Page 9 of Beast’s Surrender, Beauty’s Revenge

CHAPTER NINE

PERCIVAL

Stay here.

Stay here.

Stay here.

The magic coursed through me, commanding that I do as Almas had ordered. It wasn’t even much, and I didn’t know what I’d have done other than stay there. Follow him like a lost, starving puppy?

Well why not? I seemed to be a lost puppy. I’d needed him to show me how to bathe myself. Now that I was starting to remember things, that was... embarrassing. I was a man fully grown; I didn’t need someone to show me how to bathe myself.

Then the Tingardian boy had come down the path not long after Almas left me alone, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

He’d been a teenager, with three rabbits on a line over one shoulder—he’d been hunting, obviously—and he’d wandered by on a trail just outside the small clearing Almas had left me in. His golden hair caught the sun filtering through the canopy of the trees, and every gleaming lock had my rapt attention.

Tingardian.

Killer.

Monster.

They had to be wiped from the surface of the world, or they would do it to us. They meant us all to die, and they would do anything to get what they wanted.

Didn’t I know that all too well?

The thought made me pause in my rising rage. Did I? How did I know?

The dead people sped through my head once again. The man, the older couple, the pregnant woman, the children. All dead.

Not by my hand.

By Tingardian hands.

Without even realizing it, I’d wrapped my hands around the nearest thing I could find, a stick a little thinner than my wrist. I had to kill him. Had to rid the world of the Tingardian monsters, before they murdered all of us.

Stay here, Almas had said, though, and the young man was moving away.

I couldn’t follow him. The manacles wouldn’t allow it.

I couldn’t... the Tingardians would kill us all. They were everywhere. They would destroy us. I slumped against a tree, trying to calm my breathing, the blood rushing in my ears.

Then Almas had come back. And he’d said that Tingard was no more.

How was that possible?

The boy had golden hair. Clearly, all the Tingardians had not been killed. They still posed a threat. Didn’t they? Could they still threaten, if they no longer had a country to fight for?

A single country, with all the people, northern and southern, blond and brunet... was it even possible?

Bellara, he called it. Did it come from bella for beauty, or bellum for war?

There was no way for me to know.

Still, I was distracted by Almas’s bounty. He didn’t say where he’d gotten it, and wanted to move on quickly, so something in my mind said he’d stolen it. Part of me was bothered by that. It wanted to stay, to try to make amends for any losses people had suffered on my behalf.

Another part of me was angry on Almas’s behalf. How was a clever, industrious young man in this position, where he couldn’t simply pay for what he needed? Because of this Uther, who was taking everything from him.

That couldn’t be allowed to stand.

It didn’t much matter whether Uther was some golden-haired Tingardian, though, did it? If he’d been my own brother, I’d have beaten the hell out of him for acting that way.

My brother.

The dead man.

My brother was dead.

“Percival?” Almas asked, stopping and turning to face me. “You’re... you’re crying. What’s wrong?”

I paused a moment, but what reason did I have to lie to Almas? He’d come looking for me to do violence, but he’d been nothing but kind and good to me, not really. “My brother is dead. And... and his wife and their children. And my parents.”

“And Bedivere,” he added, then winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to twist the knife. I just... I’m sorry you don’t have anyone. It’s terrible to be alone in the world.”

It was. And Almas was alone too. Because of Uther.

He didn’t much seem to want to be touched, though, so I just offered him the best smile I could manage, and kept moving.

We kept walking till well into the sunset, to put distance between ourselves and wherever Almas had gotten my clothes, and were starting to think about resting for the night when we passed a small clearing with a campfire. It smelled delicious, like roasting meat, and my mouth watered.

Almas looked interested, but at the same time, anxious.

There were two men sitting at the fire, and they smiled over at us.

No, at me. Their eyes skimmed over him as though he were a ghost, present but not relevant.

“Join us,” one of them said, smiling broadly. The other’s eyes skipped back over to Almas, and this time, they were more interested.

“Indeed,” he added. “We can share our bounty, and you can share yours.”

Almas stiffened, and it took me a moment to comprehend what they were saying. They thought, somehow, that Almas was mine, and they wanted...

I scowled at him. “Almas makes his own choices, and I suspect you would not be a choice he wished to make.”

The second man scowled and stood up, fully a head shorter than me. He wasn’t Tingardian. It didn’t make my blood boil. But if a fight was what he wanted, if he wouldn’t leave Almas be without it, then I’d give it to him.

I crossed my arms over my chest and stared him down. “Perhaps you should apologize to him for ignoring his wishes and assuming I was in charge of him.”

The man narrowed his eyes at me, and his friend sighed. “Just apologize, so they can move on and you can keep your spine intact.”

The man muttered a thoroughly not-heartfelt apology, and Almas nodded, eyes round with shock. “We’ll just go then,” he whispered, grabbing my elbow and dragging me on. It was one of the first times he’d willingly touched me. How... how strange.