I have no idea what that means.
8
Kess
I couldn't kill him.
The thought follows me through dark corridors as I make my way back to his chambers, my bare feet silent on cold stone. I left the dagger on his floor when I ran—stupid, careless, the kind of mistake that gets people killed. But I couldn't stay in that room with his blood on the blade and his eyes full of something that looked too much like disappointment.
The memorial hall offered no comfort. Forty-seven names staring down at me while I apologized for my failure, for my weakness, for whatever broken thing inside me stayed my hand when I had him right there, arms spread, heart exposed, practically begging me to end it.
I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for my legs to go numb. Long enough for the candles to burn down to stubs and the shadows to shift and settle into new shapes. Long enough to realize I have nowhere else to go.
So I came back here. To his chambers. Because where else would I sleep—the floor of the memorial hall, curled up beneath the names of women I failed?
The door is unlocked, same as I left it.
I push it open expecting his golden eyes in the darkness, expecting his scent and his presence and maybe another confrontation I'm not ready for. Instead I find it empty. The fire has been built back up, flames crackling cheerfully in the hearth. Fresh candles burn on the mantle and the desk. The bed has been made with clean linens, turned down at the corner like someone is expecting me.
And on the nightstand, placed with deliberate care: the dagger I dropped, its blade cleaned of the blood I spilled.
Beside it, a folded piece of paper.
I cross the room and pick up the note, which is written in a sharp and angular hand, the penmanship of someone who learned to write centuries ago and never updated his style.
I've moved my sleeping quarters to the east wing. This room is yours for as long as you need it. The blade is yours too. Keep it close.
—R
No admonishments for trying to kill him. No demand that I never do it again. No mention at all of the fact that I held that blade to his chest and couldn't finish what I started.
Just... space. Given freely, without asking for anything in return.
I don't know what to do with that. It doesn't fit what I know of the Beast King and his many kills, what has been whispered about him in the village my entire life. This doesn't fit with the angry man who slashes open the throats of omegas who displease him. Nothing I've experienced from him fits the legends at all.
I set the note aside and pick up the dagger instead, turning it over in my hands. He cleaned it thoroughly—the blood is gone, the steel gleaming in the firelight. There's no evidence of my violence or my failure at all.
The blade disappears back into my boot. Its weight is familiar now. Comforting in a way it probably shouldn't be.
There's a copper tub in the bathing chamber, and when I check, the water is still warm—heated by some mechanism I don't understand, pipes running through the walls that must connect to a furnace somewhere below. Another small kindness I didn't ask for and don't know how to repay.
I strip off the nightgown and my worn-in boots, then lower myself into the water, hissing at the sting where heat meets healing wounds. As the warmth travels through my body, I use it to carefully unwrap the linen bandages wrapped around my hips.
The lantern light is dim but enough to see by as I examine what he did to me.
The puncture wounds on my hips have closed faster than they should have—pink and puckered, the skin around them tight and shiny with newness. I press my fingers against one and feel the wrongness of it immediately. The flesh beneath is harder than it should be. Tougher. Like scar tissue, but denser, almost like?—
Like hide. Like dragon hide.
I pull my hand away and stare at the wounds in the flickering light. They don't look infected. Don't hurt more than they should. If anything, it hurts less than a wound this deep has any right to hurt after only a day of rest.
But it's not healing normally. Something is happening beneath my skin, something I don't understand, and the not-knowing is worse than the wounds themselves could be.
I scrub myself clean with soap that smells like pine and some kind of floral herb like lavender. Wash the sweat and fear and failure from my skin until the water goes tepid and my fingers prune. By the time I climb out and wrap myself in a thick linen robe, exhaustion has settled into my bones like lead.
The bed is too soft. Too large. Too empty.
I sleep anyway, because my body demands it even if my mind won't quiet.
