Page 7 of Feeding Beauty (The Lost Girls #5)

From Kiss to Curse

TALON

T he girl with pink hair sits on a boulder in the middle of the creek with her back to me.

The sun shines through the rustling leaves of the massive trees overhead, throwing dappled rays on the soft cotton candy curls trailing to her waist. The water glitters under the same light, rushing loudly so she can’t hear me approach.

I sigh heavily as I stalk toward the girl.

I don’t want to get involved. I just want to be left alone.

But the Rosari King and Queen had me tracked down at great expense and effort, so they could plead with me to hear their case. Their daughter needs protection they can’t give her. Protection and help only I can provide.

I told them I wasn’t interested and that they’d wasted their time.

I’d been ready to turn and fly off to continue traveling the Realms, always alone, never staying in one place.

“Just meet her. Please.” The queen’s eyes had been glassy with unshed tears, her knuckles white from her fingers interlacing too tightly. The king held her shoulder with what looked like a vise grip. As if I were the last thread of hope they were clinging to.

My insides pinched, and something itched under my skin at all the exposed emotion, until I heard myself agree to the Queen’s request.

Making my way along the bankside, I try to make sure the princess sees me long before I get to her. The teenager’s shoulders tense when she catches me in her peripheral vision. Something about the movement strikes something inside me. The same soft spot her mother hit with her pleas.

I pause several yards away, sticking my hands in my pockets. It’s too hot to be wearing my jacket, but it’s a shield I need to keep wrapped around myself so I can extract myself as soon as possible.

“Who are you?”

Her shout is a challenge, a warning. She’s so painfully seventeen. I’ve only got a couple of years on her, but I’ve never had the luxury of being a teenager. The entitled, fiery defensiveness that wards off everyone with a silent dare is clear. Yet beneath the surface, there is a desperate plea.

Don’t leave me.

I shouldn’t be here. I don’t belong with others. I’m meant to be by myself, always alone. Or at least that’s what makes sense when you are the only one of your kind.

“Your parents sent me.” I yell out over the rushing water. “They wanted me to talk to you.”

The tenseness in her posture slips away. “Oh,” I see rather than hear her say. “You’re the Dragon,” she says, raising her voice enough for me to hear this time.

As she twists to get a better look at me, I also see her fully for the first time. My heart stops in my chest as one of the fae lords reaches down into my lungs and rips the breath right out of me.

She’s beautiful.

No, beautiful doesn’t begin to describe this girl. Eyes that remind me of the pale shimmer of snow over stone are set against skin that shimmers faintly, as if dusted in powdered gold. Her lips are full and perfect. Even her eyebrows are perfect, a feature I’d never given any thought to before.

Under the perfect angles of her face and her full strawberry-tinted lips, there’s a low thrum of energy I can almost see, like heat rising off pavement. It warps the air at her edges, but I know it’s not visible to anyone else.

There’s a tug in my chest. A sharp awareness in my spine. Her magic doesn’t just shimmer—it reaches. Not aggressively. Just…enough to pull you closer if you’re not careful.

My Dragon sees the sexual draw of her energy clashing with the awkward teenage self-consciousness that is wrapped around her bones. It’s likely to remain that way for several more seasons.

The princesses' face tightens with a stricken expression, and she draws her arms in tight, shielding herself. Some of my admiration or surprise must have slipped through.

I instantly shutter my expression. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t work on me.”

Her shoulders relax a fraction as she waits for me to do something, or for my expression to change. “Because you’re a Dragon,” she finally says.

“Because I’m a Dragon.”

Most shifters can sense magic in others, and can sometimes even nullify it. But they are never fully immune to its effects the way Dragons are. Though my body is young, my blood remembers wars before the Realms even existed. You can’t fool it. You can’t twist it.

I’m the only one she can’t manipulate with her power.

Her magic doesn’t care if the warmth it senses comes from a stranger or the ones who raised her. It doesn’t recognize family. Only need. And that’s why the King and Queen found me. That’s why they begged. Even they need to keep a certain distance from their own daughter or risk being consumed.

I scan the water rushing between us, no longer content to yell this conversation. “Mind if I join you?”

She shrugs.

I easily step from rock to rock until I’ve made my way over to a boulder next to hers and settle down.

“They want me to be your protector,” I say, cutting through the bullshit.

The princess shakes her head before wiping away a tear. “No. They want you to protect other people from me.” Then her face whips toward mine with a sudden fury. “I killed him. Did they tell you that?”

They told me. A boy died.

“I’ve always been well-liked in school, but recently I’ve been dodging crushes like it’s my job.” She launches into the account as if she’s going to explode if she doesn’t tell someone. She likely hasn’t been able to. From what I understand, her parents covered things up quickly and efficiently.

“But this one boy, Ike, had been obsessed with me for years. I'd always ignored it, but then the last couple months I started to, well, notice him too. I left him a note to meet me in the stables. I wanted to—” Her voice breaks, and her long lashes turn wet as she blinks rapidly. “—kiss him.” She says the words like it’s an unforgivable crime for a teen girl to want to kiss someone.

She swallows a couple times, keeping her gaze on the water.

“We did it. We kissed and it was...” She swallows again, the next words no louder than a breath, wistfulness tightening my chest again.

Without another word, I know it was everything she dreamed it would be.

“So, we kissed again. And then I...I started to feel hungry. Like really hungry, and the more we kissed, the hungrier I got. We kissed more and more, and we...touched.” She digs the heels of her hands into her eyes.

“It got out of control. Everything just felt so good, nothing else existed. It was all so delicious.” Her words break as her shoulders rock in silent sobs.

“I couldn’t stop. I didn’t even think to stop and now he’s. ..he’s ? —”

Dead.

Her power, her curse, made a rather dramatic entrance. Especially considering how long ago it was cast upon her.

