Page 5 of Beast’s Surrender, Beauty’s Revenge

CHAPTER FIVE

THE BEAST

Father.

Please.

These were words he knew, once. Important words. Words that had meant a lot to him.

Now, he struggled to remember what anything meant. Why anything happened. How to speak or move or even think outside his dungeon prison.

The sunlight outside was bright, and he wanted to shy away from it, back into the building, down the stairs and into the dark. The safe. The place where there was no anger but his own. No pretty blond children from Tingard whose blood called out to him for spilling.

But now, there was a Lord Uther, and just the name was making his blood boil already. It was a Tingardian name, certainly. They all had those solemn, serious, short names with the strange, round feel in his mind. Uther and Gareth and Marc and Dafydd.

But no. Gareth and Marc and Dafydd were people he knew.

People he had known? Were they still alive?

“You have to come out,” the pretty young man insisted, sighing and stamping his foot.

Almas. He’d said his name was Almas.

It wasn’t a name the Beast knew.

Beast.

That wasn’t a name, was it? What kind of creature was called Beast? He would rather be called a name, even if it was a Tingardian one, but when he searched his fractured mind, he found none. Someone had to have called him something, once, right?

The compulsion from the cuffs still trapped around his wrists reached into him and tugged. Almas said come out. He had to come out. He couldn’t spend all the day thinking about names and whether he had one. He had to do as he was told.

The man with gray hair had brought him to the tower using the manacles. When they were both linked to them, he had to do as he was told by the person who controlled the magic. Almas had taken control of it when he’d touched the things.

When, the Beast wondered, had the gray-haired man ceded control? He didn’t remember that happening. The man had brought him to the tower. He’d told him to stay.

There had been tears, but. . .

With a shudder, his body took a step forward without his permission.

Almas said come out. He had to come out.

He glared at the man. He did not like being told what to do, much less when he had no power to deny it. This wasn’t safe, either. He was to stay in the tower. The gray-haired man had told him to stay in the tower. He’d been crying when he’d said it. Looked like he was driving a sword through the heart of his best friend when he’d left the Beast there, in the dungeon. Apologized.

Why would a person apologize to a beast?

He didn’t remember, if he’d ever known.

Then, he had been lost to the rage. The bloodlust. All he’d wanted to do was to destroy, so he’d howled his impotent rage to the air and struggled against the manacles, though he’d known they would never give. They would never release him.

He looked at them as his body stutter-stepped forward, toward Almas. They were some dark metal that wasn’t iron or steel, but he couldn’t have named it. The sides were etched all around with a series of runes in a language he couldn’t read—wasn’t sure if he’d ever been able to read—but they were black now. When Almas had touched them, they’d glowed gold for a moment. Was he magical, or were the manacles? Both?

“It’s a long walk back,” Almas said, coming up to stand in front of the Beast. “We should get going. It’s going to take a few days as it is, and I don’t even have any food.”

Food?

Ah, yes. The Beast remembered food. What was its purpose, though? He recalled eating. Sitting at tables, drinking mugs of ale and being loud and rowdy, yelling and celebrating and at other times, strange, soft discussions with other people. Those, he didn’t understand at all. Discussions.

What did a Beast have to speak of? There was nothing for him but the blood.

He nodded to himself and turned in the direction Almas had indicated. Lord Uther of Tingard. He would start with him. Rip his head from his shoulders and spill his blood on the earth. That, perhaps, would quell the bloodlust, at least long enough for him to think.

There was something... not quite right about that, but he couldn’t lay a finger on it. Did killing not sate the lust for blood?

That seemed a strange thought, but something in his mind said no. No, killing didn’t help. Killing was... was worse?

But if killing was bad, then how was he supposed to stop the need inside him to spill blood?

That was ridiculous.

They walked. The sun was too bright and painful, but he found that slowly, he got used to it. As though perhaps once, it had been normal, walking in the sun. In the time before the manacles and the dungeon. Before the gray-haired man had chained him there.

Did he hate the gray-haired man?

No. He was certain that he’d never once hated him, not even when he’d chained him in the dark dungeon and abandoned him there, tears flowing freely down his face.

So who had the man been, and who was the Beast to him?

“Bedivere.”

“What?” Almas was looking at him, confused. “I thought... I thought you understood me. Don’t you speak the common tongue?”

Common tongue? What was that? The Beast considered. Bedivere. That had been the gray-haired man’s name. It didn’t mean much, wouldn’t tell him anything, unless he was still alive and the Beast could find him using his name.

He wasn’t, the Beast realized quite suddenly, and stopped walking.

“Bedivere is dead,” he said aloud. There was no other explanation. The manacles had been controlled by Bedivere. He would never have released them to another. If he were alive, Almas never could have touched them and become their master.

He stared down at the cursed metal bands, and couldn’t tear his eyes away from them.

Almas stepped in close, his expression some combination of confused and annoyed, and pressed a hand to the Beast’s cheek. “You—you’re crying.”

For a moment, they both stared at the sheen of moisture on Almas’s fingers in confusion. Then, Almas visibly shook off whatever he was feeling, took a deep breath, and looked up at the Beast. “Bedivere is dead. Is that... bad? You’re sad about it?”

The Beast considered for a long moment, then nodded. Sad. Yes, he remembered sad. There was a tearing sensation in his chest that felt like someone trying to rip his heart out, and he thought again of the bodies in his visions. The man, the older couple, the pregnant woman and children.

That was sadness.

Frankly, it seemed like a pale, pitiful word for the sensation.

“Friend,” he tried, and the word seemed to come out right. “Bedivere.”

The man dropped his head and sighed, then patted the Beast on the arm. “I’m... I’m sorry. I don’t know who he was, but it’s—it’s hard to lose a friend.”

He took a deep breath and looked up at the Beast, and something in his gaze had shifted. He didn’t look quite as wild and angry anymore, almost like a feral beast. Looking into his eyes like that was almost... calming.

Calming was good.

The Beast liked to be calm. His mind sang less for blood when he was calm.

“We should rest,” Almas finally said. “We should—bathe and rest and maybe find some food.” After a moment without the Beast’s response, he nodded to himself, and started turning around and around. “Let’s find a stream. A bath is a good place to start.”

The Beast didn’t remember what a bath was, but it had calmed Almas, so it sounded like a good thing to him as well. Maybe if they bathed enough, he could wash away the madness in his soul.