Monstrous Beauty Read Online Free

stairs and climbs, half-wondering if there is a guardian lurking here who will devour him, bones and boots and all, half-wondering if the tower room will be empty when he arrives.
    Nothing meets him on the stairs.
    As he opens the heavy door at the top of the stairs, he is of two minds. One envisions triumph and fame, the tale of how a youngest son, lacking any hope of inheritance at home, won a beautiful princess and restored her castle—their castle—to its former glory. The other fears mockery, the jeers of those around him when they learn he spent years on a foolish, pointless quest.
    All thought vanishes when he opens the door.
    The dusty, half-rotted curtains around the bed stir slightly as the air is disturbed. The prince scarcely sees them, eyes fixed instead on the figure lying atop the mouldering coverlet, hands neatly clasped across her breast. Amidst the decay, her hair shines like incorruptible gold. Her long lashes lie against her cheeks, hinting at the beauty they hide, and her perfect rosebud lips await his gentle kiss.
    There is a sleeper, and there is a curse—and the villagers know well the nature of both.
    The prince drops his torch to the floor, where it dies swiftly, unnaturally. In the sudden gloom, he walks toward her, boots automatically lifting over the debris that blocks his way. He spares no thought for the debris; all his attention is fixed on her. She is a beauty beyond compare, and his skin aches, as though too small to contain his adoration. Trembling in anticipation of the sight of her eyes, he bends over and gives her the kiss of life.
    An instant later, he stumbles backward, no longer recognizable as the idealistic young prince who set out on a noble quest, nor even as the older, more travel-weary prince who climbed the tower stairs. He is scarcely recognizable as human. His skin has shrunk tight against his bones and his muscles have withered away; he collapses to the ground, a skeletal, desiccated thing, dying among the scattered bones and rusted blades of all the other brave young men the villagers could not persuade or prevent from coming to this tower.
    The sleeper sighs once, but does not wake.
    The curse still holds, for which the villagers give thanks every morning. Her prison of sleep still contains her. But one day it will fail; one day, she will absorb enough life from others to open her terrible eyes, to rise from her bed and walk again. On that day, the skies will darken, and she will come forth from the castle once more, sweeping the bones of her suitors before her, bestowing her ravenous kiss on all who cannot flee her path.
    But that day is not today. For now, she sleeps, waiting for her next kiss.
    Notes on “Kiss of Life”

Waiting for Beauty
    He wakes before dawn to prepare her breakfast. The spoons and pot-handles are clumsy in his curving claws, but the servants all left long ago, and so he has learned to make do. The breakfast is not what he would wish it to be; getting supplies is difficult these days. He found two eggs in a lark’s nest yesterday, though, that he cracks with painstaking care, scrambling them because anything else requires more dexterity than he possesses. There is meat, as always, and bread he stole for her.
    The claws of his feet click against the stone as he hurries from the kitchens, tray balanced in his enormous hands. The sounds echo off the walls where the tapestries have long since fallen away. It took an army of servants to maintain this place, once; he cannot manage it on his own. Even the small areas he keeps are almost too much for him. The kitchens; one of the parlors; her bedroom, of course. The garden. Everywhere else has been given over to dust and neglect, surrendered to the dominion of spiders and mice. But he makes these few places as pleasant for her as he can.
    He tiptoes into her bedroom, comical in his caution. She does not stir at the sound. Laying the breakfast tray on the bedside table, he averts his