Page 116 of Her Feral Beasts

She asked me once what I saw when I looked at her when I tore her protections down. Power prowls under her skin, heavy and deep. She is a beast of a different kind, but the pieces of herself are disjointed. As if she holds two magnets apart and is straining under the tension.

A part of me wonders what power she would hold if she just fully embraced those segments and let them come together.

I think then we would have a truly dangerous person of a kind we’ve never seen. It’s alluring to me, that wild, covert strength, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to steep in her presence. She’s successfully covered the mark I gave her on her neck with makeup, but I canfeelit there on her skin, and gives me a primal satisfaction I’ve never known was possible.

But it will be the closest I come to claiming her. Which is to say, not at all. She will never be mine and I will never be hers. That one thing is essential, however madly it makes my shark thrash.

That part of me is also a bit annoyed that Lyle gets to sit next to her. But if not me, better him than anyone else.

I watch Aurelia’s head snap to the left where Halfeather’s people sit and I know she hasn’t expected to see them here. Let alone with accusing looks and tissues dabbing at their cheeks. It looks even worse that this supposed crime was done by one from their own order. Supposedly.

The moment Aurelia notices me, my animus thrashes about in triumph. She stiffens and blinks in surprise. I can’t believe Lyle didn’t warn her I’d be here, but he’s too busy muttering with his lawyer to notice Aurelia’s shock.

I pointedly look away, and after a moment, she does too. Do her shoulders relax an infinitesimal amount? Perhaps, but she’s not as intelligent as I thought if my presence herecalmsher even slightly. I still hold her life in my Goddess-forsaken hands.

The council’s tigress representative, Yana Chiu, the traditionally impartial, non-voting member, opens the trial and addresses the formalities of all those present for the minutes-keeper, a tigress typist at the front and centre of our bench. Yana then says, “Miss Aurelia Aquinas, you stand accused of one count of arson and one count of murder of the first degree of the eagle, Mr Charles Halfeather. How do you plead?”

Fontaine stands up. “My client pleads not guilty, Your Honour.”

The Council of Beasts run their murder trials quite differently from the human ones. For our kind, violent crimes are commonplace and so there’s less formality. Some of it comes from the Old Laws, where a beast was tried and their sentence passed within minutes. Executions were done on the spot, with little fanfare.

In these modern times, we need to convince the humans we are not monsters, so they’ve added extra processes for show. The victims always go first with their lawyers, calling forth their witnesses to be questioned.

So as the next two hours pass, the tides inside of me become a tsunami as I watch Mace and his lawyer dismantle Lia’s reputation piece by piece.

They call up Beak, who gives them only the information Mace has instructed him to give. Which is to say, nothing about Aurelia being there to do a healing for the beast in Halfeather’s dungeon. The dungeon is not mentioned at all and Beak speaks of the day Aurelia got married to Halfeather. I was there for that, in astral form, so I know he’s telling the truth about those parts.

Next, members of Aurelia’s family are interviewed. Her Aunt Charlotte, a reedy woman with Marilyn Monroe blond curls and crimson lipstick that I dislike instantly. She has an aura of needy pink and orange tinged with the dishonour of black.

“Why did you take Aurelia in, Mrs Naga?” the lawyer asks. Charlotte Naga is regina to two snakes, therefore they take her name.

“She was a troubled girl,” Charlotte says. “Mace thought a woman could get through to her and make her stable.”

“Did it work?”

“No, she only got worse.”

“In what way?”

“Going out all night and coming back at all hours smelling of cigarettes and… men. Humans and animalia both.”

I glance at Aurelia and see her ashen and trembling. Henry is frantically rubbing himself against her cheek to try and get her to calm down. Even without the black and grey smoke I see coiling around Charlotte, I know she’s lying through her teeth about these things. I’ve never smelled another man except Mace, her Uncle Ben and Beak on Aurelia, so I know she’s not been with a male for a year at least. An animus always knows that about his regina.

Mace is called up and I, along with the rest of the court, hang onto his every word.

“She was always spending so much,” Mace drones. “It was always cash, and we found pills and joints in her room. So eventually, I restricted her money.”

“I have here the evidence of said transactions.” Khaliso Naga holds up a stack of banking statements. “Miss Aquinas spent more than twenty grand in one month?”

“Correct,” Mace says smoothly.

Lyle’s typically stoic face becomes colder and colder as those of us who have observed Lia see what’s happening.

Mace is a man with an agenda. Even with his strong psychic shields, I can see the darkness coiling around him the same as I did that first day I met with him outside Halfeather’s burning mansion. I can see the shadow of his snake, which sits ready to strike at all times. It turns its hooded head, sees me and hisses threateningly. With defences like that, a beast has a lot to hide.

Of course he does, if he’s tracked down his daughter’s mates to help execute her.

Even if I cannot get a read on whether he is lying or telling the truth, the paper Khaliso is brandishing bears the characteristic brown-blue haze of forgery.

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