Page 42 of Feeding Beauty (The Lost Girls #5)

Finding the Power and the Villain

AURORA

T hey took him.

Mal took the man I love from me.

All logic, all fear has burned away. What’s left is singular and sharp, a diamond-hard truth I can’t escape. He is mine . And I won’t burn the world to get him back.

I will devour it.

“You’ve always saved me, Talon,” I whisper to the empty stairwell. “This time, it’s my turn.”

The narrow staircase winds downward beneath the old church, each step slick with centuries of damp. My boots skid once on the wet stone, but I don’t falter. I can’t. The air is heavy with mildew and incense and something older.

My power gathers and swells the further I descend. It’s different now. It’s not breaking free of me in panicked bursts, lashing out wildly. It’s rising because I call it. Because I want it. Because for the first time in my life, I’m not trying to choke it down.

I feed it fear. I feed it fury. I feed it every breath I take as I descend.

The curse doesn’t slither in serpent twists. It doesn’t coil anymore. It waits.

A mouth. Open. Starving.

I feel it now, gnashing beneath my ribs, pressing against my bones. Not trying to hurt me, trying to answer me. My hunger. My curse. The same thing. It aches to be fed.

For once, I don’t fight it.

I aim it. I shape it. I sharpen it.

I become the thing with the mouth, the thing with the hunger, the thing ready to bite back.

The arched doors at the base of the stairs blow inward, not from wind or force, but from my unleashed hunger. Power arcs from my skin in jagged streaks of pink light, licking the hinges, prying the heavy wood open with a sound like cracking bone.

The catacombs stretch before me, yawning open, cold and slick and thrumming with quiet violence. Not Mal’s. Mine.

I step forward, my cloak trailing behind me, my collar still locked around my throat, my hunger bared beneath my skin.

Power pulses under my skin, a second heartbeat. It hums through my ribs, licking along my spine. My fingers twitch, aching with it. My mouth waters with it. My curse isn’t inside me anymore. It’s riding just beneath the surface, eager, obedient.

The double doors at the far end blow open on another blast of my hunger. Candles gutter to life in ripples, bending toward me.

The vampires rear back, snarling. One lunges. Another bares fangs.

I don’t flinch.

Hunger moves faster than thought.

A crackle of pink arcs from my outstretched hand in an open maw that crashes down on the first vampire. It sinks in, deep. Ripping. Feeding. His eyes go wide with terror and rapture as his life tears free of him in streams of light and heat, flowing into me.

It feels…good.

Not like Talon. Not like love. But like quenching a thirst I’ve carried in my marrow for years. Like filling the hollows I thought were permanent.

The vampires hesitate now, then come at me anyway.

Their skin withers, pleasure and life ripped from them in luminous streams of soul-light that pour into my veins. Their mouths stretch open in silent moans before they collapse, brittle and lifeless.

More vampires surge forward, drawn by instinct, by rage, by the overwhelming scent of power. Some rush to kill me.

Others…don’t.

They falter. Stumble. Their pupils dilate.

They want me. They can’t help it.

My skin glows now. Not just with magic, but with heat , with need , with every ounce of hunger I’ve ever felt and now let free.

I become something radiant. Otherworldly. Sensual.

My hair lifts on an unseen breeze. The very air around me pulses in rhythm with my power.

They can smell me. Taste me.

And they come, helpless to resist.

I open my arms, and my power arcs again—out, out, snapping through the dark with jaws, biting into flesh, into bone, into magic and marrow. The curse works through me, but not against me. It doesn’t take from me. It takes for me.

Silken power slides through my veins, weight and warmth filling every empty corner inside me.

They come faster now, drawn in by hunger, by instinct, by the scent of death wrapped in sugar.

Some try to kill me. Some try to kiss me. All of them fail.

Their bodies wither beneath the weight of my need. Their souls pour from them in shimmering ribbons, pulled into the hungry maw of my curse until there’s nothing left.

I walk forward, the air parting for me, the last of the vampires breaking against my power.

I’ve waited my whole life to stop hiding. To stop starving. And I’ll feed on this entire fucking world before I let them keep him from me.

The chamber where they are holding Talon isn’t what I expected.

It’s worse.

Stone walls press close, slick with mildew and shadow.

Candles flicker in old iron sconces. The air is wet and metallic, soaked with the scent of blood and damp rot.

A table at one end gleams with steel instruments and broken glass beakers, each of them sticky with drying crimson.

Magic residue clings to the surfaces with a static that makes my skin crawl.

And in the corner…

Bodies.

Some slumped in chains. Some crumpled in heaps, lifeless and used up. Then I recognize one of them. The level one mage who created smoke ribbons in the club to impress a girl the other night. Though now, his sightless eyes stare up at the ceiling. He’s sunken, bloodless.

