Page 14 of House of the Beast

Chapter

EIGHT YEARS LATER

T he mausoleum was beautiful this morning.

Pale yellow sunbeams cascaded from the skylights, illuminating the halls of white marble.

The black and gold tombs of old Avera champions, former Hands of the Beast, lay in alcoves of peaceful shadow, guarded by their swords.

This early, the air was still chilly, and there was no sound apart from the occasional distant birdcall and my own breathing.

I sat on a bench in the middle of the hall, my own sword laid across my lap.

It was of exquisite make, in customary Avera black steel, and easily the most beautiful thing I owned aside from my arm.

I had done all my maintenance of it last night and awoken early today to dress and prepare myself ahead of time; then, with some hours to spare before the main event of the day, I had found myself wandering here.

This was not a place I often visited. All these years after being brought to House Avera, I still did my best to stay away from the main estate.

But the household was busy with preparations, and I was relatively certain I would not be disturbed.

It was just me and these dead old coots, my ancestors, who I was sure would condemn me if they were able.

I almost expected them to, yet the tombs sat motionless, their tenants, who had died for this vaunted House, now resting eternally within.

A pair of arms wrapped around my shoulders from behind. Aster leaned down to rest his chin upon the top of my head, his familiar weight stirring warmth within me.

“There’s an attendant looking for you outside,” he said.

He had grown alongside me like a tumor. No longer was he the scrawny brat who’d first befriended me. Now he took on the appearance of a handsome young man on the cusp of adulthood. But he hadn’t ditched the funeral robes, nor that impish smile, which he was baring at me now.

“How long do I have?”

“Oh, still enough time to brood a little more,” said Aster, amusement sweet in his voice. He rested his cheek against my hair fondly. “They’re supposed to bring you to the main temple, but they’re quite reluctant to actually be in your company.”

I snorted.

At nineteen, my reputation around the Avera estate had burgeoned like bad mold.

Everyone knew that Lord Zander’s bastard daughter—who had once stolen the family’s prized silverware, ripped a man’s head off, and then attacked her own father, all within a week of arrival—had a habit of snapping at her servants and talking to thin air.

My attendants took turns being shuffled around, reluctant to serve me for long, and I’d already gone through three tutors.

Much of this was Aster’s fault. When he first appeared to me, I had been delighted by the secret of his existence and how only I could see him.

But then there had been the incident where he’d tripped a particularly standoffish attendant on my account—and when the attendant had looked over her shoulder, there was only me to blame.

Or the time when he’d slammed a door behind my tutor while I was across the room, scaring the poor man half to death.

“You have to stop doing that,” I’d hissed at him after my tutor had bolted out of the guesthouse nearly in tears.

I knew he would go to my father, and then I would be lectured for misbehaving, and the attendants would begin to whisper again.

One more victim of the mad Avera bastard, who liked to knock over her own coffee and swear at inanimate objects for no reason.

“He was a bore,” Aster had said with a shrug. “And he treated you like you were stupid. Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy making him jump.”

He always had been too good at knowing my mind—and, more annoyingly, did not care for the sanity or safety of anyone else. Whenever I reprimanded him about these things, he would simply pout.

“What does it matter what anyone thinks about you? Once you’re First Hand, no one will be able to deny you anything.”

Convincing him otherwise was an onerous task.

I had learned to pick my battles over the years.

And though it frustrated me to admit, my chest fluttered whenever he spoke of what I needed, what I deserved.

He was the only one who cared. And I was certainly the only one he cared about; while he took pleasure in tormenting everyone else, he was always thoughtful with me.

He was patient, and he listened. He knew all of me, sometimes better than I knew myself.

“Have the envoys from the capital arrived?” I asked.

“Sounds like they’re nearing the station.

Your hair looks lovely today, by the way,” Aster replied, twirling a lock of it around one finger before I could bat him away.

If anyone were around, they would see only the way it floated in the air, pulled by an absent hand.

More of that inexplicable strangeness from Lord Zander’s bastard daughter.

