, my old lover the queen. No mortal could, and no spell, no matter how flawlessly wrought, could forever survive the price of a single person maintaining it. Its burden had been meant to pass from queen to child, its strength invigorated by new blood. It took decades longer than I expected, but one day my wandering tendrils pressed into the border, and the border gave.