The Beast Prince

by Marian Perera

  She followed the length of his torso upward with her eyes. No hair on his chest, but dark stubble covered his jaw. Standing there naked, he might have been a perfectly sculpted statue, except a statue wouldn’t have any beard.

  With an effort, she dragged her gaze up and met his eyes.

  They were open, looking straight at her—though she didn’t know how he saw anything through them. The sockets were completely filled with mud of a deeper brown than his skin, liquid and flowing. It should have spilled out to fall thick and viscous on the floor, and yet it remained exactly where it was.

  One brow twitched as if he’d been waiting for a shocked reaction, and she hoped she hadn’t given him one. She’d heard about that trait, although she’d never been close enough to a Prince before to see it so clearly. But it made sense: if the eyes were the windows of the soul, the Princes’ eyes showed their true selves.

  Windows of the soil, more like.

  “That’s better.” He sounded as if the two of them were acquaintances having a chat. “I prefer seeing the faces of the people I’m talking to.” Then why is this place so dark? she wondered, but he went on. “And as long as you obey me, you have nothing to fear. You have my word.”

  The word of a Prince was worth less than the contents of a cesspit, so she only nodded, hoping he would take her silence as profound awe. He tilted his head as if to study her from a different angle through the pools of mud.

  “You don’t believe me.” He sounded more curious than annoyed, but from what she’d heard about the Princes, that could change at any moment. “Why not?”

  She searched for the best way to answer without insulting him. “Forgive me, Highness, but do I have reason to?”

  Dark brows drew together over those unsettling eyes, but there was no tension in the tall lean body, and she felt sure the frown was a look of concentration. “You think I’m trying to lull you into a false sense of security, maybe have you lead your people into a trap?” He shook his head, his expression relaxing. “You’re wrong. I intend to stay here for a while, so I’ll want more than these crumbs and rags. Killing your kind might rid my mother’s land of vermin, but it wouldn’t provide me with any long-term benefits.”

  Crumbs and rags. Thankfully her rifle was in the other room. What he’d said made her want to shove the barrel under his chin and fire, and reload, and never stop until he was dead or she ran out of ammunition, whichever came first.

  Or use the dynamite on him. That would kill her too, but she didn’t give a shit. She clenched her teeth until her jaws ached, willing herself to be calm, and then relaxed the muscles in her face one by one, enough that she could speak.

  “If you want more, I can go back to the town now and let them know,” she said.

  He laughed, but oddly, it didn’t remind her of David’s condescending smile. The Prince looked genuinely amused instead, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to laugh.

  “No, that won’t be necessary.” He sat on a bench, apparently indifferent to splinters against his bare skin. “You can go back tomorrow, provided you return to serve me.”

  “Are you certain, Highness? I wouldn’t want you to endure any hardship.”

  A trace of a grin lingered at one corner of his mouth, quirking it. “I’m touched by your concern, but living like a human for one night won’t kill me.” There was an undertone of mocking irony in his voice, but before she could do more than fume silently, he went on. “Get up. And since you’ll live here until I’m done with you, I need something to call you.”

  She took a little more time to rise, partly because it might have been disrespectful to bolt up, and partly because her knees were stiff. At moments like that, she felt all of her thirty-five years and more.

  “My name is Katsumi Ito,” she said.

  “Mine is Marus.” He studied her as if trying to look beyond her face to see her thoughts—or perhaps human eyes seemed equally strange to him. “Just Marus. I know I’m a Prince, so you don’t need to keep reminding me of it.”

  Kat nodded, not knowing what to say and not wanting to use his name either. She stood with her hands at her sides, waiting for him to give another order.

  “So what will you do now?” He leveled a look at her.

  “High—? I mean, I beg your pardon?”

  “If I wasn’t here and if you had to stay the night, what would you do?”

  If only you weren’t here. “I’d find a stable for my pony.”

  “There’s one outside. Might not be anything to eat, but a cistern’s beside it, and the rain sluices into that.”

  Kat was suddenly aware of how long it had been since she’d had a drink of water. She hadn’t been able to eat anything for breakfast either.

  “I’d rub the pony down and bring in water,” she said. “Build up the fire and have something to eat before I found a place to sleep.”

  “Go on with your work, then. You won’t be disturbed.”

  The high-handedness was only to be expected, but to be left in peace to take care of the pony and of herself was an unusual leniency. She took a step back, then another. He didn’t move, so she turned and left the dining room, the skin between her shoulder blades prickling as if he stared at her the entire time.

  She breathed more easily as she led the pony outside. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and there was just enough moonlight to find the stable. It smelled as musty and forgotten as the rest of the outpost, and the hay inside might have been there for years. Nothing even the pony would eat, but it made a good enough bed.

  She found a bucket when her shin clanged into it, and she filled that from a cistern sluice. After she took off the pony’s tack and harness, she let it drink, then rubbed it down as best she could, trying to think what to do about the dynamite.

  Finally she slid the stick into an inner pocket of her jerkin. If the Prince expected her to wait on him, that was reason enough to get close, and he’d even given her permission to build up the fire.

