Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 74631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
There’s a crack in my chest, loud enough that it is audible. I hear it and I feel something breaking open inside me. Almost at the same time, a stick cracks behind me.
I turn, feeling the blood on my hands and face and soaked through my clothes. She stands in the yard, her hair blowing around her face and her skirt blowing about her legs.
Her eyes are wide, and she is not wearing her blindfold.
She stares, horrified, at the beaten and bitten bodies that lay around me in a blood-soaked circle, her mouth open in shock and her hands shaking at her sides. Her chest rises and falls far too quickly. Panic overwhelms her.
Before I can do anything, before I can even speak her name, her eyes snap to mine, and the terror in them grows.
THE PRINCE AND THE BEAST
For a few beats of my heart, we stare at each other as the night wind blows between us. Everything slows and dims around me as I watch the reality of what I am set in for my Elle. My beauty does not belong in the hell that this scene has become. The blood on the ground grows into larger, darker pools, spreading between the bodies. None of them utter a sound. They are all dead, so they will not be making any sound, ever again.
For a moment, I almost manage to convince myself that Elle and I are frozen statues, and that the magic has stopped time so I can hide what I’ve done. As if it would protect me. Or rather her innocence in all of this.
Would she believe me if I told her I didn’t feel the need to destroy anymore? I don’t feel the urge to hurt or bite or tear at or beat anyone at all. She tames the beast inside of me. It whines for her love more than the desire for vengeance. The beast’s rage has faded as quickly as it came when I saw the villagers by the gate. The chill of the night has blown all of it away, and my heartbeat has slowed. I know the danger has passed.
But not for Elle. The danger is standing right in front of her. My heart pounds as she looks at me. Even now, part of me cannot do anything but look back at her.
There’s not enough moonlight for my human eyes alone to be so aware of the color of Elle’s, but the beast’s senses do not need more than the moon. All they need is a small amount of light, and that is all he has, now that the torches the men brought are extinguished on the ground. Only one of them still burns and the flame is quickly turning to nothing more than an ember. I’m very aware of the bodies and their weapons strewn on the frost-covered ground and the last of the torchlight going out, but I am more aware of Elle.
The breeze blows a lock of her hair across her face, and I feel rather than see the final torch extinguish.
That is what seems to break the spell cast over both of us.
Elle bolts away, and I am jolted out of the stillness of the moment and back into the pain of my disappointment and my regret and of all the frustration I have kept inside me since the witch’s curse. It takes my body a few seconds to awaken again, giving her a small lead on me. I chase after her as she goes, her hair flying behind her and her skirts bunched in one hand.
Her attempts are futile. She is helpless in the face of what I am.
She tries to run through the gate, perhaps thinking she can run through the woods to the village. I let out a roar of despair and magic blows through the yard. The gate slams shut just before Elle reaches it. She turns on her heel, eyes wide and full of fear, and runs back toward me for a step before she cuts in another direction, parallel to the wall.
That pain and anger stir inside of me, the pain though…it's brutal. I knew this would happen.
The wall goes on for miles. She must know that she can’t escape by finding an edge. She must know that I have told the magic I do not want her to leave, and she will find it difficult to climb any part of the wall now.
She has to know it won’t be possible to escape, but she runs anyway. Heaving in air as tears stream down her face.
Another roar swells and dies in my throat as I chase after her. Letting her run. Letting her exhaust herself so when I catch her, the fight will be minimal.
This is my worst nightmare. I could not imagine a more terrible way for Elle to finally see me with her own eyes. There were things I could not hide from her, since she was my prisoner. I could not hide that I was willing to keep her prisoner. I could not hide that there were consequences she would not like if she were to flee.