I, however, am not lying. I speak the truth. He will have my body once I have promised it to him and him alone. But I have no intention of ever speaking those vows.
The prince thinks he can coerce me, seeing as persuasion hasn’t worked.
From the corner of my eye, I watch Killian dive into the work of field-dressing the beast. He’s divested himself of his jacket. His muscles flex as he applies a large knife to the gryphon’s belly. Entrails pour out onto the floor. The few remaining aristocrats flee, covering their noses. I breathe shallowly to avoid the smell. The prince’s nose wrinkles in disgust.
Sadness at the sight of a huge beast being butchered on a ballroom floor takes me off-guard. I edge closer to the corpse, gently stroking its feathers. The fearsome eye stays open, staringstraight at me. Its wickedly curved beak hangs open. The gryphon doesn’t look so different from the harpies.
They’re only animals, left behind by the fae when they retreated to the sky to escape our cruelty. There’s a certain beauty to its sheening feathers.
One way or another, I must convince Killian to take me away from this palace of nightmares. Where we’ll go, I don’t know, but I cannot remain here.
22
Killian
After cutting apart the gryphon and sending parts of it away for preservation, I make a detour to the showers in the knight’s quarters to clean away the filth.
Alistair’s performance with the gryphon will be accepted as proof that he killed the beasts adorning his trophy room. It shouldn’t bother me. I know the truth.
I killed those beasts. Until Briar came along, I never cared if Alistair took credit for my work. Suddenly, I do, and I don’t like the way it makes me feel. Full of rankled discontent. As if I didn’t have enough of that already.
Cold water streams over my body. A deserved punishment. I’ve sunk lower than ever before in my life, and the worst part is that I don’t even care.
Briar was right about Alistair’s self-destructiveness. But what she said has me thinking I’m the same way.
I don’t like pondering the inner workings of my heart—before we went up that mountain, I’d have sworn I didn’t have one. The fact that I’m willing to consider the possibility that I have self-destructive tendencies is proof that Briar has changed me. The question is whether or not those changes are temporary, or permanent.
Temporary. They have to be. Once she’s out of my life, I’ll be?—
Devastated.
The word slices through my mind, my heart, my soul. I rub my aching forearm absently. The thick, puckered scar tissue protests mightily at the abuse it endured today. Too much strain on a newly-healed wound, even one healed with magic.
Why would a monster come here?
Monsters have hunted humans of Belterre ever since we arrived in this beautiful, deadly land centuries ago. We may have worshiped the fae as gods, but that didn’t stop us from driving them to the farthest reaches. They left behind their beasts and the dregs of magic my mother became addicted to while I was growing in her womb.
The gryphon came for her. Briar Rose.
Who is she, really? A lost Isanthian princess, yes. From all accounts, the Isanthian peninsula is a verdant, wealthy place, but full of magic the likes of which we in Belterre can hardly imagine. I’ve always avoided traveling there due to my hatred of all things magic.
But now I have to ask myself whether I’ve become addicted to the stuff in the form of one beautiful woman.
Briar
The last thing I want to do is sleep, but Alistair drags me to my room and locks me inside. There’s nothing else for me to do.
My frustration and annoyance have morphed into outright dislike of the Prince of Belterre.
While I was at the ball, my room’s windows have been bolted and boarded up against any further monster attacks. I unpin my hair and shove the dress off, dropping it on a chair for my maids to deal with whenever they return.
In my nightdress and wrapper, tucked into my overstuffed bed like the good girl I very much am not, I try and fail to lose myself in one of the books I borrowed from the library, a history of Belterre.
Flipping to the center, I’m startled to discover an illustration of myself. The artist has taken liberties with my appearance. My breasts are absurdly large. Obviously painted by a man.
The accompanying story is short and tells me little about my origins. No new clues to discover about myself. One impatient turn of the page rips a small tear in the paper. Embarrassed by the accidental damage, I contritely settle in to read properly.
Soon, the tome does its job and drops me into a restless sleep. I dream of claws and teeth and fangs, with Killian’s face and his sword hoisted high. But in my dream he isn’t fighting against them.
