AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My claws scraped at the stone floor. He meant well, but his words gnawed at my insides. If I had my full power back, as well as my rightful place in the Sun Court, I would be next in line for the throne. But I had grown somewhat accustomed to the solitary life here at Starfell.
When Hector stepped forward, he placed a tentative hand on my massive shoulder. “If you cannot resolve to do this, let her decide,” he muttered.
I lifted my head.
“Do not hide yourself from her. Be her husband. Let her see you as you are. And let her decide whether or not she will love you. If she falls in love before the month expires, you are free. If she does not, then in a month’s time, we can return her to her family and then she will be free—and we can pray Fabian ignores her existence.” He lifted his brows in a knowing way.
His reasoning pulled at me. I wanted him to be right. But every woman who’d ever learned the truth about me had fled. Every last one. Talia provided one final chance.
Sensing my capitulation, Hector repeated, “She is nothing more than the sacrifice you need. Nothing more, brother. Win her heart and send her on to the First and Last. Perhaps he even sent her to you to set you free.”
My bones ached, and the amber color of my magic filled my vision briefly, as if the ancient power in my veins yearned to be let loose. She could set it free.
With a furious roar, I dismissed my younger brother to await the change. Magic and willpower twisted and warred within me; I desperately wanted to unleash the power I’d been born to but had never fully known. In seconds, the change knocked my body to the floor.
My chin hit the stone first, then my temple. I twisted, curled my knees into my stomach, and shut down the part of my mind that registered pain.
For a minute, I lay there, breathing hard. The clothes I’d worn last night still smelled faintly of citrus from having held Talia for so long. I’d not had time to change before sunrise.
Hopping up, I hurried toward the waterfall at the edge of the cavern, stripped off my clothes, and stood under the water until every vestige of animal had been rinsed from my skin.
Only then did I don my best riding suit and stride toward the barn. It is for her protection. I had nearly convinced myself by the time I crossed the garden. She doesn’t know the dangers that lurk on my property. Or what awaited her should she cross the boundary of my estate grounds.
Quiet footsteps on moss-covered stones alerted me to someone following me.
“Ah, Everence.”
My cousin flashed a neat smile and bobbed a curtsy. Not necessary, but she never omitted manners, even to a beast.
Her pale hair glowed in the quickly darkening night. She’d picked up a few nettles on her skirts, and a butterfly had discovered her braids and refused to quit them, like they might possess some sweet nectar yet.
“How is she?” I coughed to clear the roughness from my voice.
Everence’s eyes traveled almost longingly toward the stables. “She is as strong as you said.”
The unspoken reprimand landed heavy on my chest. I glanced at a rogue rose bush, all thorns and few blooms. Everence had a soft spot for mortals. “This is my last chance…”
“You brought her here to save yourself.”
My mouth turned down. “I do not wish to remain cursed forever.”
My cousin’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t look at me. “She doesn’t deserve to die.”
“But I deserve to remain a bear, forever robbed of my magic, and eventually stripped of my capacity to think as a man?”
Her face fell slightly, and she shook her head.
“Hector says to let her decide,” I added.
“Hector would tell you anything to stop your pain. He’s a good brother, but that doesn’t make him a good man.” Her ice blue eyes finally landed on me, heavier than anvils. “She wants to know you, but if you go to her now, you are endangering her.”
I slid both hands down my face, as if I could wash away my sins. But when I looked up, my angry cousin still stared at me. A gruff sigh escaped me. “Hope is poison, Ev. I drank it, and I reacted, just as Fabian planned.”
“Do not shift the blame onto him,” she snapped. “You saw an opportunity, and you took it. Do not claim he is the one who made you a beast.”
Storming forward, I could no longer contain my buried rage…and my shame. “And what? Is one mortal life of more value than my own? You would see me suffer eternally, when there is a possible end to my pain?” I recited Hector’s words.
Already, the sting of those words gnawed at my senses, like a venom eating away at the edges of my sanity. Three hundred years of weaseling out a justification for my actions did not, in the end, suffice. My cousin said nothing, but she also didn’t pull her eyes away from mine. She was right, after all. In her searching gaze, I heard every word of rebuke that ever had been or ever would be spoken, playing softly in my mind, the voices of a thousand demons reminding me what I was.
