Chapter 74
Belle
“Wait outside,” the king growled at the closed door.
“Not today,” Locke said, his voice muffled. “You just incinerated half an army. We need to talk.”
Valen glanced over apologetically. “I’m sorry, but apparently, this cannot wait.”
“I understand.” I hugged my arms around my body. Whatever strange, magical moment we’d just shared was over, perhaps forever. The moment we left this room, everything would be different.
He collected my clothes from the floor, and when he handed them to me, I didn’t know if it was regret or guilt on his face. Perhaps both.
I scrambled up and pulled my bottoms on. One pant leg was torn, and they were still damp with blood. I was going to need a piping hot bath for so many reasons.
Valen waited until I smoothed out my shirt, then he tried the door. It rattled, and he looked back at me. “Care to let him in?”
I’d almost forgotten that I’d sealed it.
“Do I have to?” I muttered.
This had been the most honest moment we’d ever shared, and I didn’t want it to end.
“Yes,” Valen said sternly, but a grin played at the corners of his lips.
I released the thread of magic that connected me to the door.
Locke swung it open, his eyes taking in the scene. Bloodstains. Damp, disheveled sheets. The two of us in disarray.
“So, this is where you’ve been? What should I call it—attending to duties of state?” His tone was tight and his body restrained, but fury tightened the edges of his face, and the accusation and insult in his eyes were enough to heat my skin. Locke had never looked at me like that before.
Was he upset by what he’d walked in on, or did he think I’d led Valen astray?
The king positioned himself between us, shielding me from the high magister’s accusing stare.
“You overstep, magister. Belle was gravely injured, so I healed her.”
Valen’s matter-of-fact explanation for the most intimate moment I’d ever shared with a man sliced through me. Was that all it had been to him—a blood transaction to ease his conscience?
“More importantly, where the hell have you been this whole time?” Valen demanded, his tone laced with fire. “You disappeared as soon as we returned from Sarkis’s camp. I needed you.”
Locke’s expression remained placid, but the muscles of his neck were tighter than a bowstring. “I was hunting down the rest of Sarkis’s men and trying to find the traitors that unlocked the castle doors. I didn’t expect you to murder the general and then attack his army by yourself.”
“He came for Belle, and his army was preparing to strike. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Really? I saw what you did to the general. You could have left him pinned there and ransomed his treacherous ass back to his army in exchange for a peaceful withdrawal. Instead, you let your dragon take control and staked him through the heart. You had a choice.”
“No.” Valen looked at me, his eyes blazing with an emotion I couldn’t place. “I didn’t.”
“Immortals and their possessiveness.” His gaze flicked to me. “I hope you’re happy.”
Surprise strangled the retort building in my throat.
Valen turned on Locke, the angles of his face threaded with fury.
“This isn’t her fault, and you know it. Everything about that bastard seemed designed to push me to the edge.
His arrival. His arrogance. His disregard for my people.
Every word he ever spoke about”—Valen paused, glancing at me, then looking away.
He shook his head—“I swear, the demon delivered him here to break my control.”
Locke shook his head. “Feeling a little paranoid?”
“Or maybe this is all part of his game. Sarkis was the solution to overthrowing the mages, but he arrives two years too late, at the exact moment I no longer need him. Belle realized that his army could be the solution to finding the demon’s lair, but instead, I was forced to destroy it the next day.
It’s an unending pattern—he dangles hope before me, then rips it away again, pushing me closer to breaking every time. ”
The king dragged a hand across his face, weariness evident. “It’s like he’s feeding off my misery.”
I inhaled sharply. His words were so close to what I’d written in my notes. “What if that’s true?”
“What do you mean?” Valen asked.
“I found a lot of useless information on demons in the books you set aside, but one described them as reveling in the torment of mortals and feeding off misery and chaos. That’s exactly what you’ve described.”
Locke narrowed his eyes. “You seem unfamiliar with the concept of a metaphor.”
“What if it’s not a metaphor? What if…” I looked from one to the other, then to the dried trails of blood staining Valen’s wrist. “What if this demon literally feeds on misery like an immortal feeds on blood? What if that’s why it’s tormenting you?
Could that be the link between the statues and beasts and the curse over the woods? ”
Could it be the reason the castle itself seemed to groan under a weight of gloom and misery?