  There was nothing else to take when she went back in, except for her rifle. A gun could harm a Prince in flesh form, but in his earth form, it would be about as effective as firing into a mountain. Besides, the weapon was far too valuable to leave in the stable.

  After she refilled the bucket, she carried that and the saddle blanket back to the dining room. He was still seated, but the food she’d brought was laid out on the table before him. More candles had been lit, and they cast a warm glowing circle that held back a little of the gloom.

  Why had he done that? She hadn’t expected it of a Prince, especially one indulging himself with human servility, but best not to draw attention to it. Instead she set down the bucket and leaned her rifle against the wall.

  “You’ll want wood,” he said. “There’s some in the outbuilding to the left, and it should be dry.”

  “Thank you,” Kat made herself reply before she went out again. Her hair was damp from the rain by the time she found the building, though she was so dusty she would have welcomed a bath. She carried an armful of firewood back into the outpost. Strange that the wood wasn’t old and musty like the hay in the stable, but she wasn’t about to argue with small mercies.

  She pulled off her jerkin so she didn’t accidentally detonate the dynamite, then lit a fire and built it up. Sitting back to enjoy the warmth would have been pleasant, but she could tell the Prince’s not-eyes were fixed on her and she got up hastily to continue working.

  As the fire grew to a blaze, she found a kitchen she wouldn’t have kept a pig in, though she salvaged a dented kettle and tin cups. She filled the kettle and hung that over the flames, wondering if she could lure him over to the fire and toss her jerkin in. The dynamite would explode at once, maybe kill him before he could revert to his earth form.

  But short of stripping off and acting like she wanted him—which would make him suspicious at once—h
ow could she make him come closer? He didn’t strike her as a fool. And she had never felt less alluring, travelworn and streaked with dust as she was.

  “Something I wondered,” he said, and she turned quickly. “Am I the first to have discovered your settlement?”

  Kat nodded. “The first Prince.” Solstice Harbor had been built for concealment, located on a long spit of land shielded by the mountains. And for six years, that had worked.

  “Good.” He leaned against the table’s edge, long legs stretched out and eyelids half-lowered over the wells of mud. He didn’t seem to be bothered by either his nakedness or her presence, and his voice was as quiet as if he were speaking to himself. “I like this place. Peaceful and sheltered.”

  She had once loved Solstice Harbor for the same reasons, and she wondered if he was mocking her. He had to be. If a Prince was pleased about discovering a human settlement that had survived, it was because he now had a chance to destroy it himself.

  “I suppose that’s why no one lived here,” Marus said. “So you wouldn’t give your presence away with rising smoke or light in the windows.”

  “No, it was the creature.” Bubbles started to plink in the kettle, so she wrapped a rag around the handle to lift it off the fire. “It was dormant when we arrived, but that could have changed at any time. Good thing you killed it.”

  The thud of the kettle on the nearest table was the only sound in the room. A cold realization snaked down like a lump of ice into her stomach as she looked up. Blank pools of mud fixed on her, and there was no expression on his face.

  “You didn’t?” was all she could say.

  He rose. “What creature was this?”

  He’d spoken more softly than before, as if something just beyond the walls was listening, and when she replied, it was in the same muted tone. Hell below, she’d walked to the stables and fumbled for the cistern in the dark, without any idea that she stood on the edge of a precipice. The thought of how easily she could have woken it made her light-headed.

  “It looks like glass rods stuck together at angles,” she whispered. “I don’t know what you call it, but we have lots of names—silicoid, spiderglass, crystal crawler. All too long. I just call it the linx.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I’ve seen one before. It absorbs flesh, so it couldn’t affect me in my earth form. But it would kill you. If it’s still here.”

  “You don’t know?” She didn’t understand that; the first thing she would have done, if she’d taken up residence in an unfamiliar place, was search it thoroughly and then secure it.

  Instead of answering, he came up to her. Kat retreated at once until her back was to the wall, struggling not to look at her jerkin tossed to the floor beside her. She might kill him now, but what if the shattering explosion woke the creature?

  “Don’t do that.” An edge sharpened his voice, and she thought for a moment of hollow dread that he’d spotted the dynamite somehow. “I’m not going to hurt you, so if you keep jumping any time I move, you’ll wear yourself out. I find it easier to hear a whisper when I’m not halfway across the room, that’s all. As for not knowing about the linx—well, the place seemed deserted so I didn’t bother searching.”

  She frowned, because there was something a little too offhand about the answer to her question, as if he was trying to be deliberately casual. But before she could say anything, he asked, “Do you know how large it is?”

  “From what our scouts said, it’s not that big. Thirty feet long.”

  Marus glanced at the open door. “Oh, good.”

  “Just about ready to reproduce.”

  He looked back at her, and there was nothing pleasant about the hard direct stare. He knew she’d tried to needle him and she knew she’d gone too far.

  “Your people knew it was here,” he said.

  Kat nodded, wishing she could tell him this talk was a waste of time better spent searching for the creature and wiping it out. But then again, if he turned into his earth form—the Princes’ legacy from the goddess who had spawned them—he could destroy any linx in a heartbeat, so obviously he felt free to take his time.

