The Princess and the Beast Beneath Her Castle

By Derek Tampa

Princess Anastasia Blackwood has grown up believing she is the daughter of a benevolent king and the heir to the most prosperous kingdom in the world. Blackwood has known seventy years of impossible health and abundance: crops never fail, disease is nearly unknown, and the nobility seem untouched by age. Yet beneath the glittering palace, Anastasia feels something no one else seems willing to acknowledge-a terrible vibration pulsing through the stone.The palace calls it the foundation settling. Her father calls it imagination. The servants call it luck.But Anastasia knows better.Driven by the sound of a subterranean sob, she enters the forbidden North Wing and descends beneath the castle. There, deep inside an ancient oubliette, she discovers the secret supporting Blackwood's miraculous prosperity: a gigantic creature bound in thousands of enchanted silver chains. Its body is covered in scales and fur, its wounds leak black bile, and its agonized heartbeat is the very tremor Anastasia has felt beneath her feet all her life.Then the creature looks at her.Its golden eyes contain the memory of a man named Adrian-a prince whom Anastasia once loved in another life. The truth is more horrifying than any monster story: Adrian was not born a beast. He was sacrificed by Anastasia herself, when she was once known as the Weaver, an ancient sorceress who believed she could protect him and her kingdom by binding him forever. Her act of "love" became a prison, and her descendants built an entire civilization upon his suffering.Now King Marcus treats Adrian as a living machine, extracting the magical substance that keeps Blackwood prosperous while ignoring his endless torment. Anastasia realizes that her father's cruelty is only an inheritance of her own original sin. To save Adrian, she must destroy the very magic that has protected her people for generations.Breaking the curse means allowing disease, hunger, winter, and ordinary human suffering to return. It also means surrendering the kingdom's "divine luck" and accepting responsibility for the consequences.Anastasia chooses mercy over possession. The chains break, Adrian is freed, and the miraculous protection of Blackwood disappears. The kingdom must finally live honestly, without feeding its prosperity with another person's pain.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HGF1NSZ4
• ISBN13: 9798240835544
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Derek Matthews Tampa
• Length: 108 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"