King of Beasts

by Scarlett Kol

  At the far end of the circle, one of the guards took charge. He pulled his sword back behind his shoulder and yelled, charging toward my father. My stomach clenched, bile burning its way up my throat. He wasn’t just some monster to slay. Somewhere in there was my father.

  “Stop!” I shouted as I lurched forward past the line of guards, but my warning came too late.

  The guard swung the sword at my father. He dodged, the blade barely missing his torso. The guard swung again. Missed. But my father didn’t. He grabbed the guard’s arm in his clawed hand and dragged him off the ground, his feet kicking wildly as he screamed in fear. My father growled again and flashed his teeth, then tossed the guard across the square like a toy that no longer pleased him. People ducked as the guard’s body smashed into a fruit cart. Crates splintered with a crack. Melons and dragon fruits splattered across the cobblestones.

  The next guard in line took his turn, running at my father screaming his battle cry. His body landed two stalls away, spilling bolts of fabric into the street.

  “Attack!”

  The guards inched closer around my father tightening the circle. He spun around, the fur along his back rippling as his shoulders hunched preparing for a fight. They charged. All at once and from every angle.

  “Stop,” I screamed again but no one heard me over the noise of the battle. My knees weakened. All the strength in my body drained as I watched the havoc. Helpless to stop the battle that had already begun.

  Swords clanged as they clattered to the ground. More bodies flew, blood poisoning the fountains and staining the square. My father yelped as the guards clambered over him, dragging him down. His massive arms swung out, swatting at them like bees. Guards fell, one after the other, none strong enough to take down the beast.

  My insides twisted beneath my skin. Each blow hitting me hard, but also providing relief that this nightmare might end soon. The image Veda’s father painted in my mind of the ferocious malevolent beast took form in front of me, but he didn’t know him like I did. His kindness. His strength. His ability to care about his people. This was not the ending for a king, no matter what his form.

  I pushed my way through the onlookers onto the battlefield. Pieces of armor lay sprinkled between the aching guards, writhing on the hot stony ground. I picked up a sword, the weight of it heavier than I expected, or maybe the responsibility of it simply weighed more than the iron to make it?

  My father jabbed his elbow out sending the last of the guards crashing into the crowd, then howled loud at the sun. I gripped the sword with both hands, bringing the blade up in front of me, and took a cautious step forward.

  “King Ezra,” I shouted, as I eased another step closer. “Look at me.”

  The beast ignored my plea, stomping around and scratching the claws on his feet across the ground.

  “Ezra Balthazar Aldric. Look at me.” No response. It’d worked for my mother, but maybe he was too far gone to recognize himself anymore. Maybe he was now more beast than man. Which meant that only one thing left for me to do.

  I tightened my grip on the hilt of the sword. All those lessons in fencing and combat better not fail me now. Lessons the man I poised to kill, had paid for. Lessons he’d invested time in helping me perfect, spending hours going over the ideal form and stance. Lessons I’d never be able to thank him for.

  A thickness built in my throat as the world blended into a watery haze. I swallowed, nearly choking on my own guilt as tears spilled to the bloody ground. I mumbled a prayer under my breath as I inched closer.

  “Don’t make me do this, Dad.”

  The beast cocked his head my direction and stilled, his stare moving from me to the sword and back again. He let out a pained roar, stumbling back a few feet.

  “Dad, can you hear me in there?”

  I lowered the weapon to my side, his eyes following my every movement. He grabbed the sides of his head and moaned, surveying the carnage throughout the square.

  “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay, Dad. Just come back to the castle. We’ll figure out a way to break the curse and everything will be okay again. I promise.” I held out my hand, my arm shaking.

  He hung his head, a sad whimper emitted from deep in his throat. He looked at me, his eyes soft. Deepest brown, warm and familiar, his eyes, my father’s, not the beast’s. He took a lumbering step toward me. Voices gasped in my periphery, but I forced myself to stand tall and tried to steady my hand.

  “That’s it. You can do this. Let’s go home.”

  Argh! Metal glinted in the sun, the flash hitting me before my ears registered the scream. The heel of a fist slammed into my chest pushing me down onto my back, my head nearly smacking against the cobblestones. A guard, already bloodied from the first round of the fight, rose up and slashed at my father. An agonizing yelp rang out as the blade sliced my father near his shoulder. The fur darkened and he howled louder, throwing his paw over the wound. The guard struck again, cutting across my father’s thigh, the silver sword marked by my father’s red blood.

