A Beast's Tale

Chapter 57

Ivetta's carriage was pulling into the courtyard when I stepped outside. I called the destination to the coachman as I strode across the cobblestones, and I climbed into the carriage before it had reached a full stop. Ivetta, who was bending over to slip on her shoes, jerked her head up to look at me, startled. "Prince Chevalier?"

"The festival."

She bit her lip and straightened in her seat. "Oh."

I hadn't expected that reaction. "You don't want to go?"

She looked down at her lap, where her fingers were fidgeting with her skirt. "Well, remembering the dead and looking toward the future is all fine, but the wishes... It sounds too much like people are praying to the dead, as if they're gods, and I don't believe in that. I know the festival is important to many people," she hastened to add, peeking up at me, "and I know people at church who go to it every year, but I believe it's wrong to pray to anyone or anything other than God."

Ah. She was one who gave religion more than lip service. "You're under no compulsion to take part. The ceremony is brief, and I have no intention of lingering afterward."

She nodded and looked out the window. I should have done the same, but I found myself tracing the interplay of light and shadows across her fair skin and the black fabric of her dress. She had such delicate features. The curve of her cheekbone and the tilt of her nose, the fringe of her eyelashes glistening in the sunlight and the smooth length of her ponytail cascading over her shoulder—I couldn't blame the painter for selecting her as his muse. She was a living, breathing piece of art. He'd captured her essence well.

It was a shame he had to die. What a wasted investment. But his obsession had been increasing at an alarming rate, and it was only a matter of time before he progressed from stalking her to causing her physical harm. Gilbert had saved me the trouble of disposing of him myself. Of course, I still had Gilbert to contend with, and he was a far more dangerous predator.

I didn't want to think about him right now.

"Have you ever been to the festival?"

She turned to face me and shook her head. "No, Mother never approved of it, and she said she didn't need a ceremony to remember my father, anyway. She had me and his journal for that."

"A journal?"

She nodded. "She reads it often. It's in another language, though, and she won't translate it for me, so I don't know what it says."

Interesting. The answer as to her origin was likely in that journal. "I can translate it for you."

Her eyes widened. "You can?"

"You've seen my library," I reminded her, smirking.

"Well, yes, but I don't even know what language it is."

"Language is a construct of phonetic rules and grammatical patterns. I'm fluent in every language I've encountered, and even if this one is new to me, the likelihood of my knowing at least one other language in the same linguistic family is high. If not, it will still take me less than a day to translate."

She stared at me in silence for a moment. "Is there anything you can't do, Prince Chevalier?"

"Yes. I remember everything I've experienced and learn everything I read, but I am still bound by physical constraints."

She tilted her head to the side, a slight furrow forming between her brows. "Do you ever get tired?"

That was an odd question. "You're not speaking of physical exhaustion."

She shook her head. "No, I was just thinking, you can't stop it, can you? You can't stop thinking, observing, putting all the pieces together. Doesn't that get exhausting?"