Page 15 of Beast’s Surrender, Beauty’s Revenge

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

PERCIVAL

The sword clattered from my hand into the cobblestones with a loud noise, but no one around us moved.

The guard stood over the dying Uther, his sword out, but wavering.

And in front of me, there was Almas.

Almas, who had come through the Black Forest, through woods older than every human kingdom, stumbling through streams and rocks and woods, hungry and hurt and worried about his father, to find me. Or no, to find the legendary Beast who could help him get his revenge.

Well-deserved revenge, against a man who had taken everything from him, and a people who had watched it happen, cold and careless about the need of their fellow human being.

But he was done.

His vengeance hadn’t turned out to be all of them after all.

It wasn’t simply that he had no stomach for it, I realized as his lips pressed against mine, warm and hopeful and oh so distracting from the anger constantly boiling in my body.

And in that moment, something snapped inside me. The breath left me in a whoosh, and I realized... I didn’t have to kill all of Tingard. Time had defeated Tingard for me. Almas’s tormentor was defeated, lying prone in the street. He might not know it yet, but he was dead.

Three lives. That was enough.

The lord was a monster, and the men who protected him were in clear support of his vile behavior, so I felt no sadness at what I’d done, but what I’d done was enough. That was it.

I reached up to cup Almas’s cheek in my hand, and he leaned into the touch like a flower to the sun. He’d never wanted to hold himself apart from everyone. He’d only wanted the right to choose who touched him. The right every person should have, always.

Leaning in, I pressed my lips back to his. Not forcefully, but so soft, as gentle as a great oaf like me could manage. “Yes,” I agreed. “This is done. None of them matter any longer. Tingardian or not.”

“You... won’t get away with this,” Uther panted out from where he lay on the ground.

Almas turned to look at him like he was mad. “Do you want him to kill you?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said. “He’s dying. Unless you have better witches now than in my day, nothing can save him.”

A few of the people gasped in shock. “The king will have you killed,” one woman said. She actually sounded, perhaps, a little saddened by the notion of us being murdered.

“For what?” I asked her. “This man attacked me for no reason. I’d committed no crime. He attempted to kill me and got his just reward. If any of you had a bit of backbone, someone else would have done it years ago. Almas couldn’t be the first young man this lecher has tormented. But the lot of you ignored it. Allowed his behavior. You should be ashamed. All of you.”

“Here now,” the old man from earlier said, stepping forward, but when I turned to look at him, he stepped back.

I waited for a moment, looking at him. Then at the others. “Nothing to say for your behavior? I’m not even armed.”

“You’ve killed two men,” a woman pointed out.

“Three.” I looked at Uther again, then back to her. “As I said. He might not be dead yet, but he will be. That isn’t a wound a man survives. But again, unarmed. And I only attacked them when they attacked me. You don’t want to defend yourselves?”

The old man apparently found his balls and straightened his back, lifting his chin into the air. “How could we have known the boy didn’t want him back? He kept flouncing around town in the same clothes that had attracted the lord. Acting the same way, saying the same things. Clearly, he liked the attention.”

Only one other person in the crowd nodded, most of the rest were staring at the ground.

I glared at them all. “Don’t look away. Look at him. This man. He thinks your lord’s behavior was warranted. Threats and harassment and torment. He thinks people are at fault for being mistreated. He’s one who’ll mistreat others.” I pointed to the other who’d nodded. “Him as well. I may not give a damn about any of you, but you should recognize the monsters among you.”

A few people took steps away from the men I’d singled out, but none of them spoke.

Gently, giving him room and time to stop me, I pulled Almas toward me. “You were right. The lot of them are beyond hope. We should get your father and leave this cursed place. It may not be Tingard, but it’s still full of monsters.”

He spun and threw his arms around me, nodding into my shoulder. “Please.” I almost felt the word, breathed into my skin, more than I heard it. But that was enough.

“Can you walk, or shall I carry you?”

He let out a sound somewhere between a giggle and a sob, but drew himself up. “I’ll walk. To get my father out of his unjust imprisonment.”

I nodded, and without another glance at the people, turned to the remaining guard and his golden hair. There was still a beat, a moment where looking at him reminded me. A group of men sitting around a campfire, laughing about how my brother’s wife had pled for the lives of her children, so they’d forced her to watch as they’d slit their throats.

But he wasn’t them.

“Will you show us to where Almas’s father is, and help us release him?”

“You will not,” Uther panted, but his voice was going thin and reedy, almost more whisper than voice. “Get me... back. Need. Water.”