  I pushed to my feet and reached for my fallen sword, but my father struck first, digging his claws into the guard’s shoulder and lifting him off the ground. The guard screamed. I froze.

  “Dad, stop! Don’t!”

  My father shook him like a doll and threw him down. The hollow sound of bones cracking as they shattered pulsed through me, moving through the crowd, everyone around taking a fraction of the guard’s pain. His eyes closed, the light in them already gone.

  I buckled over, gripping my knees, as I retched, the devastating terror too much to contain any longer. I wiped the back of my sleeve over my mouth and stood shaky on my feet, my father’s cries calling to me.

  He’d stumbled across the square and fallen into a heap on my mother’s chessboard, the pieces scattered like the wrecked guards around him. Thick pools of blood gathered near his leg and his shoulder painting the white squares of the board a sickening shade of death.

  I rushed to his side and fell to my knees, laying my hands on his leg wound. The sword had cut deep, strips of fur completely gone where the skin beneath lay sliced open. He winced beneath my touch, but let me apply pressure to try and slow the bleeding.

  “I need guards,” I yelled to anyone who dared to move. My voice cracked. “We need to bring the king back to the castle.”

  He rolled away from me and sat up, pulling his legs into his chest.

  “You need to stop moving. Lay still until we can get you stitched up.”

  He shook his head and started to rock back and forth on his toes. Tears poured from my eyes. The broken beast before me splintering my heart into pieces with his mammoth paws.

  “Please, Dad. I can’t lose you. I need you.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder, but he jerked away, his stiff fur passing through my fingers.

  “Please.”

  He grabbed the white knight from beside him and smashed it into the ground, shards spraying out in all directions. He grabbed the black queen and pulled it into his lap.

  “Enough, Ezra,” a voice called.

  He stared past me and I glanced over my shoulder. Mom appeared in the square, with a squadron of guards following close behind. She clamped her hand over her mouth as she inspected the aftermath of the chaos my father had caused. She closed her eyes and clenched fists at her sides.

  “It’s time to go home,” she continued, but the fear in her voice shadowed the command.

  My father’s body slumped, his massive frame compacting as small as he could make himself, a glaze of shame washing over his face.

  I held my hand out to him again. “Let’s go.”

  His face hardened, the last whisper of his humanity draining from his expression and replaced with a stare of cold granite. He ripped the queen from his lap and ground it into the chessboard, it’s pieces mixing with the destroyed knight. He rolled his head back, mouth wide open in a growl as his pointed teeth glistened in the sun. I retracted my hand and he pushed me onto my
back, pinning me beneath him. My heart pounded as I searched for any part of him I could hang on to and pull him back, but there was nothing left. He roared again. I covered my face with my arms and waited for the pain the sink in, hoping he’d make death come quick and not make me suffer.

  His burning breath brushed across my skin, and I screamed, my vocal cords shredding as the sound ripped up my throat. But the shadow of him faded, as he pushed up on his hind legs. I glanced through my fingers as he gnashed his teeth and stared down at me. I pushed myself up on my arms, but they trembled and I fell back down to the stone.

  “Dad,” I whispered.

  He roared. My hair blew back from his breath. But then he turned away from me and ran toward the street and up the hill.

  Guards tried to block his path but he whipped them out of the way. More casualties. More bodies cast aside. He bounded faster, falling to all fours and picking up speed until no human would be able to catch him.

  Mom rushed to my side and helped me up. Her glassy eyes wept, as she shivered and wrapped her arms around me. “I’m so sorry, Fallon. You know it wasn’t him. Don’t you?”

  I pulled her closer, the familiar scent of home rolling from her hair, but not giving me the serenity it usually did.

  “We’ve lost him, Your Majesty.” The decorated guard who’d greeted me with Alizeh marched up beside us, his jaw tighter and more dire than he’d been in the hopeful glow of morning. “He disappeared into the forest and headed up towards the mountains. I’ve sent men in after him, but it will be difficult to find him in that terrain.”

  Mom’s body collapsed in my arms. “Keep looking. Don’t stop until you find him.”

  I rubbed my knuckles along her spine as her tears bled through my shirt, soaking my skin. “They’ll find him.”

  “Maybe.” She looked up at me, completely shattered, her heart broken. “But what will happen if they do?”

  She wiped her hands over her face and pulled away from me, then slipped off to address the remaining guards. Always the strong one.

