The Beast Prince

by Marian Perera

  She couldn’t move, so he had to go to her. He forced himself to his feet, teeth clenched, and ran, stumbling and lurching over the uneven ground.

  If his brother had been in earth form, he wouldn’t have got three paces, but Ractane bolted towards the foot of the hill instead. Marus hoped he was running away. Every step jarred his arm, where the edges of broken bone felt as though they ground together, but he reached the girl as she pushed herself up on her elbows.

  She looked past him and her eyes widened. Marus turned. Ractane held the borrowed rifle, its broken strap dangling, and socked the butt of the rifle to his shoulder.

  One thought flew through Marus’s mind—that the rifle was pointing at the girl. He flung himself before her, and Ractane fired.

  The sound was loud as a hammer splitting stone apart. A sharp punch hit Marus below his breastbone, and he thudded against the ground in a boneless heap. He couldn’t feel anything below his chest.

  He stared up at the moon with its ring that seemed to fragment into a dozen bands. Maybe the bullet had shattered those too. Everything felt cold and far away, and there was a soft rushing in his ears like the tide drawing away from the shore.

  But even that didn’t drown out a metallic click. It sounded again and again.

  Marus tried to raise his head. Through a haze he saw Ractane pulling the trigger, face twisted in impotent fury. He’d probably seen humans with such a weapon, Marus thought, but he’d never paid attention to how they reloaded it.

  “Quick.” The girl cupped Marus’s face in her hands. Ractane shouted and ran forward. Before he could reach them, the girl bent her head and covered Marus’s mouth with hers.

  The kiss was gritty with stone dust, too painful to ever be sexual. Her teeth ground hard against his, her nails digging into his face, and he bit down reflexively. He couldn’t breathe, could only swallow a bitter mixture of blood and bile—and something slammed into him, harder than the bullet, as he did so.

  The girl was thrown aside with a gasp as Ractane kicked her away. He raised the rifle high over his head, to bring the barrel down against Marus’s prone body.

  Another shot rang out. Ractane jerked, and a small dark hole appeared above his nipple.

  “No,” Kat said from the hillside. She cracked her rifle open, slammed another cartridge home, pushed the stock back up. “You won’t touch him again.”

  She fired once more. Ractane turned like a marionette pulled by strings. He’s already dead, Marus thought with a numb lack of surprise, but he was equally unsurprised to see Kat reload with practiced hands, never taking her eyes off her target as she did so.

  Her third bullet drove into Ractane’s head, and that time he went down.

  Marus heard his own breathing, shallow and irregular. A cold heavy dew seemed to have settled over him, and he couldn’t move. He tried to say something, but his mouth felt numb, and there was a taste like iron filings on his tongue.

  His flesh form was giving in, dying. But at the same time a deep unstoppable power rose through the earth towards him. As if from a distance he heard running footsteps, and Kat dropped to her knees beside him. She touched his face, and her trembling fingers were the only warmth in the world.

  “Your eyes,” she whispered, sounding far more in shock than he was.

  That’s normal, Marus tried to whisper, but what came out was, “Kat.” Then the earth came up to meet him with the force of tectonic plates slamming together, and crushing the moon between them.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kat bandaged the girl’s throat carefully, afraid of applying any pressure. The girl looked so fragile, and the rags she’d worn under her blue dress—selected to make her look vulnerable—were bloodstained where they weren’t dirty.

  But when she said, “I can walk back,” her voice was steady, and Kat let her go. The town would be barred and darkened, everyone waiting silently for the outcome of the battle, so Kat couldn’t expect anyone to come to them. And whatever happened, she wasn’t leaving Marus.

  He was spread over an area wide as a plowed field—and looking like a plowed field too, she thought. Rather than being mud or lava, he’d turned to a deep layer of dark earth, rich with a loamy scent that reminded her of springtime sowing. No indication that he noticed anything around him. She didn’t know what might happen if, say, all that earth had been carried far out to sea and tossed overboard, but she wasn’t allowing anyone a chance to find out.

