Page 61 of Beautiful Beast

Idroal pressed their palm to the center of my chest and looked me in the eye. No lies and no manipulation lay there. “The three of you must choose. Not because of fear. Not because of anything or anyone else. But you must choose, and do it soon.”

“About Lena?”

They looked at me, and their non-answer was indeed an answer. Not just Lena. About everything. I nodded before I turned to go. My chest and heart still roiled with indecision and agony, but it had been tempered—barely, by a tingling of hope.

“Zovai.” I looked back with my hand on the door. “I have lived a thousand years. There are no accidents. Do you understand?”

I took the stairs three at a time on the way up.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

________

KATALENA

Belleo teased me a little, but it felt more like the teasing Helena would do than anything real. My stomach still fluttered, my heart still raced. What would have happened had she not walked in right then?

I shuddered, wanting to find out.

Some of the clothes my new friend had promised were in the room I’d been assigned, including a simple sleeping shift that was somehow still prettier than most of the things I’d worn in Rensara with the way it was formed of silver silk that looked like liquid moonlight.

She’d even made Varí more little pouches for his coin. He gathered them up into a pile and snuggled down in them so I could only see his eyes. I laughed and stroked the top of his head. “Will this be your new hoard? Pouches?”

One slow blink had me laughing even harder, because his answer was clearly no.

I doused the candle beside the bed, and for the briefest moment I wondered what would happen if I climbed the stairs again and knocked on their door. Would it open for me?

But that was exactly what Soza had done.

It wasn’t the same, but I wanted no comparison between the two of us. Even so, my body took a step toward the door like it might override my thoughts.

Stop it, Lena.

I crawled beneath the blankets, keenly aware of my skin against them. Aware that I was alone in the bed and for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be.

Since I was young, the idea of marriage had been abhorrent, because it had never been my choice. It was an inevitability. Here and now, though it might get me killed, it was my choice.

The way they looked at me?—

I had only ever imagined being looked at like that. Like you were the sole object in someone’s universe, and you were all that mattered.

Turning on my side, I stared out one of the windows into the darkness of the night sky. Speckled with a thousand stars that were different from the ones I knew back home.

I nearly laughed. Home.

Rensara was no longer my home. Even if I did go back, I would be bundled off to Craisos or killed. There was nothing left to lose.

Something unfurled in my chest.

I was never going back.

Any decisions I made were my own, and I didn’t care about the risk.

A shadow swooped past in the bright darkness, causing me to sit up. I went to the window. The shadow of a dragon moved out over the sea and curved back. In the light of the moon I spotted the glint of rubies.

It came back so fast, and right at me.

Was it not going to stop? If it didn’t, it would run straight into the mountain. Like an arrow, it tucked in its wings and came faster.

---