Page 36 of Beautiful Beast

I swallowed. “Yes.”

A step closer. “And I’m sure you understand all the reasons why my… failure to do so will cause… friction.”

Allowing myself, I smiled a little. Every possibility and argument had already flowed through my head. How it might play out if they had killed me when they meant to. How it might play out if they killed me now. How it would go if they sent me back alive. “Yes. And I know you still should, even if I don’t want to die.”

His eyes warmed a fraction, but his voice was soft. “I don’t want to kill you,” he murmured. “I’m not even sure my dragon will permit it. But do you have any arguments as to why we should keep you alive?”

“Likely nothing you haven’t already thought of.”

Another step closer, and I couldn’t think with him so close. He smelled of smoke on a summer evening. The scent melded with the warmth of soft breezes. “Try.”

“Why?” I asked honestly. “Whatever you decide, it will have nothing to do with me.”

Sirrus laughed roughly behind me, closer than I realized he’d been. “On the contrary, I think it might have much to do with you.”

My fear turned to frustration that boiled over. I turned and walked away from them toward one of the windows before whirling back. “Then choose. If it has nothing to do with me or everything to do with me, you need to choose because—stars, I am dead either way, so please decide if it will be you that delivers the killing blow.”

All three dragons’ gazes fixed on me with a sharpness that stole my breath.

Once, Taia told me when she first met Baris every time they locked eyes, it felt like her heart stilled. Was that what this was? I reached up to scratch Varí behind his ears and hide the shaking in my fingers.

They were beautiful. Handsome. More than any human I’d ever seen in my life. My mind and body responded even though I knew they shouldn’t. But none of that mattered if they were about to put their claws through my chest or send me back to the nightmare of a marriage they rescued me from.

It might not matter even then.

I watched Endre inhale before he narrowed his eyes. “If I flew you back to Rensara this very moment, they would kill you?”

No. They wouldn’t. But the result would be the same. “I did not say that.”

Endre stood and stalked toward me. The plain shirt he wore stretched and bunched as he moved. I couldn’t claim to have noticed the fit of men’s clothing before, but I did now. They all wore plain clothing. Nothing that belied their status as heirs to the most powerful race in existence. “When we spoke before you told me you would not return to his side. Have you changed your mind?”

I shook my head. “Never. Nothing has changed.” My words got caught in my throat and sounded more like a hiss. “You may send me back. I will not live on after.”

That was the truth. If they sent me back, the potion to keep a child of Andaros out of my womb would not be enough. He would trap me in a gilded cage, his wild possession driven by my rescue and the value of what they traded away to save my life.

By saving my life, they turned me into a treasure. And though Andaros would rail against it, he and dragons weren’t as dissimilar as he wanted to believe. It was well known that dragons loved treasure more than anything else, and though I was questioning that knowledge now that I stood in their city, Andaros loved treasure too. His definition of it was merely different.

“Then explain, Princess.” Zovai said, turning away from me. “How exactly are you to die?”

“I am a potion master,” I said. “Or would have been had I continued to learn. My father thought it merely the dabbling of a woman, but it was not. The night before the wedding, using that knowledge, I ensured that I would never bear Andaros a child. If I am returned to him, once all the promises that have been bargained are resolved, I shall make sure he has nothing else of me either.”

Endre whirled, golden dragon eyes blazing. “You would take your own life rather than return to him?”

My voice rose. “No, I would take my own life rather than be owned by him.” I closed my eyes, allowing myself to accept the truth I’d forced away this whole time with false hope. My voice shook, but I kept it level. “My life is forfeit. It was when the marriage contract was signed. And I made my peace with that. But now, no matter what happens, whether you send me back or keep me here, they will come for you. My life—my existence—will bring violence down on both dragons and humans, and I am not too proud to admit that my life is not worth the cost of another war. The war continuing. However you want to view it.

“Do I want to die? No. Of course not. I doubt there is a single living thing—” I sucked in a breath. “My life has never been my own. I’ve tried to take as much for myself as I could, but it’s the truth. And the moment the agreement was signed, it was done. Marriage to him would have been death in enough ways. The possession our reuniting would spark in Andaros is not something I will survive, so I will make one last choice that is my own.”

“You begged me,” he snarled, coming close. “You begged me to ruin you so that you would live, and then you would choose this?”

“I did not beg.”

“Say that all you like. We both know it isn’t true.” His eyes dragged over my neck. My lips. All the places he’d touched. Where I wanted him to touch me more, and I was pretty sure he did too.

“I asked you because it is the only way he would throw me away. If you give me back to him whole, I am nothing better than a prize. I’ll be his hoard. Locked away for the rest of my life to make sure I will never be taken again. I would rather die than live like that. So yes. I will beg you and then choose it, because I am still not ruined, my lords.”

The very air in the room shifted, warming.

“That can change.”

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