Page 17 of Beast’s Surrender, Beauty’s Revenge

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

PERCIVAL

Five days travel on the horses we’d taken from Uther’s keep, we found it.

I’d known it was there, and hoped against hope that the years hadn’t completely destroyed it, and, well... My hopes had been half granted, and that was enough for me.

My family keep was still there. It wasn’t in perfect condition, but it still stood, and it was empty.

Dismounting my horse and rounding the area on foot, I was quickly joined by Henry.

“Good bones,” he said speculatively. “It’s in the old style, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Just makes it less likely some lord will come along and claim it.”

I grinned at him. “They could try. This has been my family’s home since before a single one of them was born. Since before Bellara was born.”

His breath caught with excitement, and he practically bounced on the balls of his feet like a man half his age. “Do you think there’s anything left inside? The history we could find...”

Henry, as it turned out, was a man in love with learning. He was a tinkerer simply because he wanted to know how every single thing worked, and he’d figured out quite a lot of it. I suspected that with the right inspiration, he could go a step further and create newer and better things than what we had.

So that was my plan. Rebuild the family keep. We had enough coin to buy the materials and hire workers, if Almas and Henry agreed to it.

And then . . . we would simply live.

We hadn’t passed a town in days, living off the rations we’d bought and kept in our packs. This was the northern end of the country, Henry had said, and few people lived there. It was unlikely we’d be accosted by someone claiming my family home. If they thought it theirs, they wouldn’t have allowed it to start to fall apart.

Perhaps a town would come up around the keep again in time, but that didn’t matter. For now, we would build. And we would farm, and tinker, and... well, Almas could do whatever he wished to. If he wanted to farm with me, then I’d teach him everything I’d learned from my own father. If he wanted to breed horses or make shoes or... well, I’d quickly realized that the gold they’d given us from Uther’s treasury could easily pay for anything his heart desired.

Almas could have whatever he wanted in life, and Henry and I would be happy to give it to him, because he did the same for us every day.

It was like having a family again.

Mine would have adored Almas and Henry, I thought. I only wished they could have met, without centuries between their passing and Henry and Almas’s lives. I’d never expected to be grateful to have survived all those years. There had been a time—many times—in the tower, when I’d longed for nothing but death. An end to the never-ending bloodlust that had lived inside me.

When we’d passed through the last town half a week earlier, a gold-haired shopkeeper had made a snide comment about my shirt’s quality, and I hadn’t even been taken with an urge to smash his nose. I’d simply rolled my eyes and told him it served me well enough. Almas had procured it for me, after all.

Henry had lifted a brow, Almas had blushed, and we’d moved along.

I turned to Almas, waiting for his judgment. Henry and I had a say, obviously, but I’d never demand he live somewhere he didn’t wish to. If he wanted more or newer or better or just different, then we’d find that and give it to him.

He smiled at me and stepped into my arms, which I closed around him automatically. “It’s perfect. Let’s make it home.”

Little did he know, it was already that. Not because my family had once lived there, but because he was there, and we were together and safe. Nothing else mattered.