Looks like you made a deal you didn’t understand.

Winter in the Dark Castle is, really, very comparable to summer in the Dark Castle, or spring, or fall.  Seasons pass and years fall by like snipped threads, but the Castle is eternal.  Remote.  Stone walls keep the halls cool, thick drapes keep the light dim, and he whiles away the dozens and hundreds and thousands of deals with the slow hum of the spinning wheel and the whine of the wind through the mountains.

And now, with company.

Of a sort, at least; Belle is earnest and sincere and sweet in a way he hasn't seen in -- well, in as long as he can remember, and it's odd, to say the least.  Unexpected.

But the point -- the point of her is not conversation, no, it is to prove a simple truth: the man who makes the deals names his price.

And she is a very pretty prize.

Far more precious to her father, naturally, but that's why he'd chosen her, after all. 

 

What's one more child sacrificed to the wreckage of the ogre wars?



And yet, she is something he hasn't seen before, and he watches her, bemused, as she sets the chipped cup carefully back on the table.

"Do you understand all your duties, dearie?  There may be more, of course.  You'll find I have...whims, occasionally.  Flights of fancy, I suppose you could say."