Then I recognize another one. She had been floating quarters at the bar. Now her head is twisted at an odd angle, dried blood at the puncture marks on her neck. Were all these people mages?

My stomach turns.

I scan the bleak surroundings until my gaze lands on Talon.

He’s been strapped to a vertical stone slab—arms bound wide with iron cuffs, legs locked at the ankles, chest exposed. His head hangs forward, chin resting on his chest, his body limp beneath the pull of gravity.

He jerks, just slightly, as if trying to lift his head.

Clinging to him, a small, dark-haired parasite of a woman.

Mal.

She’s latched to the front of him, her fangs buried deep in the crook of his neck. Her fingers claw into his waist, bare feet braced on his thighs like she climbed him, climbed my Dragon, and is now feeding from him like he’s a fucking wine fountain.

His blood trickles from the corner of her mouth, glistening red-black. Her eyes flutter half-closed in ecstasy.

She’s gorging on him.

I start to gather my hunger before I remind myself what happened last time. I grab her by the hair and yank her off Talon. She crashes into the table, glass shattering, liquids colliding with sizzles and smoke leaving an acrid stench in the air.

I stand between her and Talon.

Mal lifts her head, licking her lips as she rises to her feet with a slow, languid grace. Her small frame makes the gesture look almost childlike.

“You came,” she murmurs, her voice soft and infuriatingly mild. “I had a feeling you would.”

Black scales form on her skin, creeping like armor up her neck from the collar of her dress. Fissures glow orange beneath the surface, pulsing with light, as if something volcanic writhes beneath her fragile form. Sparks spit from her fingertips—mage magic, stolen and unstable.

“What did you do?” I demand, fists clenched, every part of me trembling.

Her mouth slowly splits into a terrifying grin as she takes in the scales on the backs of her hands.

“You should know better than anyone, Aurora,” she says, still grinning when she meets my eye. “You are what you eat.”

And she’s eaten Dragon.

Talon hangs there, pale and broken, his chin tipped forward, skin slick with sweat and blood.

I rush to him.

But I’m not sure he even sees me.

His eyes flutter open, dazed, unfocused. His lips part like he wants to speak, but nothing comes out.

Blood still drips from the puncture marks on his neck. The orange light between Talon’s scales has dulled and dissipated. I touch his chest gingerly, confirming my fear. He’s cooled.

I whirl around when Mal steps closer. She’s not afraid. Not rushed. She knows. She knows I can’t touch her. Not now. Not with her skin blazing and my power unable to sink its fangs into her.

“I regret it, you know.” Her voice stays soft, a lullaby against the scream building in my chest. “Punishing you for your father’s sins.

I thought it would satisfy something in me.

But all it did was waste time.” Her hand drifts lazily through the air, sparks trailing from her fingertips.

“No matter. I’ll correct the mistake soon enough.

He’ll know the pain of losing everything. Like I did.”

Fuck . I instinctively reach back to touch Talon. His arm is cold, but he groans at the contact. He’s still with me.

Hang on, baby, I’ve got you.

“But you could have your life back.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” she says, toying with the words, “I could take the gift back.”

“Gift?” The word curdles in my mouth until my lips twist.

“No more hunger.” Mal speaks so evenly, as if she’s completely in control of everything.

“No more deaths on your conscience. No more shame. No more strangers. No more feeding. And I could make you more. Like him.” She gestures to Talon.

“Like me. Then you would be free to touch who you want. Free to love who you want. Without burning. Without fear.”

The offer hits me square in the chest.

No more hunger. No more bodies. No more curse. No more strangers in dark rooms. I could touch Talon without gloves. Kiss him without restraint. Love him without fear. I would be just a regular girl in Boston working at the bar with her friends.

For one aching, terrible heartbeat, I want to say yes.

Mal sees it in my face. Her mouth curves with indulgence. “We could take them all down together. The Rosari who kept you locked away. The Midnight Kingdom who cast me out. Wipe the slate clean. Build something new from the ashes.”

But I see Talon's Dragon power burning through her veins like poison. She’s not free. She’s trapped by her hate of my father, my parents. She’s living in the past.

“I’ve already been building something new,” I say, my voice soft but steady. “Without burning the world down. Without becoming like you.”

Her smile falters. “You think this life you scraped together matters? You think those girls care? You think he—” She gestures to Talon like he’s nothing, like he hasn’t bled and burned for me. “—can save you from what you are?”

“No.” I lift my chin. “But I can.”

For the first time, I see her clearly. And I don’t envy her. I don’t hate her. I pity her. “I don’t want to tear it down. I want to build something better. I already am.”

All kindness falls away like a veil dropping until hate gleams from her eyes. “Then starve, little princess.”

She turns. Walks away without fear, without hurry. Because in her mind, she’s already won.

And Talon hangs by a thread behind me.