Free Scarlet in the Snow by Sophie Masson

pursuit of me. But I reached the glass doors that led to the garden without her voice hailing me. Blindly, feeling as though I were about to suffocate, I pulled open the doors and stumbled out into the empty garden, the crisp cold air making me gasp, half in relief, half in pain.
    I reached a stone bench and sat down. Doubling over, I rocked from side to side, murmuring desperate prayers. I tried to still the panic that burned within me, the fear that Luel was lying and that I was already trapped by my own thoughtless words into a terrifying marriage with a beast.
    My eye was caught at that moment by a splash of scarlet on white – the withered petals of the fateful flower, lying in the snow. Hardly knowing what I was doing, I got up groggily and staggered to where a single petal lay. All the others had vanished as though they’d never existed and the bush was completely bare.
    I picked up the petal. Withered as it was, it still exuded a faint fragrance, and its ragged shape and deep colourreminded me eerily of a heart. A bloody, dying heart, broken beyond repair. And that image undid the last of my precarious self-control, so that I put my face in my hands and wept, the petal slipping unregarded through my fingers.
    ‘She has told you.’ The voice was quiet, but it made me start violently. I turned to see the
abartyen
standing on the path. He stood absolutely still and his yellow eyes held no expression at all but glowed like lanterns in his monstrous face. He made a terrifying sight.
    ‘Yes,’ I whispered, quailing before him.
    ‘She has no right,’ he said, so quietly that I strained to hear him. ‘No right. I did not ask it. I
will
not ask it.’ His voice rose a little with each word, so that by the time he got to the end, it was a deep, menacing growl.
    I took a step back. ‘It is all right, sir, I am not –’
    ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he said harshly. ‘I know every fibre in you rebels at the thought, every sense shrinks. Is that not so? Answer me.’
    I did not dare to look at him. ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘Forgive me.’
    ‘There is nothing to forgive. Whose flesh would not crawl at the sight of me? I am a monster, hollowed out by darkness. But not yet fallen so low as to allow this – this sacrifice of an innocent. I would rather live and die the hideous monster that I am.’ His voice broke a little. For the first time I looked at the
abartyen
and saw not a grotesquely nightmarish alien thing to be feared or pitied, but a ruined human being valiantly trying to cling to the last shreds of honour.
    Impulsively, I said, ‘Oh, sir, you are no monster but a fellow mortal unjustly condemned to a cruel fate, and it is my dearest wish to help you. I cannot in truth do as Luel asks. I cannot be your lover, your wife but . . .’ Trembling, I took a step towards him, then another. He did not move a muscle and stood there staring at me with his tiger eyes. They didn’t seem quite as glowingly yellow any more but shadowed deep down with a darker, softer shade. I held out my hand. ‘But that does not mean I cannot be your friend.’
    He gave a low groan. ‘No, it is too late.’
    ‘I will not believe that,’ I said, trying to speak lightly. ‘Sir, is it the custom in your country for a gentleman to leave a lady’s hand dangling as if she were a cheeky beggar asking for alms?’
    I saw him blink – the first time I had seen such a homely human tic disturb those alien eyes. ‘Why, I . . .’ He broke off and then resumed a little more strongly, ‘You must excuse me, my lady, but my manners are . . . somewhat rusty.’ Taking my hand shyly and delicately in his, so that I felt neither coarse hair nor ragged claw, but only a very gentle touch, like the soft pad of a cat, he held it for just an instant before dropping it again.
    ‘We are agreed, then,’ I said, my heart thumping so hard against my ribs that I was sure he must hear it. ‘We are to be friends.’
    ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘But if ever .