Read Bryony and Roses for Free Online Page B

fingers out, rejecting the chest, trying not to sound completely mad. “So, thank you, I’m sure you meant well, but no.”  
    “Hmmm,” said the Beast, in a meditative rumble. “I see.”
    “Besides,” said Bryony, daring to look up, “you cannot spend royals in Lostfarthing. They would have to travel halfway to the capital to find anyone rich enough to make change.”
    The Beast shut the lid. “I have never before met anyone with an aversion to wealth. Someday you will have to explain it to me.”
    Bryony snorted and let her arms fall to her sides. “I suppose we will have plenty of time, unless you plan to sacrifice me to the moon gods on the next equinox, or something equally nefarious.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” said the Beast. “The moon gods require virgin sacrifices on the solstice , not the equinox.”
    “They’re twice out of luck there, then,” said Bryony.  
    The Beast’s face writhed into a mass of teeth and tusks, and Bryony had a bad moment when she thought that her virginity might actually be what he was after, for some unknown magical reason— But damnit, he should have asked, not just assumed, and I’m not ashamed, it’s not like I ever planned to get married anyway, and even if by some chance I did it wouldn’t be to someone who cared about a thing like that —and then she realized that he wasn’t angry.
    The Beast was smiling.
    “I think we shall get along very well, Miss…what shall I call you?”
    “Bryony,” said Bryony. “And what shall I call you?”
    “Beast,” said the Beast. He stretched out a hand, not to touch her, but holding it palm up in a way that was oddly reassuring, despite the claws. “And have I not already said that no harm will come to you? There will be no sacrifices, virgin or otherwise. On this you have my word.”
    “Mmm,” said Bryony noncommittally. She wiggled her bare toes in the pile carpet. What is the word of a Beast worth? Well, he is a sorcerer, and they are said to keep their word…though what they actually promise you may be different than what you think they are promising…
    “As for your sisters, Miss Bryony, I am determined that you not fear that they will starve. Will this do, in lieu of gold?”  
    He opened the chest again. The coins still glittered, but more softly now, on copper pennies and a few silver talers. There was no gold inside the chest.
    Bryony exhaled slowly. It was wealth enough to keep her sisters for several years, to buy the second goat that Holly had been wishing for, to build the loom that Iris had been wanting, but had not even suggested that they could afford. Somehow you could not quite imagine buying a goat with a gold royal. The gold and the goat did not belong together in the same image.  
    It was more than she would have earned, carrying her vegetables to market for many years.  
    Perhaps her sisters would be able to find their own ways to survive. Holly would likely marry—she was pretty and blond and vigorous and did not mind hard work—and Iris needed to marry someone, if only so that there would be someone to kill spiders and save her from dangerous earthworms. The coins would serve as a generous dowry, if nothing else.  
    She took a silver taler from the chest and turned it over. The stamped wheat sheaves gleamed at her.
    “I think it will do very well,” she said to the Beast. “Thank you.”
    “It is the least that I can do,” said the Beast.  

CHAPTER SEVEN

    “You’re alive!” cried Holly, hardly waiting for Bryony to dismount from Fumblefoot, and not bothering to open the gate before she scrambled over it. “You’re alive, Iris thought you were dead, nobody’s seen anything like that blizzard, not even Old Bran, but I knew you had to be alive, I said you probably stayed with Elspeth—”
    “Yes, yes, I’m alive,” said Bryony, getting down from Fumblefoot. The pony had been a bit edgy during their ride home, although that may have been from an overabundance of magic