Chapter 27

Agnes entered Anna’s room carrying a tray of tea.

“Do you mind if I join you?” she asked, setting out two settings.

“Of course,” Anna replied, setting her book aside.

After pouring, the older woman settled into a seat across from the younger woman.

“I want to speak with you about something,” she began, pausing to take a sip of the steaming liquid, “but I’m not sure how to begin.”

“Say what you need to,” Anna replied. “After all this time, I’d thought you realized how much I value your council.”

“The night Christian lost control...,” Agnes said, her voice soft. “In all this time, he has never met anyone who has made him feel like you do. He’s held himself in check for so long, he couldn’t control it anymore.”

“Control what?” Anna asked.

“The beast inside,” Agnes sighed, looking at Anna with tear rimmed eyes.

“He is still the same man you grew to care for,” Agnes continued, hoping Anna would take this talk to heart.

Anna wrapped her arms around herself as if she felt a chill.

“You asked me what had caused him to change, and I did not tell you. I thought Christian should explain it, but I think you deserve to know,” Agnes continued, retrieving a heavy shawl to wrap around the shivering girls shoulders before taking her seat. “Christian was once a handsome young man, with titles and riches that had been passed down to him by generations before. He never lacked for anything, whatever he wanted was given to him. As he grew older, he became a cruel and demanding man.

“One spring, a gypsy caravan came through the county, and in their number was a beautiful young woman named Alamina.

"Christian saw her and from that moment on he could think of nothing else. He rode to the campsite daily and tried to woo her with gifts and words. She, of course, accepted these, but would not give in to him.

“Finally, his lust and greed got the better of him. He kidnapped her, brought her back here and attempted to force himself upon her. She managed to escape him and ran to the turrets. In her haste, she slipped and fell to her death.

"In revenge, the gypsy’s placed a curse on Christian and those of us in his household, for we had allowed him to grow up this way, never checking him or attempting to curb his appetites. For two hundred and forty nine years we have lived with this curse, and slowly one by one we have begun to fade away into nothingness.

“In the beginning there were over a hundred of us, now we number only twenty. Soon, we will all cease to be and Christian will be alone,” Agnes continued.

Anna sat silently, listening to this tale.

“To make it impossible for him to find anyone who could care for him, the curse altered his body to show the ugliness that was inside on the outside. What he didn’t know, what none of us knew until now, was that it also manifests his love as animal lust, all instinct and drive, no humanity. The way he behaved, clawing and biting, it is the worst part of the curse. It was the gypsies last gift to him.

“If he did find someone he truly loved, he would be unable to show it without hurting them, thus making it that much more difficult for him to find someone to love him in return. I mean, who could love someone who hurt you every time they tried to show you the love he feels?”

With a sigh, Agnes concluded, “You see my child. He is so much in love with you, truly in love, that he could not control himself. His feelings of the most desperate love were twisted by this horrible curse into what happened.”

She ended her tale with a sob, feeling a weight lift from her shoulders. Now Anna knew everything, the good and the bad.

“I did not tell you this story to excuse Christian’s behavior, but to help you understand him better,” Agnes soothed. “Until you arrived, he’d given up on trying to find love.”