  And given that he’d taken a shot straight through his chest, he needed all the time he could get to heal. If the girl hadn’t drained Ractane’s power, and if she hadn’t passed it on to him…

  Kat didn’t want to think of that, so as always, she looked around for work. There was the outpost, or what was left of it—she wouldn’t be too far away if she returned there—so she picked through the remains, constantly wary some broken timber would descend on her head. The cistern was cracked, and water trickled over the ground, but she managed to uncover the cache they had buried. Chewing on a heel of bread, she lit a torch and went back down to Marus. What felt like hours later, hoofbeats sounded on the road, heading straight for the torchlight.

  After that, there was little to do except clean up.

  Ractane’s corpse was loaded in a cart—Dr. McKay was interested in examining it—but Kat had only asked for fresh clothes and something to shelter her while she waited. She got the clothes plus a tent, and as she set that up, Ranj told her the girl was safe in the infirmary.

  He’d also brought half a bottle of whisky so raw it burned her throat, and they shared it while the rest of the guard secured the area. Not that anyone doubted Ractane was dead, but Janice took no chances with safety. Everyone kept a careful distance from Marus, and Kat was relieved when it was over. “I’ll give the command to stand down,” Ranj said as he rode away.

  After the whisky, the battle and the time she’d spent in the tower with Marus, she was exhausted. It was all she could do to take off her boots and jerkin and fumble another shirt on before she crawled into the tent. She slept longer and deeper than she’d ever done, and when she woke, it was to sunlight.

  She scrambled out of the tent with a guilty feeling of responsibilities overlooked, but no one was in sight. The spread of deep soft earth nearby was untouched. Smiling, she tried to twist her hair back into its usual knot.

  The earth moved as though it was a glove lying flat and a hand had just pushed in. Different tunnels wove their way through it and came together, but rather than forming the body of the man she knew so well, the mass of earth flowed towards her tent. She stood where she was.

  The earth rose into a circular wall ten feet high around her. Then it grew a dome that shut her in the dark for a heartbeat before parts of it dropped away, leaving the roof supported by narrow pillars with archways between them. Rather than earth, it was now pale, glittering quartz. Prisms of crystals detached themselves and fell, like shards of moonlight dripping to earth.

  Kat rolled her eyes. “Stop showing off.”

  The entire structure collapsed, raining down as white sand that never touched her, and the sand flowed together to make Marus, who seemed unable to keep a grin off his face. “It feels good to do that again.”

  Although she wouldn’t admit it, she’d enjoyed the performance too, but it was already late enough in the morning that someone from the town was likely to ride out to meet them, so she handed him some clothes. She didn’t mind him naked at all, but sharing that experience with Janice or Ranj was a different matter.

  She looked him over with frank interest while he dressed, and he seemed fine except for the healed scar where Tom Novak had stabbed him. Maybe that was there to stay, since it had been inflicted so long before Marus had taken earth form again. It wasn’t large or ugly, but it stood out from the rest of his skin.

  He’d seen her looking, and he touched his sleeve, just over the scar. “It’l
l be a reminder. Of my time as a mortal.”

  Although they stood so close together she could have touched him too without any effort—doing up the top button he’d missed, maybe—there was a different kind of wall between them now. And that reminded her of the previous night, how his eyes had changed.

  “I meant to ask you.” At the change in her tone, he looked up. “Your eyes, after Ractane shot you. They weren’t mud any longer. They were lava.”

  She thought no matter how long she lived, she would remember them—pools of orange fire that glowed like the setting sun—and yet despite the change, she would have recognized Marus anywhere. For the first time since she’d seen him, his eyes had been beautiful.

  “Oh, that,” he said, as if it was hardly worth notice or attention. “Happens to us when we get angry.”

  Kat frowned. “Weren’t you angry when Novak attacked you?”

  “Well, I sure as hell wasn’t happy about it. But lava doesn’t mean just anger—it means the kind of killing rage that would make anyone short of the Queen get out of the way.”

  Was it because Ractane aimed at his daughter? Kat wanted to ask, but she heard hoofbeats again. Janice rode around the curve in the road, two of the town guards mounted and flanking her, and they rode up to the tent.

  “Highness.” She dismounted, and spoke just as she’d done back in the outpost. “I trust you’re well.”

  Marus seemed to take his cue from her, if his cool, arm’s-length smile meant anything. “And in your debt, Mayor.”

