Page 17 of Beautiful Beast

Fuck.

I ran. Maybe I could get to the stairs of the battlements. Maybe I could take refuge in a place so small even a dragon couldn’t access it.

The wall rose in front of me too soon. I didn’t need to look behind me to know it still stalked my steps, unhurried, like it knew it had me trapped.

Arrows laced with blue-green fire flew over my head. An attack meant to harm the dragon. Too little too late. “TO THE PRINCESS.” The cry went up across the gardens and walls, echoed in a hundred places at once.

I stumbled on gravel, scraping my hands as I fell and pushed upright again, fighting gravity, my strength sapped by the excess weight of the dress. But it was there. The wall. Stairs to the battlements.

They exploded.

Bits of stone hailed down on me, the force of the blue dragon’s claws shaking the earth and walls and air so thoroughly I collapsed. Where the stairs had once been was nothing but crumbling rubble. Destroyed. Keeping me contained.

I dragged myself to my feet, pushing to the wall, running still. The stone of it slapped under my hands, breaking my speed. I crashed to a stop and turned. There was nowhere else to go. Breath heaved in my chest, burning. There was nothing but stone at my back and death in front of me.

The red dragon came closer, not flinching at the soldiers racing toward it or the attacks on it. Not fighting back or sweeping them away the way he had with the King and Prince. They were nothing to it. For the first time, I realized why they were feared. Why Craisos, and then the rest of the humans, had chosen to kill them. Because they could kill us. The three of them could burn Rensara to the ground and be done with it, and we wouldn’t be able to fight back. The cannons weren’t ready. The scalefire wasn’t ready. There had been no dragon sightings in Rensara for over a hundred years. Why would we need that kind of protection?

Lowering its head, the dragon stared at me. Large, golden eyes took in everything from my torn dress and wild hair to the smudges of gold on my skin. The necklace hanging from my arm, my sleeve gone. He saw, and there was death in his eyes.

Me.

It was me.

I was the reason they came.

To kill the half of the alliance they could.

Destroy the hope and plan which could end their existence.

But he didn’t move to strike. He didn’t open his mouth and unleash his flames. He merely looked.

Snout so close I could touch it, I smelled brimstone and felt the heat gathering. They said dragon fire burned so hot it would feel like nothing. Simply a flash and waking up in the stars.

I could close my eyes and accept it. Know that I’d done everything in my power and it hadn’t been enough. Give in to the tears and the fear welling in my chest and know that it was for the best. To keep all of dragonkind safe from the monster of a Prince behind him.

Or I could try.

Pulling one shaking hand away from where it was plastered to the wall, I reached out. In spite of the growing heat and sweat slicking my skin, I reached, knowing I might burn anyway.

Everything else seemed far away. The soldiers and the shouts and the fighting. There was nothing else in this infinite moment but an immortal dragon and me.

I touched him. Palm flat in the center of his nose. I looked at him, too, between one golden eye and the other. Something beyond anger and violence sparked there, lurking. The truth of who they were. The truth I knew.

With a shudder, I showed him all of me. No masks and no fear. Just the plain truth. I was afraid, and if I died, I would accept it. But I saw him too. Saw the truth and knew it.

Something surged between us, fire and light and nothing at all but a sense of understanding. An echo it felt like I’d been hearing my entire life and just understood what it meant. But I didn’t understand it at all.

One word was all I had. “Please.”

Brightness flashed, and a boom followed—the first cannon loaded with the fire that poisoned and burned. If the dragons were to survive, they needed to leave. Now.

But the dragon before me didn’t move. He looked and looked and looked. A low growl shuddered across the ground. The glow of flame built between his jaws, searing heat wrapping around me and singeing the edges of my dress black.

“Please,” I said again.

His wings burst open, crashing into the curve of the wall on my right, shattering it into pieces. The wind nearly knocked me to the ground. I locked my feet in place, my hand still touching the warmth of his scales.

In one movement, he raised his head and spewed fire into the sky with a wild roar. I felt the heat even from the distance, flickering along my skin like it wanted to consume me from afar.

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