Page 67 of Her Tortured Beasts

“What?” I breathe. “Wild Goddess!”

I reach for her and she pulls me into her arms, though I’m already taller than she is so I rest my cheek against her temple. “I’m so happy for you, Sissy. But…why don’t you look happy?”

“I am. Oh Xander, I am. I just worry, you know?” She reaches up to swipe at a tear.

“I think that’s normal—” I freeze because I’ve just seen the skin of her wrist.

Three finger-shaped bruises mar her skin like three marks of doom. I grab the offending wrist, an emotion I’ve never felt steadily growing within me.

“What is this?” My voice sounds like the scrape of a heavy boot.

“It’s nothing.” Selena pulls her wrist away, frowning at me. “It’ll fade to nothing by tomorrow.”

But this rage inside me will not. “Who did that? Was it one of the servants? I will flay him. Or her.”

Selena pulls down her long sleeve to hide the bruise. “It’s literally just an accident. No harm, no foul. Drop it, Xander.”

“Anyone who touches my sister deserves a slow death, Sissy. Don’t forget that. Ragnar would know that too.”

She rolls her eyes and swings around to loop her arm through mine. “As I said before, let’s talk of happy things.”

Chapter 38

Xander

Hands of Gold — Peter Hollens

Flying used to give me a sense of peace. Now, there is only agony. When I leave Francesca in our marital bed and set into the night, she’s not happy with me, protesting and demanding things, but I can’t fucking care about that when there’s a constant rage in my mind.

We’d said our vows, burned and healed each other in the sacred ways of our ancestors, and that would just have to be enough for now.

I head up to the family dragon launch pad. It’s the highest balcony of the castle, a massive open-air turret made exactly for the perch of one dragon with space for them to spread their wings and launch off the castle from a height, directly into the sky.

It’s raining tonight when I get in there, a cooling drizzle that is like a balm to my hot skin. I rip off my pants, toss them aside, and shift.

Expanding under violent energy feels good, and stretching out my wings feels even better. I was a creature born to fly, bornto tear through the wind and let my majesty be known to all beneath me.

And yet I want to tear apart the very sky. I want to sink my claws into the world and shred it to pieces. My dragon toys with my mind like it’s his personal Rubix Cube, flashing through fragments of foreign images, sounds and smells on a near constant basis. They are from other times and places, maybe even from other worlds.

Sometimes they are images of death, sometimes many bodies, writhing together in a rhythm I’ll never understand.

He roars in my mind as he relives these moments. Pure furore. Pure pain. Pure yearning. It’s agonising and irritating all in one.

But this ismyprice to pay for what I did. And by the Wild Gods, I will pay it with joy. I fly hard and fast, high into the sky until the air is so thin there’s no oxygen for my lungs. At this point, I plummet, tucking my wings in and making my nose a spear, keeping my eyes open so I can see the expanse of the darkness as I fall through it.

But even the roar of the air past my ears and the oxygen deprivation can’t drown out the living nightmare in my head.

Only one thing had done that today.

Swearing bloody murder, I head back to the estate, rearing up and backflapping to slow my speed so I don’t go crashing into my family home. I extend my claws out, finding a perch on the massive black stone bar that runs the circumference of the platform. Shifting into my human form, I wait until I’ve shrunk down to my human height before stepping off and striding to the stairs at the centre of the tower.

The rain beats harder still deep into the night, drumming away even the sound of Mozart in my ears. I don’t bother with my pants, leaving them there for the servants to pick up on their morning sweep. There’s a towel rack as I exit, and I dry myselfoff before marching back into the castle proper, naked. The sound of the rain penetrates all the way inside, and I’m thankful for that thunderous, regular hum.

It makes me want to kill something just a little less.

My bedroom is dark when I enter it, rubbing my temples to try to dispel the images of a bloody sword fight flashing through my mind’s eye. Although everyone looks different, I recognise them all, and I know the tall blond man who took a killing blow for his brother was me.

Exhaling black smoke, I close the door behind me, surveying the pitch-black room. Francesca is fast asleep on her side of the bed, the sheet tucked right up to her chin and Spawn’s cage is covered for the night as usual. Rain beats on the double window panes, which have been left open, suiting me just fine. Beads of rain water trickle down the window, their reflection making a pattern across the bed. Hoping I don’t wake her up, I slip under the sheets.

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