Chapter 53
Fifty-Three
- THE BEAST -
I snap my eyes open to find everything doused in shades of red. Two guards dragging me back to the manacles, pulsing with magic that threatens to cage me.
Not this time.
I seize both of their wrists, gripping and squeezing until their bones snap beneath my hands. They both cry out and lose their grips on me.
I flip onto my hands and knees. Meeting the old woman’s gaze from across the room, her eyes round in fear.
The one who’s been drugging me.
Trapping me.
Thinking she can control me.
A weight falls onto my back, forcing me to the floor. A shout in my ear, “Cyrus, the only one who can stop him is you!”
“Cyrus isn’t here anymore,” I laugh, twisting and swatting Devin off me like a fly.
His body slams into the wall, collapsing limply.
Cyrus’ pained roar rises from the depths, but I snuff it out. I lunge at the closest guard, seizing his throat in my jaws and ripping him to the ground in a shower of blood. The second guard I slay as easily, slamming his bloody body into the wall.
Lady Bethany edges her way across the room. Away from the manacles she knows are too late to use. Toward the balcony for an escape.
I stalk forward on my hands and knees, my body contorting.
Scales bloom across my skin. Horns burst from my skull with a painful pressure, and my black claws slip down into the grout until I curl them and crack the tile.
My spine stretches out into a tail, and I whip it back and forth.
Gone are Cyrus’ clothes. Gone are his teeth and tongue and mouth.
Elongating into something far more useful, more deadly.
Ahh. For once, I feel at home. Free from the cage Cyrus had me imprisoned in. I’ll make him regret having kept me there for so long.
I step through blood. Unfazed as it wets my taloned hands and feet.
Every step toward the old woman sways my massive shoulders. I back her up against the wall where she cowers, so close to the balcony doors. Inhaling deeply, I hook onto her scent. Drool drips from my mouth, hungry to pierce the flesh in front of me.
“Please…” she whimpers, not wanting to look me in the eye. Her hands held up, as if they’ll be enough to stop me. “I’m only here to help you.”
I growl, licking my sharpened teeth like I can savor her fear. “You act as if I didn’t know it was you suppressing me. Keeping Cyrus from his true potential.” I creep closer to her until my maw is a few inches from her face. “Where is the blue-gowned girl?”
She looks up slowly, but no farther than my throat. “P-please don’t do this.”
“Do not make me ask again, mortal,” I growl deeper, snapping my jaws.
She flinches. Panting, her lips part, but nothing comes out. Then she shuts her mouth, finally looking up at me.
I snap forward, snatching her throat in my jaws. Not hard enough to end her, but enough to hurt her. She flails, pathetically trying to get me to release her.
“You’ll show me, then,” I rumble around her throat. I release her and retreat, blood steadily streaming from the bite marks I’ve left.
She tries to apply pressure to the wounds, and yelps when I bite her foot. Her blood taints my tongue, and I drag her out of the bedroom down the stairs.
“Come to me, and I won’t hurt the others.” I pulse down that thread of magic tying me to her. The one that Lady Bethany is responsible for creating when she fed Cyrus her blood after wiping their memories.
She hasn’t responded. At least, not yet. Anticipation quivers within me at finding her.
Lady Bethany, to her honor, keeps quiet as I drag her, her blood gushing out of her ankle and pooling in my mouth with each stair we descend, bumping my teeth deeper into her. Every now and again she groans.
Once we enter the throne room, guards flock to us. I let her go long enough to slaughter them, then turn back for her.
She’s gone.
A growl thunders in my chest. I prowl out into the hall, using my magic to snuff out the sconces within my view.
When my second eyelid slides horizontally over my eyes, then back, the darkness is no obstacle for me.
Lowering my maw to the floor, I pull in a few sniffs.
Then turn right down the hall. Creeping slowly, quietly.
Melding into the shadows as I was born to.
As I turn the corner, I find blood smeared down the hall runner. Flicking my tongue out into it, I smile with a growl. One by one, I use my magic to blow out the sconces down the hallway. Then rise on my hind legs to stretch higher for a better look. Waiting still for her to move.
“I know you’re here,” I purr. “I can smell your fear.”
I drop down to my fours and stalk forward. Slowly, toward her figure tucked behind a curtain. Foolish, really. I seize her from behind the curtains with her shriek, dragging her out with predatory delight as her terror washes over me.
That thread—that magical call I’ve been drawn to—tugs insistently.
A sinister smile lifts my lips, anticipation rumbling within my bones. I suppose I don’t need Lady Bethany after all. I crunch down into her frame, ending her immediately, before tossing it away.
Prowling about the hallways toward that thread, I come across several groups of guards and slaughter them immediately. Leaving corpses and pools of blood in my wake. The power, the draw of the one I crave, luring me forward.
As I turn down the last corner, a scent wafts over me. Filling every crevice, every shadow. I grumble as I close my eyes, my pupils dilating until they’ve completely taken over my eyes. When I reopen them, I slip to her door and check the handle.
Locked.
I rear back and slam my head into it. Once, then twice. The door snaps as it swings open, splinters of wood showering the floor.
The room is red…everything but her.
I rise onto my hindlegs to get a better view of her. The blue dress draped over her frame. She’s standing before her window. Her eyes connect with mine—and I’m struck.
Blue.
My pulse jumps, her magical scent sending me into a spiral. Enveloping me, twisting within my very bones, my soul, and calling me deeper.
Mine.
She answered the magic. Called upon the thread to lead me here.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispers, her blue eyes skewering me.
I drop down onto all fours, slowly crawling toward her. “I don’t want you to be.”
“Then why have you been stalking me?” She shifts closer to the window. “Why have you been flooding my dreams, my visions, with all the awful things you’ve done and plan to do?”
My gaze softens on her. “Sometimes the truth is awful. I am what I am, in the light, and in the darkness. I wanted you to see it.”
“Kill me then. Be done with it,” she snaps.
I stop a few strides away from her, my tail fluttering behind me. “Oh, I’m not here to kill you, Lyra Goldbrook.”
I flood the thread between us with magic—pulsing, waving, rippling. Until she gasps, body arching back against the wall. Calling her magic with mine.
A perfect match.
At first she fights it. Not wanting to accept it, wanting to block me out. Until her eyes flutter, rolling back into her head at how good it feels. The power, intoxicating. Humans and beasts alike are called to it, swept away by it. Her lips part, head lolling back as she begins to drink it in.
Smiling, I inch closer to her, our magic pulling us together. Each step solidifies the tie.
“Yes, Lyra,” I purr, slipping closer to her. “You cannot deny it any more than I can.”
Her head rolls to face me, her eyes glazed in white. “It was you in the dining room that night, wasn’t it? You who pinned me up against the column?”
“Yesss,” I hiss. “And now I’m here to claim what was always meant to be mine.”
Bonus spicy “the beast & Lyra” scene: