Page 8

This beast, this supposed prince, had an intriguing presence about him.

Something captivating and otherworldly. Even with the spans of mortal lives I’d lived, I had never seen anything, or anyone, quite like him.

He looked almost preternaturally refined in a monstrous way, with an undercurrent of unspoken depravity at his core.

Unnerving and haunting with an appearance mimicking the humans’ depictions of devils.

I moved slowly, imitating his choice as he picked a three-pronged utensil to stab at the vegetables.

I knew I was holding it wrong when his nose scrunched upon watching me shove cabbages and sliced carrots into my mouth.

But the flavors of the food burst on my tongue and my hunger encouraged me to stuff my face until my cheeks were swollen and my jaw ached from chewing.

“Is there something wrong with you?” he barked.

I swallowed my mouthful before nodding. “Oh, yes. Many things.” I bent to consume another chunk of steamed, buttered potato. “Do you want a list?”

“A list?” he trailed off as if dazed. His hand lowered until his utensil clinked on his plate, then he shook his head as if hoping his errant thoughts would be flung from his ears. “What sort of woman are you?”

“I…” I’m not . I choked the admission down. “I’m not sure.”

“A baffling one, certainly.” He leaned on the edge of the table, one hand stroking his chin. “Do you still refuse to tell me your name?”

He leaned back in his seat, intensely observing me as I shoved a particularly lumpy potato around the plate.

“I truly don’t have a name.”

“That you remember?”

“No. At all. I’ve never had one.” A pinch of exasperation wove into my voice. I didn’t want to talk about myself when there was nothing to tell. “And I don’t know where here is. What is this place?”

He submitted to the change in topic.

“This is my home, my castle.” Some of the tension in his shoulders eased, and the beast relaxed into his chair. A wave of candlelight played across his face, enhancing the inhuman nature of his features. “This realm is not like the one you’re from. Far, far from it, in fact.”

“Obviously. Tell me something I don’t know.”

His upper lip curled, briefly baring his sharp teeth. A passing flash of annoyance. “We are in Infernus. A world adjacent to your own but divorced from the same rules and creatures.”

“Infernus.” I tasted the word on my tongue. I set my utensil down. The world blurred at the edges as my vision hyper focused on the opposite wall.

“How did you get here?” Mavros tapped a claw-tipped finger on the table to the rhythm of my heartbeat. Tap. Tap. Tap. It thrummed in my ears, crowding out my thoughts.

“A magical accident,” I replied. Some truths I needed to keep close.

The beast nodded slowly, and my gaze darted to the light gleaming on the ridges of his horns. My heart sank and my stomach twisted itself into knots.

“From what I’ve read, that seems to be the case with most of these incidents.”

That sparked my curiosity. “This has happened before?”

His fingers stilled, the tapping ceasing as his throat bobbed with a hard swallow. A fresh wave of tension radiated from him, feeling much like the buzzing hum of humans’ infernal electrical contraptions. My chair creaked when I shifted in my seat.

“Sometimes. It’s rare.” Then his stare returned to me, glinting with something calculating and voracious. Goosebumps rippled over my arms. “Since you have nowhere else to go, I can offer you my home. You must reside here with me where it’s safest for you.”

An asphyxiating sense of dread reached up from my nauseated guts and clawed at the back of my throat.

The vulnerable sense of mortality in my chest, already tender and bruised, abused itself in the agony of my fate.

Forever warped, twisted into the body of a thing that would die, lost to myself—my spirit rotting and corroding through my fingers, slipping away like sand.

Acidic, hot tears cut at the corners of my eyes and threatened to spill.

“This… this is a nightmare,” I said, voice thin and reedy.

A fist slammed on the table, and the plates rattled. I flinched away.

“A nightmare? Is this how you see my hospitality?” Mavros bellowed. “Are you this atrocious toward all your hosts, my lady?”

“Only the beasts.” I practically spat the word at his feet.

He paused, breath frozen and eerily still.

“I am a monster, but at least I know who I am.” He tore himself from his seat, bowing over the head of the table like a predator coiling to pounce.

I held my breath yet refused to cower.

His gaze flashed over my plate.

“And all you’ve eaten is vegetables. Do not waste meat in my home. Show some gratitude and finish your meal!” His thunderous roar reverberated around the room, echoing into the shadows and grated against my bones.

Wood clattered on the ground as I surged from the table, rising to meet his furious challenge.

Breath rattling, fists shaking, blood vibrating beneath my fragile flesh, I gritted my teeth right back at him.

“I have never in all my years eaten meat, and I won’t start now simply because you demand it! ”

Mavros dragged his claws through his hair, fire-eyes wavering with building rage.

Then he growled, a sound so akin to a tiger’s roar that my muscles tensed with the instinctive need to flee.

I balanced on my toes, chest heaving as he bayed and howled like a maddened wild beast. “Then you will never eat again!”

A jolt of fear struck me to the core. I stepped away from the table, tensed to hide my trembling.

He took a step, immediately following. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’ve lost my appetite,” I said, breathless.

“You will sit. You will finish the meal.”

“No.” I met his eyes, unblinking. “I can’t be commanded.”

His fist crashed into the edge of the table, claws ripping through the cloth and wood, cracking and splintering under the force of the blow. Utensils went flying and porcelain shattered.

