Beauty by Sarah Pinborough Page B

Her father’s friends?
    He sat up late into the night, turning the spindle in his hands. One prick, the witch had said, and that would be that. He wished it could be done while she was the Beast. Somehow that would feel easier. But the Beast rarely slept and her magic would protect her from danger. It had to be Beauty he murdered.
    He went to her rooms the next afternoon. It was a beautiful day. The city was full of life. A rose, Beauty’s favourite flower, sat in a glass on the window sill. She sat on the edge of her bed and laughed with delight as she reached for the spinning wheel, happy that he’d thought to bring her a gift from his travels, especially a thing she had never seen before in her life, and in that moment where she was joyous he saw her delicate finger touch the spindle.
    It was done.
    Her eyes widened for the merest moment and then the spinning wheel slid from her hands to the floor and she fell backwards onto her bed. Rumplestiltskin stood and cried, silently begging her forgiveness, for what seemed like forever, before he laid her out on the bed. He was so absorbed in his grief and guilt he failed to notice the sudden unnatural silence around him.
    He did, however, notice that the princess, one arm flopped over the side of the bed, a tiny drop of blood striking the floor from her pricked finger, was still breathing.
    It didn’t make sense. Not at first. Not until he’d been outside and to the forest’s edge and seen the wall that had grown there. And even then it had taken weeks, maybe even months, for the terrible truth to sink in.
    ‘ T he witch lied,’ Petra said, softly.
    ‘Oh no.’ Rumplestiltskin shook his head. ‘Witches never lie. But they do speak in riddles. The queen would die. She would bleed to death and it would be painless. But she would bleed to death one drop at a time.’ He shuddered and sipped his wine. ‘Before Beauty’s birth, the witch told the king that a spindle would send his daughter to sleep for a hundred years. Her prophesy was not destroyed by my deeds. I brought the spindle. I sent her to sleep as I killed her. She would sleep the hundred years it took her blood to drain from her body and then she’d be gone. A hundred years of waiting. And we were so nearly there, when you woke her.’
    ‘Your daughter?’ the huntsman said.
    ‘Long dead now. After a life abandoned and locked away in a witch’s tower.’
    ‘Locked in a tower,’ Petra repeated, her gaze misty as if she was lost in a different story.
    ‘So why is the first minister so keen that we find you and take you to him? You were doing something that surely they all wanted?’
    ‘If I had succeeded, of course. But I failed. The queen is awake, and there’s only one other person who knew of my plan and my visit to the witch.’
    ‘Him?’ Petra said.
    ‘Exactly. If I’m captured and the Beast tortures me, he knows I’ll have no choice but to give up his name. It’s better for everyone if she thinks I acted alone.’
    ‘Shhh.’ Toby tilted his head and frowned.
    ‘What?’
    ‘The bell,’ Toby said. ‘The bell is ringing. A dark day has come.’
    Rumplestiltskin looked up at the huntsman. ‘The Beast is awake.’
    ‘But what about the prince?’ Petra asked. ‘He’s with her!’
    ‘Hopefully the first minister will look after him,’ the old man muttered. ‘But I fear he’s about to have a very rude awakening about his sweet queen.’



 
    9
    ‘Perhaps he was in a dream . . .’
    T he bell rang out from somewhere at the top of the castle, a steady heavy knell, and as the prince stared up at the ceiling of his apartments he shivered slightly while his heart raced. Whatever affliction had struck poor Beauty the first minister had not been surprised by it, but the prince had also seen that he was afraid and that in turn frightened the prince. Much to his own chagrin, he wished the huntsman were here. Surrounded as he was by the kind of luxury he was used to, he still suddenly felt very