Page 96 of Her Tortured Beasts

She’s silent with shock. I don’t know why, because she’s done nothing to hide it tonight. Or any other night.

“When you would not consummate the marriage, he offered…and I accepted.”

I snort. “Don’t think this will somehow protect you. He will use you for your body, and then when he tires of the novelty, he’llreturn to the arms of one of his favoured mistresses. That’s how it’s always been.”

Her voice twists with fury. “You have no right to speak of such things! Not after what you did!”

I rise to my feet. “Where is the key?”

She reaches for the fine chain around her neck and pulls out the key from between her breasts. When she throws it, I snatch it out of the air and unlock the shackles, placing them carefully on the table.

My power returns like a tired candle spluttering back to life. I have to funnel my magic up and into my empty eye sockets. It pools there for a second, creating new eyeballs as my eyelids pop over them. I see white light first before that fades away and the darkened room comes into view, aglow with only the light from the embers of the fireplace.

Francesca stands frowning and defensive before me, a fist holding the edges of her robe together.

But I’m distracted by something over her shoulder.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the gilded mirror on the opposite wall. Suddenly, I don’t know the man who stares back at me. Perhaps I never knew him. Unbidden, my hand reaches up to touch the skin under my right eye. The fine scars made by my father’s claws. The old ache pulses within my sockets. Sometimes I still get phantom pains, but most days I don’t notice them.

“He should have ended it that day, you know,” I say faintly. “No one would have stopped it. But it wasn’tenoughfor him. The pain he inflicts is always calculated. And he thought it would be a slow, agonising death that lasted years. That was his…hope.”

Then Scythe and Savage had found me lying hopelessly in the rain. And they changed everything. Scythe introduced me to Eko, and the Greenland shark had taught me how to see. I’dbeen a useless student at first, but eventually, under the patience of both sharks, I’d learned.

I never knew beasts could be patient like that. That males could be gentle and understanding of the nuances of a teenager in pain.

Then years later I find out that he is mate to Aurelia’s mother. That knowledge had shaken me, that night on the beach when Athena Boneweaver had died in Eko’s arms.

My mentor, the beast who had given me the greatest gift also had a regina. And he’d grieved for her loss like he loved her.

“He did what he thought was right at the time,” Francesca says through gritted teeth. “It was his right as a father.”

I’d almost forgotten she’s still standing there. So she’d heard the story of my eyes being taken, likely from gossip, because none of the servants had reported her asking the question in her detailed interrogation of them.

“It’s also the responsibility of a father to protect his offspring,” I say in that dead voice.

“Do not speak ill of him when he took you back in,” she says, lip curling in contempt. “He didn’thaveto take you back.”

And the price he’d asked was for me to curse myself. My dragon unfurls his wings, snorting in distaste. With my power back, he glares at me, and those fragments of memories from times long past flicker through my mind once again.

Torment. That’s all it wants from me. Except a dead man feels nothing.

I turn away and head to the entrance of the suite.

“Where are you going?” she demands.

“I’m going to patrol our lands,” I say. “I’ll be ready to leave at dawn, as you asked.”

Chapter 54

Xander

8 years ago

The beach is cold and I clutch the sides of my jacket together as I stumble over a soft mound of sand.

“Fuck!” I cry.

“Here, let me?—”

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