The Eye of the Beholder (25 page)

Oh, aye. Too much time. Or is it now too little? Why can I no longer remember? Why do I no longer care?

Exhausted, I followed her suggestion.

The next time I awoke, it was night again. Only a few candles were lit, their flames dancing in the warm, light breeze that occasionally wafted through the open doors. I could hear no sound other than the wind and I wondered where Mira was. Painfully, I managed to pull myself into a slightly more upright position, but by the time I was finished, I was panting from the exertion. To my surprise, I found that Mira was again at my side.

"Have you need of something?" she asked me. She was dressed in a white linen shift with a white linen wrap over it. There was lace at her wrists and lace at her throat and her vibrant hair tumbled around her face in a riot of unruly curls. I had never before seen her with her hair in disarray. Whenever she had been in my presence, it had been carefully arranged. I found that I liked it better tousled.

"Water," I said, my throat and mouth so dry that I could scarcely speak the word.

She turned away from me to pour the water and I found myself staring at the curls that hung down to her waist. I became aware of her scent and found that I wanted, more than anything, to reach out and touch one of those curls, to know how it would feel. But I did not. There was little use in such a gesture at any rate. I longed to know the texture of her hair as it ran through human fingers, but I possessed the paws of a beast.

There was a harsh taste in my mouth as she turned back to me. I was too weak to hold the glass myself, so she had to assist me. The water was cool, but it did nothing to wash away the bitterness.

"I am in your chambers," I said, with a sudden dawning of awareness.

"Yes, you are." Her expression was somewhat wary as she studied me with her lovely eyes.

"Why?"

"It was closest. You were too ill to carry back to your own chambers."

There were many questions I wanted to ask her about my illness, none of which I currently had the strength to ask. Instead, I knew I must speak of that which troubled me the most. "You saw it," I said, turning away from her.

"Your outburst," she said, her tone neutral. Even so, I could not help but grimace.

"The black rage," I elaborated, feeling my body tense. I stared up at her canopy again, for I could not meet her gaze. I was afraid…and I was ashamed. I had spent far too long denying what I felt, but I could do so no longer for I simply had not the strength for it.

"Black rage," she repeated softly. "You have had them before?"

"Aye."

"Many times?"

"Aye, many more than I care to remember."

She was quite for a moment. "It was horrible," she whispered.

Anguish washed over me and I closed my eyes against it. I had tried so hard to conceal from her the baser parts of my nature, though my conduct toward her was such that she had probably not imagined I could possibly possess a nature baser than that which she had seen. It was laughable how foolishly certain I had been that I could win her over despite my being what I was, laughable that I had thought it necessary to hide my hunting and my rages from her, as if these things would have been the deciding factor in my failure with her rather than my complete lack of worthiness. All my carefully laid plans had not mattered, for she had not only seen my unworthiness, she had also witnessed one of my black rages.

"I cannot imagine what it must be like to experience such a thing," she said, her voice low. "It was as if you were not wholly there. I spoke to you, but you could not hear me."

"I remember very little of what happens when I am in such a state," I said, my voice tight and gruff. I did not open my eyes, for I could not bear to see the expression on her face.

She was quiet for a long moment. "It was not until I witnessed what you did to that corridor that I truly understood how dangerous you can be."

Pain bloomed within me, bright and sharp. She was being fairer to me than I deserved, but her words still cut me like a blade. For the first time, it hurt me to realize how terrible I must seem in the eyes of another. I had no one to blame for this but myself, and my sense of self-recrimination made me feel ill. "Why are you here?" I asked, my voice made harsh by my storm of emotions.

"Where else would I be?" Her voice was carefully controlled, and I finally opened my eyes and looked at her.

"I was ill, injured. You could have escaped. You could have left me and returned to your home, never to see me again."

"I could have left you to die, you mean," she said, looking into my eyes.

Much as I wanted to look away, I forced myself to continue to meet her gaze. "You would have been well within your rights to do so."

"I thought about it," she said, shocking me with her candor. "But I knew that, if I did, I would have to live with the knowledge that I held a life in my hands, and I chose to let it be extinguished. Who am I to make such a decision?"

It struck me then just what sort of person she was. I had long known that she was my superior, but her words had finally forced me to truly examine myself, something not even the enchantress had been able to do. Mira had bestowed upon me a generosity and compassion that I did not deserve. Any other woman would have left me for dead and would have had no cause to feel guilty for having done so. But Mira had remained by my side, had cared for me, had nursed me back to health even though I had threatened her father, even though I had imprisoned her, even though I had grossly mistreated her, even though I had lost control of myself and exposed her to one of my black rages. To say that she was more than I deserved was like saying that the sun was sometimes bright in summer. It was such an understatement that it was almost disgracefully ridiculous.

I nearly died
.
I nearly died, and she saved me. She saved me even though she was not obligated to do so, even though she would have been better off had she left me for dead and saved herself. She saved me even though I did not deserve to be saved.

I felt a strange sensation within me, an urge that I had never before felt. I wanted to be a better man. I was flawed, I was twisted, I was wrong, and I was finally admitting it. The enchantress had been right all along, I was a beast. All this time I had wasted cursing her should have been spent cursing myself, cursing my own depraved indifference, my own heartlessness.

