The attack came without warning, innumerable sharpened branches racing as one to pierce me. I let them, gasping as too many broke through my skin: my thoughts of bark-like protection were not, it seemed, enough to ward off killing attempts. Eleanor laughed, surprised at the ease of taking me to my knees, but I had no interest in taking her on directly. Not while she was tied to the power of the land, at least. On my knees, I was able to worm one hand through the rose roots and curl my fingers against the Beast's shin. I felt his weakening life force, and the strength of the roses, and I whispered, "No," to them.
They had bowed to my will before, parting just enough to let me pass through them. A shock trembled them now, and under my resolute command, they began to withdraw from the Beast's body. Eleanor shrieked in outrage, more and more spears raining down on me. Some struck home; more did not, as the roots pulled away from the Beast and the roses struggled to decide which of us was their master. I extended my other hand, head lowered, and thought of my thornless roses, racing now along a pathway between the hunting lodge and the palace's front gates. I called them to me, and they began to grow ever-faster. They peeled Eleanor's roses off the copper-worked gates and ran forward, moving more and more quickly as I pulled the other roots from their hold in the Beast's flesh.
He awakened screaming, a sound so terrible I wanted nothing more than to stop and comfort him. I didn't dare, knowing that if I did I would never have the chance to start again. I told myself the pain was good: it meant he was alive, and it meant Eleanor's roses were losing their grip on him.
Eleanor seized my hair, ripping my head back and slashing at my throat with nails made of thorns. They connected: I had no way to stop them. But my throat didn't slit open; it felt more like rough chunks of flesh were torn away, without any terrible pain accompanying the blows. As surprised as she was, I smiled at her. I couldn't fight her without taking my hands away from the Beast and my call to my roses; all I could do was smile, and so I did, confused and bright and helpless. Her eyes went mad with rage. She seized my jaw and the back of my head as a tunnel opened in her roses, my power bringing what it could to the fight.
It brought nothing visible, but before she could twist my head around, something struck her, knocking her away from me. My head was yanked forward as she staggered away, but my neck wasn't broken, and Opal appeared in front of me.
My sweetest sister wore a maniacal grin matched by the fierce smile on Pearl's face as she came striding down the tunnel I'd carved through the roses. They had both taken a beating: Opal limped and bled, and Pearl was scored all over by rose thorn lines. But they were neither of them defeated, and my heart soared to have them with me. As if joy fed my magic, the roots loosened from the Beast ever-faster. His screams lost strength, not as though he was losing strength, but as if the pain was no longer as unbearable. I cried out in relief and my sisters turned their smiles on me, then both paled and stepped back before exchanging looks and returning, resolutely, to the battle.
Eleanor made a sword of thorns and struck not at Pearl, whose moonlight armor had faded with moonset, but at Opal, whose magic was the least of all of ours. Pearl, with a sword shaped like the crescent moon itself suddenly in hand, leapt to her defense, thorn meeting pearl-drop shield. I knew from the clatter that the shield was unlikely to last long.
The final threads came loose from the Beast. Eleanor's power weakened suddenly, obviously: she staggered with the loss of it, and Opal leapt on her with driving elbows and knees, more ferocious than I had ever imagined she could be. It created the briefest lull for Pearl, who shot me a wide-eyed look that jerked to the Beast and back, as if to say get on with it!
I did not want to leave my sisters to fight a mad faery, but neither would the curse break if I left the Beast to help my sisters. I let the power of the roses go, surprised that the tunnel remained open, and crawled up my Beast's body to catch his huge face in my hands. "Beast. Oh, Beast, my love, my Beast. Wake up, my love. Listen to me. Listen, beloved. Wake up, and tell me: will you sleep with me?"
Eleanor screamed. From the corner of my eye I saw Pearl's crescent sword sweep down, and light exploded all around us as the Beast transformed in my arms.
I had seen so many beasts in my Beast: the ram, the boar, the bear, the cat. His arching, writhing form transformed into each of them, fighting me with tooth and claw and tusk and horn. I hung on, sobbing, as he became too big, too cruel, too fierce to hold. Injuries opened on my arms, my torso, my legs: everywhere and in every way that a beast might strike in rage or fear, I was scored. I held on, afraid that if I released him I would lose him forever. Then he began to shrink, but in shrinking radiated heat, until it was as though I clung to an iron bar. A burning woody scent filled my nostrils. I screamed, but I did not let go, and suddenly the pain and the power were gone. The Beast made an ungainly whumph of sound as he collapsed on top of me.
He ought to have crushed me. That he did not took some consideration; the thought that we had succeeded, that the curse had ended and his transformation had been undone, took some time to reach. My heart clenched in sudden terror: I had become quite accustomed to my Beast, had fallen in love with him. I had seen the prince in a vision, but I had never thought of what he might be like, or if I would care for him. I pressed my eyes shut against the oncoming sunrise—the sky above the tunnel of crumbling roses was gold and pink and streaked with blue—and tried to tell myself that Timmet was the Beast, whether in an ungainly monstrous form or in his own.
A voice, his voice, but much thinner and lighter, no longer coming from a chest as broad as my arm, said, "Amber?" with much the same confusion I myself felt.
I set my teeth so I might gather my nerve, and opened my eyes to see—
—to see a Beast, albeit not the same Beast I had known, propped above me. His shoulders were no more than a man's in breadth, though like before a dark mane cascaded over them, and down his chest, like a lion's. More of a mane than before, in fact, as it had less inhuman features to struggle with, and could frame them more magnificently. His face was slim, all planes and angles softened by the loose long fur of his mane, through which the ears I had liked so much still swept upward. Like Eleanor, his eyes were huge and slanted, though his were the amber shade of a beast's, and his lips, parted in astonishment, showed teeth sharper and more deadly than any human had ever owned.
I scrambled backward, out from under him, until my back hit the brambles. It was a greater distance than I had expected: we were in a proper clearing now, and also all alone. "Beast?"