The boy’s death was staged as some kind of horse-riding accident.

When the princess looks up at me, her eyes are owlishly big with dark circles under them like she’s haunted. “And worst yet,” she whispers so I can barely hear, “I’m still so hungry.” It comes out in a whine before she bursts into full, body shaking sobs.

I don’t know what to do. Someone else might pat her on the back or offer a hug. I can’t do either of those things.

Maybe tell her it’s going to be okay?

It probably isn’t. She’s the first Succubus in centuries. And she’s going to have to keep feeding to survive.

I could tell her it was an accident.

It doesn’t change the fact she killed the boy she had a crush on.

So, I just sit there with her. I let her cry. I let her be swept away by all the grief as she sits with her confession. I don’t offer empty assurances or condemn her with judgement.

After some time, she dips a hand into the cool, clear water and uses it to wash off her face.

“I’m a monster,” she says in a much calmer tone.

“You’re not a monster.”

“Yes, I am. All other Rosari may be energy vampires, but they don’t kill anyone. They feed off people’s anxieties and actually help those they feed from.”

“It’s not your fault you’re like this,” I point out.

“Oh, I know it’s not my fault,” she says darkly.

Someone snuck into her nursery when she was a baby. The King walked in, in time to hear the curse spoken over Aurora’s crib before the culprit fled.

Let love’s first prick sow despair in its bloom.

The princess looks at me for the first time since she confessed her sins and scans my features with interest. “You’re different too.”

My throat tightens even as I nod. “I am.”

“Is it true? That your skin...burns?”

A wry smile briefly pulls at my lips. Then I dip my hand into the cool water. Steam rises off the creek where I touch it.

“My leathers are special, but most things burn if I touch them. Mainly organic materials. I have to be careful not to touch certain things, like plastics and some fabrics.” It’s the reason I often traverse the Fae Realms. Here, the fae favor stone and metal.

Their fabrics are also often resistant to my heat.

“If you touched me, would you burn me?” The shimmering air around her intensifies, and her beauty both sharpens and softens at the same time. Her hunger is reaching out to me. Her curse wants to feed.

I stand, leveling her with a heavy look. “I wouldn’t touch you. And I am not tempted.”

Even as the princess scrambles to her feet, she recoils with what I recognize as rejection. Good. She needs to know she can’t affect everyone.

“I didn’t mean to...I didn’t think you thought I was...” she stammers.

I lift a hand to stop her from spiraling. “I’m just clarifying.”

She follows as I step from rock to rock and head back to the riverbank.

“What about other Dragons?” she asks.

I can’t help the heavy sigh that leaves me. It’s my turn to cast my gaze to the water. “I don’t know if there are any other Dragons.” I don’t know why I have the sudden urge to walk, but she trails alongside me.

“What? What about your family? Your parents?”

“I don’t remember my father, and I was very young when my mom left.

One day she just left and didn’t come back.

Later, I learned Dragons are solitary, and it’s normal to leave their young to fend for themselves as soon as they’re able.

” She might be alive, but I’ve searched far and wide for her.

If she is alive, she doesn’t want to be found.

As I grew older, I began to understand. I started to feel an intrinsic need to keep moving.

To never form attachments. To live a solitary life.

Her brows knit. “How old were you?”

“Six.”

She gasps in horror.

I shrug. “It’s fine. This is how my kind is supposed to live.”

“From what I know,” she says after a beat, “I’m the only Succubus too. Succubae and Incubi were killed off two centuries ago. Too dangerous to let live.” She frowns and kicks a rock out of her way. Then a hopeful smile springs to her lips. “Guess we’re kind of alone together.”

“Alone together,” I echo.

The moment I say it, something shifts inside me.

The restless part of me—the part that always itches to move on, to avoid connections, to keep from getting tethered to anyone or anything—goes still. Like it’s been waiting for this. For her.

I don’t feel trapped.

I feel...anchored.

A weighted silence falls between us, as if something invisible has locked into place beneath the surface of the world.

Aurora rubs her palms down the sides of her simple skirts, eyes darting around. “I don't mind being around you,” she says, then rushes on before I can react. “Not because you’re a Dragon or because you’re supposed to be here, or whatever.”

She swallows. Her gaze flicks toward the trees, trying to focus on anything but me.

“It’s just...people don’t really see me.

They see some weird idea of me. Because I’m a princess.

Or because I’m too...” She makes air quotes.

“‘Pretty.’ Even to other kids my age, I’m not real.

I’m more a symbol they’d rather talk about than talk to.

They’d rather make up stories about me instead of bothering to find out who I am. ”

Her voice drops. “You’re the only one who hasn't done that. You make me feel real. So, uh…thanks. I guess.”

An odd sensation presses deep into my chest. No, deeper than that. Into my bones. A knowing. A recognition that defies reason.

She takes a breath, almost bracing herself. “So. Are you going to stay?”

The ceiling above me is water-stained and cracked. The blinds rattle faintly in the air from the heater, casting slivers of neon city light across the floor like prison bars.

Sleep evades me as the memories return.

Seven years ago, I made a vow. To the King. To the Queen. To her .

I vowed fealty and protection to the princess for as long as my services were needed. I’ll help keep her secret, make sure she feeds, and dispose of the evidence.

I’ll stay with the princess until the day I die. I’m not entirely sure that part of me wouldn’t rise from the ashes of my own corpse and rejoin her.

Because while that vow connected us, I didn’t expect to fall for her. Being with her hurled me down an endless staircase, the ground never arriving, not after months, of even years.

Despite my feelings, I force myself to focus only on what I do. I protect her. I contain her curse. I clean up the mess.

I turn on my side, trying, and failing, to get comfortable.

Because nothing else will ever be possible.