"Thank you," I said to Mira. The words were difficult to speak. I had spoken them so rarely I marveled that I knew how to pronounce them.

"You are welcome," she replied and, in a gesture that only served to further my sense of astonishment, she clasped her hand around my paw. Startled, my eyes shot up to hers and she looked down at me steadily. "It is late and you need your rest. We shall talk more in the morning." She pressed my paw gently, and then stood and moved away from the bed.

"Good night, Mira." They were thin words; there was much more I wished to say to her. Even had I not lacked the courage, I knew that I did lack the right to say them.

"Good night," she responded, looking back over her shoulder, through the veil of her hair. I felt a twinge of pain in my heart as she disappeared from my view.

"You must learn to love another…" the voice of the enchantress rang through my head.

I do love her. I love her with every fiber of my being. How could I not?

"In return, you must earn her love…"

Perhaps by some miracle I could earn it. Perhaps she could find something within me to love. But no matter, for I do not deserve her love and I never will…

Wearily, I closed my eyes, but there was no escape in the darkness behind my lids, for her image seemed to be burned upon them. I knew there would be no escape in sleep either, for she had haunted my dreams for some time now, and I knew that she would continue to do so. I sighed, a deep, shuddering sound that I hoped she would not notice. If she did notice it, I hoped she would simply attribute it to some physical discomfort.

I love her, but I may never have her
, I thought. The pain that lanced through me was enough to rend my heart in twain. This, then, was to be what I would suffer as a result of the enchantress's curse. But what caused me the most agony was the knowledge that I deserved the suffering.

Chapter 24: A Frightful Illness

From the moment I had decided not to flee the castle, to stay and help Lysander instead, I had ceased to think. There had been no hesitation when I had ordered him carried to my chambers, no hesitation when I had set about cleaning and binding his wound. He had become my patient, my responsibility, and I was entirely consumed with the immediacy of caring for his injuries. This lack of thought was partially a result of necessity; there was too much to be done for me to think about how I felt. It was also a defense. I was not prepared to examine the wisdom of my staying.

It was not until several hours after I had cleansed and stitched his wound that it suddenly occurred to me that I had touched Lysander and that I had done so without the slightest sensation of fear. Amazed, I turned my gaze to his wretched form, lying sprawled across the bed. In a moment of crisis, I had not thought, I had simply acted. I wondered at myself, wondered that I had somehow found the courage to overcome my fear and prejudice and help him in his moment of need.

The thinking began during the lull that followed those initial hours of frantic activity, and it continued unceasingly throughout Lysander's convalescence. At first, I thought I was mad for staying. But two days after his rampage, Lysander lay unconscious on the bed, moaning and thrashing, and I knew that if I had left, he would surely have died. I did not need to touch him to feel the heat that radiated from his body. His fever raged, the result of a combination of his exposure to the elements and his wound, which became infected. I sat by his bedside by the hour, spooning broth and water into his mouth when I could. When he was deep in the grip of his fever dreams, I dared not approach him lest one of his wildly flailing limbs dash me against the wall.

During the worst of his delirium, Lysander often cried out. His speech was incomprehensible at times, but I was occasionally able to understand snatches of what he said. He babbled primarily of kings and enchantresses, saying things that were more fantastical than any fairy story I had ever heard. This was strange, for he had never before seemed given to flights of fancy, but then I had never before seen him in the grip of so serious an illness.

Despite my best efforts and fastidious care, his wound continued to worsen. He was fortunate his illness had rendered him insensible for, had he been awake and in control of his faculties, the pain of my ministrations to his wound would have been excruciating. I was forced to cut back some of the skin, to open my own careful stitches and scrape the wound out again to rid it of the infection and to ensure that I had not missed any bits of glass. For a time I feared that the infection would spread and grow gangrenous but, after several harrowing days, the wound at last began to heal, and I was able to breathe something of a sigh of relief. I had shaved the hair away from the site of the wound and my second set of careful stitches stood out against the skin in harsh relief. The pale skin was a beautiful sight compared to the lurid coloring of his once-festering wound.

Once his fever had broken, my vigil consisted of long hours of quiet, as he slept and recovered his strength. I often opened one of my balcony doors just slightly and stood with my face turned eagerly toward the small slice of the outside world. Beyond this castle, my father and sisters continued on with their lives, learning how to live without me. My months in the castle had left me feeling strangely detached, as if I existed in some sort of bubble, removed from the notice and concern of the world around me. However, I also could not deny that I had felt more alive during these months than I had in years. I was living the adventure I had always sought, and my mind was engaged as it never had been while I lived in Everforest. Lysander was a terrible beast, but his was also one of the most subtle, intelligent minds I had ever encountered. My captivity in the castle was also a form of escape; escape from the expectations, disappointments, and mind-numbing boredom of the world outside its doors. The realization that I felt this way was entirely disturbing.

I spent hours standing at those doors, finally giving in to the thoughts I had tried my best to ignore. The fresh spring air was extremely welcome after spending so much time in the stale, fetid air of the sick room. I watched as gentle showers watered the castle and the forest, as the trees began to show signs of their first buds, as the night sky blazed with countless stars. Always, there was a faint scent of roses in the air, and this scent had the effect of reviving me, even when I was at my most tired and despondent.