Page 68 of The Beast of Ashwood Manor

My eyes dropped to the large pan she drew up, and it reminded me of Royce, but instead of him standing there making food, it was her.

“I need to get Gil to show me his other side,” I told them. “He won’t do it. He thinks I’ll hate him afterward.”

Natalie shrugged. “Well, do you blame him? The same happened with Jared. Who’s to say you’ll be sincere?”

“Are you saying I’m lying?”

“I don’t know, Cale. You can say all sorts of things, but then when you see it happen, it could change your mind completely. To see someone you care about morph into something monstrous, well, it’s quite daunting.”

I said nothing more of it, and instead made my way to the counter, where I cut small wedges of cheese that we’d made the day before.

They could be right in saying that my mind could change. Something in me could dent, and I could recoil from him, but as of right now, I knew what I felt with him. I wanted nothing more than to sate his loneliness and warm him at night, to read and write with him. And I had this strange urge to show him to my mother. The way he’d looked at me each time we were together, why would I give that up?

So, he’s a monster? Not like any that I’ve seen.

For some reason, the thought made my stomach pull in an exciting way.

I joined Mary, Natalie, Eugenia, and Edgar for breakfast at the dining table. Annie took a plate up for her and Royce, and no one bothered her since she seemed to break out in tears at the mention of him.

“Had a couple pigs die off in the night,” Edgar said, his face sullen. “This winter isn’t treating us too well already.”

“We’ll make due,” Mary said, smiling as she tried to be her optimistic self, but her expression faltered, and I couldn’t help but feel the mounting pressure that I needed to do more, and quickly, to save them all from ruin.

The weeks passed quickly, and the snow finally stopped for a while. We were less than two months away from spring, and with each day that passed, everyone seemed to grow all the more sullen.

Royce could no longer come to the kitchen anymore, as he suffered daily with hallucinations. Annie seemed bent on keeping everyone away from him, even when just bringing up food to their room.

I felt a pang every time I saw her walk by. She’d continued to clean linens, but she’d stopped maintaining the house, and her worry was beginning to show on her face with dark circles under her eyes.

Natalie and Mary had become more quiet than usual, and I felt a sort of unrest between them and everyone else, a strange tension I couldn’t decipher, as if they were still holding back information from me.

Edgar reported more dead animals every day, and when he’d looked at the ground of the garden, he shook his head and blamed the frost for them looking so rough.

On a day in February, I sat down to paint rocks with Gil. I didn’t know if he thought it was silly, but it helped us pass the time, and I was eager to see what he thought.

Painting rocks and hiding them in the grass or behind trees or in pots was a custom among the villages in the region, and it had always stuck with me, as I thought it was fun and helped keep my mind off other things.

“I never got to paint these when I was a boy,” Gil said. “I only ever took part in hunting them.”

“Really?” My brows rose. “Was your father against it?”

“No. I just always hunted them rather than painting them. We usually had fancy feasts and invited a lot of people to the estate, poor and wealthy alike.”

“That’s . . . amazing.”

“I thought so, too. It gained him favor with certain people. I wonder if he still does it now.” Gil sighed. “I think the hardest part of this whole curse is being parted from him with no way of telling him what happened. By now, I’m sure he thinks I’m dead.”

I looked up at him as he painted, and my heart ached. He seemed a genuinely good person before this ever happened. For something bad to befall someone good . . . I could understand now why he’d become so distant with everyone.

But I couldn’t help but smile now as he painted black designs on his green rock. Having him take part in this at all meant a lot to me—and to him, after what he’d told me—and my heart fluttered seeing those big hands of his get messy with paint.

Looking back down, I started, “I always—”

Thump.

Stopping what we were doing, we both looked at each other, then at the door.

When someone yelled outside, Gil was on his feet first, rushing for the door and yanking it open. I followed behind him, fast on his heels for fear he might lock me in again. In the hallway, Royce stood with a mark on his head, his eyes wide as he looked around at Annie, Mary, and Edgar.

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