  I gazed out over the mess in the square. The broken market stalls. Banners tattered, benches splintered, and the mass of injured bodies barely moving on the ground. The chessboard splashed with my father’s blood already drying and seeping into the concrete. Every emotion hit me at once. Rage. Despair. Hopelessness. Until they burned so hot in my veins I boiled over into numbness. I kicked the black king still standing on its stained square. A jolt of pain shot up my leg as it tumbled over and lay among the other casualties.

  Behind me someone clapped, slow and mocking. I whirled around, Harding and Kalmin stood with Dormand and the others from Takka’s, their faces haunted and stark.

  Dormand stopped clapping and stepped out from the rest of the group.

  “Are you going to try and tell us there’s no beast now, prince?”

  Continue the adventure in Heir of Beauty

  After the Happily Ever After…

  There is more to these stories. You want to know what happens next right? Fast forward eighteen years…

  Pick up book one now

  PREQUEL

  SLEEPING BEAUTY

  1. Queen of Dragons

  2. Heiress of Embers

  3. Throne of Fury

  4. Goddess of Flames

  LITTLE MERMAID

  5. Queen of Mermaids

  6. Heiress of the Sea

  7. Throne of Change

  8. Goddess of Water

  RED RIDING HOOD

  9. King of Wolves

  10. Heir of the Curse

  11. Throne of Night

  12. God of Shifters

  RAPUNZEL

  13. King of Devotion

  14. Heir of Thorns

  15. Throne of Enchantment

  16. God of Loyalty

  RUMPELSTILTSKIN

  17. Queen of Unicorns

  18. Heiress of Gold

  19. Throne of Sacrifice

  20. Goddess of Loss

  BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

  21. King of Beasts

  22. Heir of Beauty

  23. Throne of Betrayal

  24. God of Illusion

  ALADDIN

  25. Queen of the Sun

  26. Heiress of Shadows

  27. Throne of the Phoenix

  28. Goddess of Fire

  CINDERELLA

  29. Queen of Song

  30. Heiress of Melody

  31. Throne of Symphony

  32. Goddess of Harmony

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND

  33. Queen of Clockwork

  34. Heiress of Delusion

  35. Throne of Cards

  36. Goddess of Hearts

  WIZARD OF OZ

  37. King of Traitors

  38. Heir of Fugitives

  39. Throne of Emeralds

  40. God of Storms

  SNOW WHITE

  41. Queen of Reflections

  42. Heiress of Mirrors

  43. Throne of Wands

  44. Goddess of Magic

  PETER PAN

  45. Queen of Skies

  46. Heiress of Stars

  47. Throne of Feathers

  48. Goddess of Air

  URBIS - Coming soon

  49. Kingdom of Royalty

  50. Kingdom of Power

  51. Kingdom of Fairytales

  52. Kingdom of Ever After

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  A note from the author

  The Kingdom of Fairytales authors hope you enjoyed this new way of reading. We don’t think that a series has ever been set with one chapter a day thought a whole year before and we hope we did it justice.

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  The Kingdom of Fairytales Team

  These books would not be written without a great many people. Here is our team:

  Many thanks to those who have made this possible.

  Thank you to Rhi Parkes without whom, this series would never have come about.

  Thanks to all the authors.

  J.A. Armitage, Audrey Rich, B. Kristen Mcmichael, Emma Savant, Jennifer Ellision, Scarlett Kol, R. Castro, Margo Ryerkerk, Zara Quentin, Laura Greenwood and Anne Stryker

  Also thank you to our amazing Beta team

  Nadine Peterse-Vrijhof, Diane Major, Kalli Bunch and Stephanie Pittser.

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  About J.A. Armitage

  J.A lives in a total fantasy world (because reality is boring right?) When she's not writing all the crazy fun in her head, she can be found eating cake, designing pretty pictures and hanging upside down from the tallest climbing frame in the local playground while her children look on in embarrassment. She's travelled the world working as everything from a banana picker in Australia to a Pantomime clown, has climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and the bottom of the Grand Canyon and once gave birth to a surrogate baby for a friend of hers.

  She spends way too much time gossiping on facebook and if you want to be part of her Reading Army, where you'll get lots of freebies, exclusive sneak peeks and super secret sales, join up here

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  Somehow she finds time to write.

  About Scarlett Kol

  Sc
arlett Kol is the best-selling author of dystopian, paranormal and fantasy novels for young adults. Born and raised in Northern Manitoba, she grew up reading books and writing stories about creatures that make you want to sleep with the lights on. As an adult, she's still a little afraid of the dark. Scarlett lives just outside Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

  Scarlett is also the author of Wicked Descent along with many more.

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