Isabeau—my Isabeau—lay in a massive bed, her glorious auburn hair spilled across pillows like liquid fire. A fur blanket covered her, but not completely. One perfect shoulder remained exposed, bearing clear marks of teeth. Not human teeth, butthe savage bite of a beast. Her expression in sleep was one of contentment, of peace.
And wrapped around her, one massive arm draped possessively across her waist, lay a monster.
The creature defied description. Part wolf, part lion, part bull with those wicked horns curling from its head. Fur covered its massive body, rich brown with honey highlights that caught the moonlight streaming through the broken window. Its face, relaxed in sleep, still bore the savage features of a predator. A snout filled with teeth that could tear flesh from bone, eyes shut now but surely bestial when open.
Between its legs, visible where the blanket had shifted, I could see its member. Still semi-erect, glistening with evidence of recent use. The beast had claimed her, had taken what was mine, had sullied my perfect prize with its monstrous seed.
Rage exploded in my chest, a roar building that I barely managed to contain behind clenched teeth. I would kill it. I would mount its head above my mantle. I would wear its fur as a cloak and fashion drinking cups from its horns.
As if sensing my murderous thoughts, Isabeau stirred in her sleep. Her eyes fluttered open, disoriented at first, then focusing with sudden clarity on the ghostly form hovering at the foot of her bed.
Her scream split the night, startling the beast awake beside her. It rose with alarming speed, massive body positioning itself protectively between Isabeau and the perceived threat. His amber eyes, so like Isabeau’s, fixed on my spirit with intelligence no animal should possess.
“Return,” I commanded, unable to watch another moment of this abomination. “You’ve shown me enough.”
The spirit streaked back through the window, across the dying forest, and into my room within moments. She hovered beforeme, her eternal suffering briefly forgotten in her confusion at being recalled so abruptly.
I placed the mirror face-down on the chest, severing the connection and sending her back into her prison. My hands shook with fury, my breath coming in short, harsh gasps as I struggled to control the murderous impulse coursing through my veins.
So. Not just a beast, but an intelligent one. A creature that could think, could plan, could deliberately take what belonged to me. And Isabeau… my beautiful, innocent Isabeau had given herself willingly to this monster. The marks on her skin told that story clearly enough, as did the peaceful expression I’d glimpsed before she woke.
I’d been wrong. I’d assumed she needed rescuing, that she was a captive to be saved from mother nature. Now I understood she was something far worse. A willing whore to a beast, tainted by its touch, corrupted by whatever magic sustained it.
But I would have her still. I would cleanse her of the beast’s pollution. I would reclaim what was mine and make her forget she’d ever known any touch but my own.
My fingers found the silver medallion I kept hidden beneath my shirt—my grandfather’s amulet, bearing the sigil of the Dark Lord. I’d never used it, never called upon the powers my family had flirted with for generations. I’d hunted magical creatures, yes, but I hadn’t given my soul to darkness.
Not yet.
But for Isabeau, for the perfect beauty who had been promised to me by fate itself, I would cross that final line.
The bog witch waited in the northern marshes, her hut hidden among mists that never lifted. Legend claimed she served the Dark Lord directly, channeling his power into potions and curses for those brave or desperate enough to seek her out. My grandfather had visited her once, returning with knowledge thathad allowed him to bind this spirit to the mirror. The merchant learned too, and that’s why my grandfather had me turn him in. Only the noblest could know the dark arts.
Now I had to prepare to leave, where no mortal willing chose to go.
What might she give me, if I came bearing my family’s medallion and the promise of my soul?
I closed the chest, locking away the mirror for now. Its purpose was fulfilled. I knew where Isabeau was, knew what kept her from me. The rest would require darker, more potent magic than mere scrying.
“Soon,” I whispered to the empty room, imagining Isabeau’s face, her body, her submission. “Soon you’ll be where you belong. And your beast will adorn my wall, a permanent reminder of what happens to those who take what’s mine.”
Outside my window, the crescent moon rose and cold over the sleeping village, unaware of the darkness stirring in their midst. By this time tomorrow, I would be on the road north, seeking powers no sane man would dare invoke.
For Isabeau, I would embrace insanity gladly.
twenty-two
Isabeau
The fire had burned low enough to feel like company rather than heat, which suited me fine. I had Beast’s spine beneath my fingertips and Charlotte’s handwriting swimming before my tired eyes. And for the first time since Papa had been swallowed by these woods, I felt something close to settled.
Beast’s light snore rose and fell in rhythm with the shifting embers. He’d stretched himself across the hearthrug with the boneless authority of a creature that understood, on someancient cellular level, that the best spot in any room was the one closest to warmth. His massive tail curled lazily over one paw. The honey-brown of his fur glowed amber where the firelight touched it, and I couldn’t help running my palm down the ridge of his back in a slow, idle stroke. He didn’t stir. Just snored a little louder, which I chose to take as a compliment.
I’d learned his rhythms the way you learn the hours of a house. Not by studying them but by living inside them long enough that they became your own.
Mornings belonged to the beast. Not cruelly, not with menace, but with the frank simplicity of a creature that hadn’t yet found the man beneath the fur. He came to me in those hours with something freshly hunted draped across his jaws, dropping it at the hearth’s threshold like an offering, his eyes watchful and direct in the way of animals who hadn’t yet remembered to be anything else.
I’d come to love those mornings, actually. There was something that mattered about the way he’d lower his head when I reached for him, that moment when my touch pulled him half an inch closer to whoever he’d been before the curse took him. Like I was a candle held near something cold.