My feet carried me back without realizing, and in the next second, the beast prince of Infernus grabbed and tossed the chair I’d been sitting on.

Wood sailed through the air before crashing into the wall and exploding into a hundred splintered pieces.

Adrenaline and a prey animal’s impulse seized me, guiding me to turn on my heel and flee. I fumbled with the skirts hindering my legs, barely lifting them as I reached the double doors.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give to fly…

Glass spiraled in every direction and shattered on the opposite door, kicking an involuntary yelp from me. My bones throbbed, my blood pulsed like sludge under my skin, and my heart raced, faster, faster, faster as terror sent me tearing from the room.

The roars and sounds of explosive rage followed me across the castle.

He is a monster, and I am doomed.

As I fled, I felt his eyes on my back.

Since the dawn of time no creature or being had ever spoken to me like that. Never dragged me around, or snarled at me, or treated me as anything less than divine. Majestic. Ethereal.

I stormed through the corridors, haunted by the burning coals of his eyes.

No witch, wizard, or beast would have ever dared to treat me in such a manner before Aradia bound me to this accursed flesh.

Her actions hadn’t saved me, only gifted me another horrid dilemma If she were alive, I would curse her as she had me.

I needed air or else the acrid smoke in my lungs and mind would suffocate me.

The glass-paned doors to the garden came into view. The night’s chill kissed my flushed cheeks as I burst outside. I paused to inhale and regulate my pounding heart before stepping into the welcoming arms of the star-lit garden. Somewhere in the hedges a shadow hissed softly, then stilled again.

I ignored it and moved on, letting my feet guide me.

Perhaps under the strange stars of a new world I would find myself again.

Maybe in the silence of the castle garden I might remember who, what, I was before the threat of magic-users stole it all away.

Even the breeze went gentle and quiet as if giving me the space to breath and stew in my thoughts.

I wandered down the stone path, past thorn-wrapped trellises and statues too worn to recognize. My footsteps crunched softly on gravel. Pale blossoms curled toward me as I passed, as though curious. I paid them little mind, still muttering silent arguments in my head.

That damned beast had no right. No right to touch me even as a prince. No right to command me even if he was master of the land.

And somehow, impossibly, he had stirred something within me. His fury ignited a tingling thrill along my nerves. One I only became aware of in the calm aftermath.

That unsettled me more than his temper.

The wind shifted.

My ear twitched, and my heart skipped a beat.

A breath caught in my throat. I turned slowly and the world tipped beneath my feet.

A crimson fog rose from the roots of the hedges, curling effortlessly around stone benches, rolling over the roots of fruit trees, and bleeding over the stone paths. Not sweeping in with the wind, but seeping from the earth itself, like pus oozing from an open wound.

I stepped back.

The fog pulsed.

“What is this?” My voice was shallow, brittle.

No answer came. I remained planted in the gullet of a gathering hush.

I turned back toward the castle, but the mist had spread behind me, threading through the hedges like veins through a body.

The garden had become a maze, unfamiliar in the dark, and every path looked the same beneath the choking red.

A whisper echoed through the gloom.

Panic flared. My heart thudded painfully in my chest.

“Sylph…” A drawn-out hiss that slithered down my spine.

Ice chilled my blood and rooted me to the spot. Helpless as the mist thickened. Shadows danced in the heart of the fog, shapes darting too quick to see clearly. My legs trembled and a lump formed in my throat. And then, from the center of it, a figure emerged.

Not solid. Not real. A phantom, conjured from blood and magic.

A man-shaped void lined with crimson fire, its form unraveling and reforming with every heartbeat.

Its face was a mask of warped features, ever shifting, and black smoke puffed from its nose.

Its eyes glistened like festering open wounds.

“Found you,” it whispered.

I tried to run. But this mortal body lacked the power I once had. Feeble, slow, weak. Trapped in the dark.

My feet turned on instinct, scrambling for purchase on the path, but the fog followed—fast, intelligent, alive. The mist roared as it chased me, an echo of death and vicious laughter filtered through screams. It nipped at my heels with ghostly claws, searing every place it touched the earth.

Branches scratched my skin. I barreled through hedges, through arches I didn’t recognize, tripping over roots that hadn’t been there a moment before. My breath tore from my lungs. I couldn’t think—I could only flee.

“Sylph,” the crimson phantom sang again, closer now. “You belong to me.”

“No,” I cried out, stumbling.

The ground slicked beneath my feet. The mist gathered ahead.

I turned sharply and slammed into something solid. Something warm and sturdy. Hard hands wrapped around me, supporting me. Even as I screamed and thrashed.

“Easy. Easy, now,” a voice growled into my ear. Not frightening, but grounding.

Reassuring.

Mavros?

His body was all hard muscle and heat, his presence a wall against the cold terror behind me. I struggled—half-blind, half-mad with fear—but his arms held fast, not crushing but firm, anchoring me.

“What happened?” he asked.

“He… he… he saw…” I gasped.

“Fuck,” he snarled. “You’re trembling.”

“He saw me… he… he—” The words crumbled apart in my mouth. My knees gave out.

The beast caught me before I hit the ground. The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was the flicker of red in the garden’s edge, swallowed by his shadow.

Then nothing.