Page 13 of Beast’s Surrender, Beauty’s Revenge

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PERCIVAL

The town Almas led me to was just a quiet, sleepy village with a keep overlooking it from a hill. It seemed like a hundred other towns I’d seen in my years, even if the way they’d built the front towers, somehow round instead of square, seemed quite clever and odd.

We arrived there in the morning, frost still on the grass and our breaths showing in the air before us as we walked through the quiet village. Halfway through, Almas stopped, his breath catching, a tiny noise in the back of his throat that could mean nothing good.

I turned to look at a small house just off the main street, and I almost sobbed along with him. It looked like perhaps once, it had been a lovely home. But more recently, someone—or more likely a group of someones—had tried their best to destroy it. They’d broken the windows and knocked the little wooden fence down, trampled the grass, and written words in something runny and red across the front of the building. It wasn’t the language I’d learned as a child, so I couldn’t read the words, but I didn’t need to, did I?

I knew what these kinds of monsters did. They found a soft spot and they attacked it. They pushed and pushed until something inside you broke, and you could never be the same person again.

A gaggle of children ran through, laughing and shoving at each other, but froze when they saw Almas. They were brunets, most of them, with a few gold-haired exceptions that I tried not to look at too hard.

One of them pointed at him. “It’s the lord’s whore!”

Almas fell against me, the breath knocked out of him.

That was precisely what he’d been avoiding. He had no interest in sleeping with this lord of theirs, and that was what had started the problem.

But that was the point, wasn’t it?

How strange, that the villagers wanted to degrade him into doing that very thing, because it would be easier for them. And when he refused to capitulate, he, not the lord, was the one they blamed for the man in power acting like a child denied candy.

Doors opened and closed, and people started to wander out into the street. An older man pursed his lips at Almas and shook his head. “Why did you come back, boy? You’ll only make things worse for all of us.”

“All of you?” Almas demanded, his sadness making way for the deeper, hardier well of anger inside him. “You? What about my father? What do you think would be better for him?”

“It would have been better for him if you’d just done your duty, and none of this ever would have happened,” a golden-haired woman sneered.

I dropped my hands from Almas’s arms as they tensed, not wanting to hurt him, but he turned to look at me, panicked, as though he were afraid I might leave him.

Instead, I breathed, long and slow, trying to quell the blood bubbling up inside me, ready to explode and destroy and rend and...

He reached up to press a cool hand to my cheek. “Oh Percival. I’m... I’m so sorry. Maybe we?—”

“Well, well, well,” came a smooth, snide voice from the other direction. From the central street through the village, in the direction of the keep itself. “Look who’s come crawling back. Ready to do what you need to, to free your criminal father?”

“My father has never broken a law in his life,” Almas shot back, almost shouting.

I could feel his anger inside me. My father, too, had been a good man, innocent of any wrongdoing. He’d been more farmer than soldier, and had loved his grandchildren more than anything in the world.

The Tingardians had killed him all the same, because he was in their way. Because it was a way to hurt me.

Slowly, I turned to see the man speaking.

This, I was certain, was Lord Uther.

I didn’t know how I knew, or how he’d noticed us and arrived so quickly, but I had no doubt. He was wearing a crimson velvet doublet with black hose and boots, and a flimsy sword belted at his waist. It looked like a child’s toy rather than a real sword, but with shiny precious gems set into the hilt. It was the sort of thing only a madman would swing at another person. It belonged on a wall for show, not a field of battle.

His hair, halfway to his shoulders, was flowing golden waves.

Behind him, there were three guards. They had real weapons and real armor, and they were looking at me rather than Almas.

Uther glanced in my direction and rolled his eyes. “Thought fucking a goon was going to get you protection, did you?” He waved a hand at me. “Leave. Or my men will put you in a cell next to his father.”

I drew myself up and pulled Almas to my side. I wanted to stand in front of him, shield him from this monster, but that wasn’t right. Almas was a man grown, and wronged, and he deserved to stand against the monster who had wronged him. “What charge do you intend to bring against me? You don’t even know my name. I’ve done nothing against the law.”

“You’re standing in my way,” he sneered back. “That’s my bit of fluff, and you’re fucking it anyway.”

Fluff. Like Almas wasn’t even human, but an object to be owned.

“Perhaps the laws have changed since my day, but I don’t recall standing in the way being a crime. A lord is as capable as anyone of walking around a person.”

He took two steps forward, and his guards took three, not willing to let him get too close to me, even though I was unarmed.

And even though I was unarmed, he drew his toy sword. “I’m telling you to get out of my way, fool. Leave now, or face the consequences.”

“Name my crime, and Almas and I will go,” I agreed.

That, apparently, was too much for him. He shouted and lunged at me.

I let him.

His aim was poor. The sword slid through my gut, and while it might have killed me, it didn’t stop me in my tracks. It might not have hit anything vital. Even before the spell, I might have lived through it.

Now? Now, I grabbed his sword hand and ripped it from the hilt, then shoved him away from me. He fell back onto his ass, releasing the sword and leaving it buried in my gut.

Almas squeaked. “Oh no. No no no no no no, Percival, he—you—we have to get help. You?—”

I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him, and met his gaze steadily as I pulled the sword out of myself. There was a gout of blood, but then, as expected—as they always had after the spell—the wound closed almost instantly.

I turned the sword in my hand, testing its weight. It wasn’t the worst weapon I’d ever used in my fight against Tingard. Looking down at Uther, I nodded. “I accept your challenge.”

“What? Challenge? I never?—”

His guards, while terrified of what they’d seen, leapt to his defense. One slashed at me with all the dexterity of a child who had no sword training, and I whipped the blade up in answer, striking his head cleanly from his shoulders before turning to the next man.

He was more circumspect, more skilled, determined that he could take me down. But no one could defeat the Beast I had made myself into. Not even when I held the most pitiful sword in the fight, not even when I was barely dressed, let alone armored.

I was the horrible Beast of legend for a reason.

I beat back his blows with inhuman dexterity, disarming him in four blows, and then stabbing my ill-gotten sword straight through his chain shirt as though it were butter. He fell from the tip of it, light already fading from his eyes.

The third guard paused. He clearly understood that he would not defeat me, and was trying to decide whether Uther’s life was worth his own. I picked up my foot, planted it in his chest, and shoved him down and away.

Stepping past him, I stood once again in front of Uther, who hadn’t even bothered standing up from where I’d knocked him down.

Without waiting for him to flap his vile tongue any further, I stabbed the sword forward. I deliberately missed his heart, aiming for his belly, and stabbed just deep enough to do the damage necessary.

Necessary to ensure his eventual death, but leave him in pain, suffering, whining for escape. No one could save him now, short of a very talented witch, and he could feel a measure of the suffering Almas had felt at his own filthy hands.

“Tingardian,” I growled, baring my teeth at him.

The guard I’d knocked down was trying to stand, and in the process, lost his helmet, exposing a head of sun-gilt hair. My breath came short, and I stared at him. Golden hair. Tingardian. Murderers.

I had to keep going, didn’t I? Had to destroy them all, stop them from spreading across the land like the plague they were.

I spun to look around, at the villagers gathering. So many of them, Tingardian.

I lifted the sword again, ready to kill them all.