Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 74631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
That is not how it works. Whether I look or not, time still passes. What I do in that time is irrelevant to the state of the clock ticking. The petals will still fall. Watching the rose for hours a day does not seem to make a difference. Ignoring the rose for weeks at a time makes no difference. Consideration alone does not affect the curse.
And yet, on nights like these, I find myself before it. I do not find the rose to be entrancing or alluring. At one time I may have looked at the rose the way a solider will look at a wound that cannot be healed but will not cause a mercifully quick death.
The petal quivers again in such a slight motion that I almost allow myself to hope it will not fall. When I was first cursed, it would have been a simple matter to convince myself that it had not moved at all and forbid myself from looking for a month, but now I cannot lie to myself. Elle has changed everything.
Despite my determination to be stoic, the sight of another quivering petal turns my stomach to knots.
I follow the line of the stem to the bottom of the cloche. I do not try to convince myself that the number of petals is unchanged, because every time I come to this room in the tower, the number of petals that have fallen is burned freshly into my memory. I cannot lie to myself about this, either. There are more petals on the bottom of the glass cloche than there were the last time I was here.
Try as I might, I cannot remember when that was. It was before I brought Elle to the castle, but how long before? When I search my memories, I cannot recall how the land looked outside the window or whether there was rain drumming on the roof. I cannot remember if it was dark out or daylight. I cannot remember if it was hot or cold. It makes me feel crazed.
I cannot even remember whether it was this year or last, or even the year before. There have been times in my life when the days blurred together with no way to tell them apart. The beast and I fought for control and space in my body, and the hours passed without notice as I struggled to force him into submission or retreated into my mind and let him run loose when I was too exhausted to keep up the fight.
Other times, though, the years were interminable, each day stretching out until I thought for sure a week had passed, only to find that the sun had not yet set. My mind remained clear during those days, and I dwelled in overwhelming anguish and pain and guilt thinking back to the day the witch came to the castle.
It was too late when she arrived. There was not time to build a wall and keep her out, or to gather any weaponry that could hope to overpower her. There had not been any warning signs, and her arrival was an ambush. All I could do was flee the castle with the people who dwelled there. I gathered as many as I could, every servant I could find, as the witch swept into the castle, and we ran through the forest to the village. The journey seemed never-ending. There was not room for all of us in the inn so we divided ourselves among the homes of the villagers who would take us in.
At first the villagers were welcoming, as they understood the fear of having to flee from a sudden attack. We had escaped with our lives, the most precious thing to defend, and for a short while it seemed as if that would be the worst of it. Perhaps the witch would pass on and we could go back to the comfort of the castle.
I should have known then that we had not run far enough and the witch would never give up the castle without being completely defeated. Black clouds darkened the sky. They were like nothing we had ever seen, swirling in vicious spirals above the village. They cracked open with brutal lightning that set trees on fire and split the earth. It was a warning of what was to come.
At the time I could not understand how it had happened. Dark witches are normally handled by their own kind. They keep each other in line, for their power is too great to be challenged by most others. I had not been prepared for such an attack and I did not have an enchantress at the castle. There was not even a wise woman in the village who could offer the slightest protection.
The storm raged above the village for three days and three nights, and I began to understand that it would not stop without my intervention. I resisted the idea because I did not want to face the witch in a place of power, but when yet another house was struck down by lightning and the inhabitants ran screaming from the flames, I knew I had to act. The people were mine to protect and my cowardice was the cause of their pain.