II. The Revealing

Maryweather couldn't believe the story at first, but she eventually came to realize she didn't have much choice in what was going on.

It was nice that Leroy tried to get something for her to cheer her up from life living in the dismal grey village streets, but it had come at a cost, that he and Maryweather would have to go back to the castle the very next day. She just hoped that whatever happened next wouldn't be of any harm to them...

Quite early the next morning, the two got up, ate a quick breakfast of stale bread and water, and headed out of the village and towards the castle. Both children were afraid of what could happen, and they both knew if something bad was going to happen to them, they were both going to face it, even if they were afraid.

Instead of something bad happening to them, though, it was the complete opposite.

"What?" Leroy and Maryweather both couldn't believe their ears at what the Beast told them.

"You heard me. Do I need to repeat it a second time, or should I not bother if both of you are deaf?" The completely cloaked Beast answered hastily, and he made a motion like crossing his arms from underneath the ragged, long black cloak. Even his face was obscured from view, but Leroy couldn't help but remember how the Beast's face had looked when he first met the Beast.

"No, you don't need to..." Leroy trailed off, before turning to Maryweather. Both were thinking the same thing. He wants us to simply reside here at the castle!? And he's going to be serving us? What? That's not normal... Leroy swallowed nervously, before turning towards the Beast. "Well, if you say you're going to do all that for us, thank you..."

"Well, actually, I have one request if you accept this offer. I forgot just now, so I apologize for not mentioning it sooner." The Beast responded. "Please don't go into the West Wing...It's..." The Beast appeared to pause, before he finished. "The rooms there, they are of grave importance to me, and I feel my privacy would be, well, violated if anyone else went in there..."

"Well, we can do that." Maryweather answered, looking at him carefully. "I'm just wondering...Do you have a name?"

"Yes..." The Beast's tone of voice sounded a bit nervous as he answered. "Do I need to tell you?"

"Well, I really don't know how to address you if I don't know your name..."

"True. You both already told me your names, and it would be rude to not tell you my name. The same would go for revealing my appearance, wouldn't it?" The Beast paused, before letting the cloak fall from his shoulders. Both children let out a gasp at what they saw standing in front of them.

The Beast...Looked quite human, but not exactly human, either. His skin, a mix of pale and tan tones, was covered with numerous scars and blisters. Some cuts looked fresher than others, with congealed blood slowly dribbling from those wounds and over the other closed scars. and his ragged clothing consisted of a tunic with trousers. He was barefoot and bare-handed, and the children noticed his hands were more like the talons of an eagle, sharp as a blade and curved just slightly. His dark amber eyes stared at them a quiet tenseness, through strands of greasy, chocolate-brown strands of hair that almost touched his shoulders.

"I looked a lot better ten years ago. Things have changed since then." The Beast muttered sourly, before answering the question. "My name, children, is Cassandra Gladstone. I am the last of this once-standing kingdom, and I am doomed to forever be in this creature-like form if I do not 'fall in love' with someone by a certain time. Of course, I gave up on that. I mean, who would want to love a beast? No one, I tell you. No one."

Leroy sighed quietly as he sat on the bed in his room. It wasn't like he hated being in this castle, but the Beast...Something really was off about him, and it wasn't because of him being stuck as some...Inhuman creature because of someone plain-old casting a spell on him. It was something else.

This was a castle. There were supposed to be servants, usually. Where were they?

"Gone." Cassandra muttered bitterly right after Leroy had asked him about it. "They all were killed on the day I gained this inhuman form, along with all the other residents of this kingdom. Alexis Hargreaves...He had his soldiers to wipe out everyone in this kingdom except for me, probably to bring misery to me and have my pride of running the kingdom one day smashed into splinters. After he made sure to kill everyone, he cast this horrendous spell upon me and told me if I didn't 'fall in love' with someone in...Approximately ten years, I think...I would be forced to stay this way forever."

The next point was when Maryweather asked about how in the world Cassandra was able to survive.

"I learned to hunt in my youth." Cassandra had answered simply, as if it were the most obvious question in the world. "Of course, Alexis took the liberty of taking the majority of the weaponry available, so I had to make do with finding plants or catching fish in the woods. Eventually I figured out that the best way to hunt, in this form at least, is to simply act on animalistic instincts."

'Acting on animalistic instincts' in Cassandra's case was quite, quite bloody, literally. When Cassandra had run into them, Leroy had noticed the blood on the older man's cloak and realized that he must have finished hunting for animals to eat at the time.

Both children could barely stomach the sight of seeing a dead deer in the kitchen later on, and Maryweather almost threw up shortly afterwards. Leroy couldn't blame her for it; he did feel quite sick when he saw the animal's corpse, just as Cassandra was able to chop it up with a cleaver he made. Both of them didn't each much at supper, to Cassandra's disappointment. He'd prepared it with extra carefulness, too. If he had not done so, they would have eaten half-raw deer. That would not have been good for the children, and Cassandra did not want them getting sick.

Leroy really wasn't sure why the Beast let them stay here, heck, even let them stay alive in the first place. If he was the Beast, he would have probably killed them instantly at first sight. Right?

Then again, there was definitely something off about Cassandra. Leroy just didn't know what it was exactly.

"...Am I so desperate that I turn to children for companionship out of all creatures?" Cassandra muttered as he sat on a black chair in his bedchamber, watching a scarlet-red rose trapped in a tall, slender glass jar. "But I suppose it is better than no one around. No one has ever treaded towards here for ten long years..."

Before he could continue rambling aloud to himself, he noticed a petal start to turn grey. He watched, quietly, before it shriveled up and fell off the flower, crumbling into bits of ash and dust.

"...Time is running out...If I were to-to try to find anyone to love me, I suppose I am far too late. Then again," He let out a humourless chuckle, "I was always too late at situations like this. Always."