“Are you here to talk to your ghosts?” he asked. “I don’t think they want to talk back.”

They hadn’t, in fact, approached me at all in the last eight years.

I sensed them lurking sometimes, when I was in that vulnerable state between consciousness and sleep, but they seemed deterred by Aster’s constant presence in my waking hours.

I was grateful for it. It was only because of him that I could sleep through the night.

“Not with you around,” I said. “You already know that.”

He unwound his arms from around my neck and plopped himself down on the bench beside me but facing the opposite direction. His shoulder bumped against mine in a gesture that was customary by now. “I do like to keep you to myself. You’re my favorite, you know.”

I snorted.

He always said things like this, just to get a rise out of me.

I had long given up on trying to deny the way it made my heart beat faster, because how could I not feel this way?

I had barely any contact with anyone my age and he was, for all intents and purposes, a beautiful boy dreamed up by my young and girlish mind. A perfect companion, just for me.

He knew, of course. He must have known from the very first moment he took my hand in his own.

There was no hiding anything from someone who made his home in your shadow.

He saw every instance my cheeks turned hot in his presence, heard whenever my pulse stuttered, sat there smiling when I woke shamefaced with the dream of a kiss haunting me.

He would stroke my cheek gently and lean in, hair suffused with moonlight, and ask me, “Would you like to kiss me for real?”

Sometimes it killed me to say no.

But while I was a fool in many regards, I intended to keep at least this one dignity.

I knew those offers weren’t made of real affection.

He was an elder god, and they were not capable of such a human folly as love.

He’d taken the form I’d given to him, and any desire he displayed was a result of my own imagining.

It was my fault, because it was what I’d wanted.

The shame of it always brought my senses crashing back.

If anyone found out, I would have to exile myself from Kugara.

Or the Court of Divine Hearers, with their clergymen acting as official custodians devoted to the service and preservation of the Four, would happily do it for me.

To desire one of Kugara’s elder gods was unimaginable blasphemy, and I was not interested in following in the Despot Queen’s footsteps for what was surely the most embarrassing crime known to mankind.

Once, I had asked him desperately, “Aren’t you tired of being turned down?”

Aster had only smiled. “You are already mine. No matter your cold words, or how you brush me away, you know it as well as I. I already have you.”

Perhaps I was his favorite only because I was so full of guilt and hatred, which the gods loved to feast upon. The worst of the worst , he had called me. In moments like this, when the glow in my own breast betrayed me, I was inclined to agree.

I looked at the shadowed tombs around me and answered, “I wish I wasn’t your favorite.”

He leaned in. His breath brushed against the shell of my ear, the way a lover’s might before whispering sweet nothings. “Liar.”

I pushed his shoulder away with mine. “Stuff it, Aster.”

He took my jostling easily, then leaned back against me afterward, undeterred. “Is my poor Alma nervous?”

Of course I was nervous. I had spent the last eight years preparing for this moment. Today was the trial for the Pilgrimage. Envoys from the Court of Divine Hearers in Sorrowsend would soon be here to judge the worthiness of House Avera’s candidates.

If I were to remain in my father’s retinue the way he had planned, I would have no need to worry. But I was going to make my own way—become a Pilgrim myself in order to wrench victory from my father’s grasp.

If I failed now, my work—and my life—would have had no meaning.

“I’m fine,” I said, willing it to be true.

Of course, my monster saw right through me. The teasing veneer disappeared. His left hand, the one he’d taken from me, came up to grasp my chin so I would face him.

“You won’t disappoint me, Alma,” he said. “You’ll impress those envoys so entirely they’ll have no choice but to name you a Pilgrim. And then when the umbral gate opens, I will be right beside you as you slay the fallen star for yourself.”

He sounded so certain. Maybe he was. He’d watched me every day for the past eight years as I toiled outside my little guesthouse—whether under the boiling sun or on the chilliest winter mornings—following my father’s instruction as he painstakingly listed all my failings to me.

An Avera must know the sword, because a sword was what the Beast required us to be.