  “I’m guessing it devoured whoever was here before our town was founded,” she said.

  “You knew it was here and yet you did nothing.”

  “We’ve been keeping watch on this outpost for years, ever since we—”

  “And what would you have done when it woke? Kept watching?”

  The cutting, contemptuous tone made her feel as if she’d been slapped. She fisted her hands at her sides to make certain they wouldn’t move, and now she didn’t just want to kill him. She wished she could hurt him first, in a way he would never forget.

  “It can’t be killed with fire or bullets.” Her voice was almost as low as his, held under tight control. “Unless we smashed its whole body at once, it would liquefy and flow back together. You can turn into lava and—and destroy it on a chemical level, but what could we do?”

  One corner of his mouth twitched, though she couldn’t have called it anything close to a smile. He was close enough that she saw everything from the hard set of his jaw to the film of sweat sheening his bare skin, as if he stood too close to the fire.

  “I’ll show you,” he said. “I won’t need to take earth form to deal with it. I’ll stay flesh from beginning to end, and maybe that will prove even humans can do more than just watch.”

  The insult might have been delivered in another language for all the effect it had, because she could only stare at him. The Princes were arrogant, everyone knew it, but this was going too far. She searched his face for a sign of sarcasm, a hint that what he’d said was a stupid boast.

  What she saw instead was a rigid intensity that turned his expression to a mask.

  “Do you have power in your flesh form too?” she asked.

  He shook his head, the not-eyes returning her gaze steadily.

  “Then how will you kill it? You don’t have any weapons.”

  “I’ll improvise.”

  This is insane. “You don’t even have any clothes on.”

  Marus chuckled, without humor. “You think it’ll be so embarrassed at the sight of a naked Prince that it’ll crawl into a hole?” He snagged a length of silk from the pile of gifts. “All right. Just for you, I’ll wear this.”

  Wrapping that tightly around his waist, he knotted it so it made a sarong. He looked slightly more decent now—if she ignored the way the silk clung to his hips—and the deep blue cloth rippled smooth as water against his skin. Which would have boded well if he’d been trying to impress someone, and which made no sense at all if he wanted to fight a linx.

  What the hell was he playing at? The only answer she could come up with for this ridiculous both-hands-tied-behind-my-back performance was that he wanted to see what she would do when the linx attacked. So he was deliberately crippling himself to force her into the battle, because he believed that without such prodding, humans merely watched and waited.

  Just her luck. She hadn’t ended up with a sadistic or murderous master, only a crazy one.

  “Highness—I mean, Marus?” She put her jerkin on, though it would take a great deal more dynamite to destroy a linx, and slung her rifle over her shoulder. “I don’t intend to insult you in any way, and I know this will never happen, but if it somehow gets the better of you, will you go back to your true form?”

  “If it ever puts me in genuine danger, I’ll be ten tons of rock before you can blink twice.” He grinned, showing even white teeth. “Don’t worry, Katsumi Ito. I have no intention of being eaten. Absorbed. Whatever it does to its prey. It’s kind of you to be so mindful of my welfare, but dying is the last thing I’ll do. Now, where shall we start to search?”

  Chapter Two

  Mother below, how had he got himself into this?

  Since there was no sign of the linx outside, Marus supp
osed it had to be in the outpost, in a room large enough to accommodate its huge, branching body. Katsumi told him she’d seen the stables and the kitchen, ruling those out. That left the armory, the tower and the barracks.

  “We’ll start with the tower,” he said, because that was open at the top; it might have been originally designed for a huge bell. If the worst came to the worst and the linx ambushed them there, he might leap out and kill himself quickly.

  He took a candle and led the way up, his heart hammering so badly he was surprised she didn’t hear it. The only consolation was that starvation was no longer on his mind. When he’d seen the food she’d brought, it had taken all his restraint not to tear off handfuls of bread and gnaw at a slab of fish dried to the consistency of firewood, but hearing about the linx had killed his appetite.

  If he’d seen so much as a gleam of it before she arrived, he would have run.

  Now, of course, he had to be unshakably confident, so he took the steps at a steady pace. Behind him, Katsumi followed. Sweat trailed down Marus’s sides. Caught between a dangerous creature he couldn’t begin to comprehend, and a linx.

  There had to be at least two hundred steps leading up to the tower. The muscles in his legs turned to hot jelly, and yet he didn’t dare sag against the nearest wall as he longed to do.

  His thoughts ran in circles. Three weeks ago, destroying the linx would have been so easy. He could have changed to lava, as she had said, or become a giant stone wall, toppling on the linx to crush every fragment of its glass to powder.

  Now, the most he could do was move as quietly as possible as they reached the last twist of the stairs. A drop of hot wax fell on his hand and he bit back a curse.

  Turning sideways to put his shoulders to the wall, he took the last few steps one by one, relieved for the first time that he didn’t have shoes. He made no sound as he edged to the corner that blocked his view of the towertop, what he thought of as the observation deck. Night air whispered cool on his skin.