A dark shadow passed across the king’s face, and his hands clenched. “If you’re right, then it’s not just my soul he wants. He’s trying to drag my suffering out as long as he can.” He turned to the high magister. “Is it possible, Locke? Is this why the demon let me live?”
Locke’s expression hardened. “Whatever the demon’s plan is, it’s succeeding. I saw you two arrive. How many red scales do you have left? One? Two? You’re this close to losing yourself forever.”
Ice seeped under my skin. I’d seen the change, too. “What do red scales have to do with anything?”
The magister gave me a pitying look that made my stomach drop. “He didn’t tell you?”
I turned to Valen, and a flash of guilt crossed his face. “What’s he talking about?”
The king didn’t respond.
“Someone tell me,” I gritted out.
Locke glowered at me. “Every time the king shifts into his beast form, more scales turn from red to black. Once they’re all gone, the transformation will be complete, and he’ll belong to the demon forever—and today, it seems that defending your honor pushed him to the edge.”
I found Valen’s eyes. Was I on the precipice of losing him?
“You should’ve told me,” I said, unable to hide the hurt from my voice.
He growled. “What would it have changed?”
Everything.
“I would’ve stopped you,” I said, voice shaking.
“No, Belle, you wouldn’t have.”
We locked eyes, my chest aching. He couldn’t be out of time. He couldn’t.
“What’s done is done, Your Highness,” Locke said, breaking the silence warring between us. “But you can’t risk shifting again. It may be your last.”
My lips parted as the terrible implications set in—not just for Valen’s fate, but for any chance we had of breaking the curse.
We’d destroyed Sarkis’s army, but I’d hoped Valen could use the beasts to hunt down the demon’s lair instead. Yet if he couldn’t shift into his dragon form, then he couldn’t command the beasts. He couldn’t even keep them away if we ventured into the forest to look for it ourselves.
He was no longer the king of the beasts. He was going to be one of them forever.
Something cracked open in my chest. Monster or not, he deserved better. He deserved a chance. I reached out and took his hand. “You told me that when your hunger grows too strong, you’re forced to shift. How long can you resist?”
The king hesitated, shadows falling across his face. “Maybe two weeks. No more.”
I’d just found him, or at least a glimmer of the man beneath the mask. And now he’d be torn away from me? “That’s all?”
Valen pulled away, as if my touch suddenly burned. “You don’t know what it’s like. The hunger consumes every waking hour of my life, and the beast is closer to the surface than it’s ever been. Do you have any idea how much control it took to not sink my teeth into you and drain you dry just now?”
I stepped back. The change over him was a thunderclap, sudden and violent. The man was gone, replaced by the beast I’d seen in the mirror.
His eyes flared with gold, and then his face fell, anger consumed by remorse as suddenly as it had arisen.
“Belle,” he said, reaching for me.
I flinched. I didn’t mean to, but he’d talked about draining me dry. That wasn’t something you could just shake off.
His shoulders fell under the weight of it. “I’m sorry, princess.” He shook his head as if to clear a fog. “It’s worse than before. It shouldn’t feel like this, not yet. Not for weeks.”
“That’s because your time is running out,” Locke said, his expression grave.
“I know that,” Valen snapped. He shoved past the magister and retreated to the window of his study, gazing silently at the smoldering remains of the mercenary’s camp in the distance.
Only the edge of his face was visible, but I’d seen him wear the expression many times.
Isolation. The burden of knowing he carried everything alone.
Don’t let him.
Moving cautiously toward him, I placed my hand gently on his arm, afraid he’d pull away again like a wounded animal. “You’re not alone in this, Valen. We’ll find a way together, I promise.”
“Don’t promise what you can’t guarantee.”
“I—”
“Don’t harbor any illusions, princess,” he growled. “Nothing I’ve done in the last fifty years has brought me closer to breaking this curse. You should get as far away from me as you can. My time is up.”
This wasn’t the man I’d come to know. He was no less strong, but stretched like a bow drawn past its limit. He looked defeated, almost resigned to his fate.
Buried frustrations sparked like an ember brought to flame. “So what then? You’ll just become a dragon forever? You’ll let the demon claim you?”
His lips curled in reproach. “I will not be ruled. I’ll end things myself before that happens.”
The violent truth rammed through my chest like a crossbow bolt. My throat constricted, a tight lump forming. “You can’t talk like that.”
He wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t.