I glanced at him. “Thirsty? Yes, that won’t get better. I pierced your stomach. It’s emptying its contents into the rest of you. Apparently it’s quite acidic.”

The lord paled and swallowed, his head falling back against the stones. “Need healing.”

“I told you, healing can’t help you. Bargain with whatever gods you believe in. They’re the only thing that can help you now.” Turning back to the guard, who swallowed and stared at his lord for a moment, I continued. “Now. Almas’s father?”

Shockingly, the man nodded to us. “Of course. The tinker is in the dungeon. I’ll... I’ll take you.”

Somehow I suspected that accompanying us to the dungeon would be quickly followed by packing his things and leaving for parts unknown, never again to admit to having been anywhere near this tiny apathetic town and its evil lord. I didn’t even blame him.

Instead, I put my arm around Almas’s waist and walked, together with him, up to the keep.

Uther only tried to call after us once, and then he lost the strength to do even that. Lucky for him he was so weak, he’d die quickly.

The guard, intelligently, didn’t try to put up a fight or call on the other guards when we arrived at the keep. He turned to the man at the gate and said, “Lord Uther is dying. He challenged a strange knight to a fight and lost. He’s in the village now, but... there’s nothing to be done.”

The guards were stunned, but it said something about the man they’d served that I didn’t see a single moment of sadness in any of them. More confusion. What were they supposed to do? Uther didn’t have a wife or heir, apparently, so?—

The guard who’d come with us looked at me. “You could take over here, if you wanted to. We’ve never seen anything like you. You’re clearly a leader of men.”

He said it half-heartedly, like he already knew the answer. Because he did.

“I could no more be lord to the monsters of that village than you wish to be. They watched my friend be tormented by the beasts in this keep and did nothing. I despise them. I would give them nothing.”

Almas buried his face in my shoulder at that, and from the heat of it, I thought he might be blushing. I wasn’t sure why, but if he wanted to talk about it, we could do that. Later. Once we’d escaped the prying eyes of the people who had wronged him.

His head popped up after a moment, and sure enough, his cheeks were red. He turned to look at the guard. “And my father’s money. Lord Uther took it. It’ll be returned to him.”

The man blinked for a moment, and stared at the head guard, who was looking between us. He stopped and turned toward me. “You... you killed Lord Uther?”

“I did,” I agreed. “He attacked me and left me no choice. His guards as well.”

“Don’t even think it,” the golden-haired guard from the village whispered to him. “He cut them all down in less than a second. No effort. But... Lord Uther stabbed him, and it—it’s just gone. He healed.”

I wondered if it would still happen, if they stabbed me now. I’d had to live until all of Tingard was dead, but I’d felt it, the resounding snap inside me, when I’d realized that Tingard was already dead and gone. That the killing didn’t have to continue.

When Almas had made the killing stop.

I certainly wasn’t going to tell them that, though.

I just stared at the keep guard, unblinking. The man turned to someone else. “Get a bag of gold from the treasury. For... for compensation. For the lord... wronging the tinker and his son.”

I nodded, slowly, and the guards took off to see it done.

They’d only been gone a few moments when, next to me, Almas took off suddenly, shouting. “Father!”

He almost bowled over a man who was blinking in the morning sun as though he hadn’t seen proper light in days. I knew the feeling all too well, and empathized with him.

It was almost funny. Almas’s father. Henry, he’d called him once.

He had golden-brown hair. It wasn’t quite Tingardian, but it was much lighter than Almas’s. I wasn’t sure how the Beast in me would have reacted if Henry had been the one to awaken me in my tower in the woods.

Almas almost dragged him back to me, insisting that he had to introduce him to someone very important.

Me, important.

“Father, this is Percival. Yes, that Percival. From the stories. I went looking for the Beast of the Black Forest to get revenge on the town—I know, I know, you never would have wanted that. But—instead, I found him. And... he saved me. Then he helped me free you.”

“You saved me from the Beast first,” I told him, and we shared a quiet moment of understanding while Almas bit his plush red lip.

That was when a man came out of the keep, almost dragging a bag alongside him. He hoisted it up and dropped it into Henry’s arms, and the poor man almost tipped over trying to keep it from slipping through his hands. He blinked in shock, turning to the guard who’d dropped it on him. “I’m quite sure this is more than the lord took from me.”

The head guard of the keep shrugged. “Uther’s not here to count it.”

“Excellent,” I told him. “Now we need horses, and we’ll be on our way.”

He hesitated for a moment, considering me once more. Then he gave a sharp nod and motioned to someone to bring us horses.

We were on the road less than an hour later, and the world... well, the world was entirely new for all of us, and the possibilities were endless.