Page 11 of Beast’s Surrender, Beauty’s Revenge

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PERCIVAL

Almas wanted to be held, clearly, but at the same time, he struggled with it. Like he couldn’t trust me, yes, but also himself.

I struggled to sleep that night, considering all I’d learned.

No more Tingard. No more enemies. And yet, the man in the woods had still had golden hair like a Tingardian, so they hadn’t been wiped out.

But... was it reasonable to expect such a thing? Even in my day, whenever that had been, there had been people like Tival and his mother, who had sought refuge from the others. Blond hair alone wasn’t a sign of evil. Was it?

Just the sight of it still made the rage well up inside me.

The rage wasn’t natural, though. It wasn’t mine. Or, well, it was mine, but it had been... altered. Everything was rushing back, and all I could feel wasn’t that rage bubbling in my veins, waiting to spill over, but a deep sense of shame.

“Don’t you sleep?” Almas asked, and I turned to him, startled.

“I think so?”

“But you’re not.” He hadn’t needed to point it out, but at the same time, it had been on the tip of my tongue to deny everything. I didn’t even know why.

No, it was because he was so skittish, so afraid already. He didn’t need to be subjected to my fears as well.

“I slept some. But I’m not... not myself anymore.”

I didn’t know why I thought that would end the inquiry. It wouldn’t have stopped me if I’d been asking the questions. It didn’t stop Almas either. He sat up, stretching, then looked back at me. “You seem to be coming back to yourself. I don’t think you were all there when I found you, and now you’re... well, maybe you’re still not, but you’re getting better. You built a fire last night without me even helping.”

I remembered. Building a fire was rote, really. I’d done it thousands of times in my life, and it had simply come back to me as I’d worked.

“And you... maybe you remember your name, now.”

I cocked my head at that. “Maybe?”

He ducked his head, looking away. “Maybe... I mean, I’m not saying it’s not your name. It’s just that Percival was the hero of the story. He wasn’t the—the one locked up in the tower in the Black Forest.”

I blinked, staring at him for a moment, before managing to croak out, “There’s a story?”

“Of course. The Tingardians murdered Percival’s family by sending a monster to kill them while he was away at war, and he stopped the monster. He saved his people and sacrificed himself to defeat Tingard once and for all.” He told the story like it was the sun coming up in the morning. Something everyone in all the world knew and believed.

If only it were true.

“They didn’t send a monster,” I whispered after a moment. “It was just men. They attacked my ancestral home in the night, murdered my brother, my parents, my brother’s wife, and their children. Left them for me to find.”

Almas cringed, lowering his head and wrapping his arms around himself. When he looked back up at me, his eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry.”

“I tracked them to their camp,” I continued, not willing to let myself be the hapless victim of the story. I hadn’t been. My family? Oh yes, they’d been victims.

And then... then I had made Tingard the victims as well.

“I killed them. Every soldier in the camp. Slaughtered them and left them to rot.”

“Good,” Almas answered, his voice hard. He reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing. “They murdered your family. They didn’t deserve to get away with that.”

He wasn’t wrong, either. Even now, I wasn’t sure I’d take that part back. What had come next, though...

“There was a witch in the woods back then. I found her, while I was still covered with the blood of my family and the men who had murdered them, and demanded she give me the ability to stop Tingard once and for all. To... To kill them all.”

Almas stared at me, eyes wide and mouth open, as though he were a child listening to a bedtime tale.

“She warned me it was a mistake. That I should take time to mourn. Leave the war entirely to others, who had better judgment. I insisted. Acted a complete ass. So she... she gave me precisely what I wanted. I didn’t defeat the monster. I was the monster. I slaughtered them. One after another, every person who had so much as a drop of Tingardian blood in them.”

“You got revenge,” Almas tried to correct, but he didn’t understand.

I wanted to laugh. The tables had been turned so completely. I was the witch now, trying to tell him that the revenge he wanted wouldn’t sate him the way he thought it would, and he was me, telling me to shut up and cast the damned spell already. Make me the tool of retribution that I needed to be.

It wasn’t even unreasonable of him. He’d been horribly wronged, and he deserved justice.

But it was a fine line between justice and revenge, and I hadn’t simply crossed it—I’d obliterated it entirely, along with any Tingardian I could find.

“Bedivere was my best friend,” I finally said, going on with the story without pressing my point. Almas didn’t need me pontificating about the evils of revenge. He’d asked about my story, and I was giving it. “He helped me, every step of the way. When I realized I couldn’t control the monster inside me, he took me into the woods alone, where I wouldn’t be distracted by my mission to kill the Tingardians, and we decided what to do. He had the manacles made, the witch enchanting them, and we went to the tower. No one traveled that deep into the Black Forest, so... so the people would be safe from me there. The witch warned us that I couldn’t be free, not even to die, until the spell was broken, but... what else could we do? I almost killed a child because his father was Tingardian.”

At that, a tear spilled over, down Almas’s perfect cheek. “I’m... I’m so sorry, Percival. That’s not how the people tell it, but—but maybe they’re right. You weren’t the monster. Not really, not like you think. You were only trying to defend your people, the only way you knew how.”

How many times over the years had I thought the same to myself? Well, until I’d simply given up and let the spell take over. Let the rage bubble up and take me, so that I didn’t have to be present in my own body, merely a mindless slavering beast locked away in a tower.

I gave him a smile, though I could feel how weak it was, wavering and pitiful. “It wasn’t what they’d have wanted. My family. They would have wanted me to go on. Be happy. I just couldn’t find a way to do it.”

Almas sniffled, then stopped and considered, hesitantly opening his arms to me as I’d done for him the night before. Like he wanted to hug me, but wasn’t sure of his welcome.

I didn’t hesitate a moment to take what he offered.