  Kat knew no one had expected him to say it up front, and he seemed to take even Janice aback. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There are ways to work that debt off.” She turned to Kat. “What are your plans?”

  “I’ll stay here. Our patron should have a personal guard, and some means of liaising with the town.”

  That was a risk. She didn’t think Marus would have minded too much—he liked what he could get from humans—but at the same time, he would probably have preferred to make that decision himself. Blurting it out hadn’t been smart, even if Janice had put her on the spot because Janice hadn’t known how far she could get when questioning a Prince.

  But she knew why she’d said it. Because she didn’t want Marus to leave, and if the only way to keep him there was to remind him of his debt…

  “You’ll stay where, exactly?” Janice asked.

  Kat kept her tongue behind her teeth, and Marus answered instead, turning towards the outpost. “That can be rebuilt,” he said. “Improved. There’s work to be done, but it won’t be difficult.”

  No, it wouldn’t, Kat thought. He’d move stone and split rock easily, and although he couldn’t redesign the structure or supply new rafters, there were people who could trade their skills for his protection.

  Janice nodded as if making a tick at the end of a list of numbers. “I have a little more information about where Ractane kept the women he imprisoned,” she said. “And their daughters. But it’ll be at least a few days before we deal with that.”

  “The girl told you?” Kat guessed that was why any rescue mission wouldn’t happen immediately; if the girl was guiding them, she had to recover from the past night too.

  “She did.” Janice hesitated, then went on with something gentler beneath her usual brisk efficiency. “She has a name now. I asked if she would accept one we gave her, and when she asked what it was, I suggested Janice Stuyvesant.”

  Marus frowned. “Isn’t that your name?”

  “My namesake was on the ship which brought us here. Ever since then, her descendants have kept the name—in every generation, there’s been a Janice Stuyvesant.”

  “Why?”

  “To remind us of who we are. And if we always remember where we came from, we’ll never stop working to return there.”

  Kat didn’t know whether they could return to that world, but if they had a Prince’s favor, life in Avalon might be—possible. Maybe even easier than she’d dared to dream. And she couldn’t help smiling, the kind of smile that pricked at the backs of her eyes. For everyone who dreamed of returning to Earth, Janice would always be the bedrock on which they could build their hopes.

  “It’s a fine name,” she said, “given to someone who deserves it. We’ll just have to find a nickname until she grows into it.”

  “Call her Princess,” Marus said.

  Everyone glanced at him, and he raised a brow. “That’s what she is. She was born a Princess. What she makes of it will be her own choice.”

  Kat guessed Janice was torn between whether to abandon or acknowledge the girl’s past. “Thank you for your suggestion,” she said. That meant they would see what the girl thought about it. “Kat, we’ve brought food, and I’ll send people out by noon to help with rebuilding. A good idea, that. We need a watchpost.”

  And a place for Marus that was close enough to show his patronage of them—but not too close. Kat took the saddlebag that a guard handed her and thanked Janice, then knelt to open the saddlebag as they rode off.

  Marus remained standing, and something made her glance up at him—perhaps his silence, perhaps their positions mirroring too well how she’d groveled before him when she’d first seen him. He met her eyes but didn’t say anything.

  “We might as well eat,” she said as she reached into the pack, groping blindly because she wanted to stare him down. We? It wasn’t like he needed to eat now.

  “You were very sure of your plans,” he said mildly. “So much so you didn’t need to consult me about them.”

  “You told me you’d trade favors with us. If we lived through this and you regained your power.”

  “Oh, I never said I wouldn’t stay. I like your food and Mayor Stuyvesant is…reasonable to deal with.” He went to his knees beside her. “No, it’s not that, Katsumi Ito. I promised my patronage, but I don’t believe we talked about what you would do in this arrangement. What if I appointed someone else as my—guard, was it? And liaison?”

  Kat knew what that little hesitation before guard meant: he wanted to stress the fact that he no longer needed any help from humans in that regard. It was the faint arrogance so characteristic of a Prince, the rock-solid knowledge that he was stronger—and, in their might-made-right world, that meant he was better.

  Worse, she couldn’t tell if he meant it about taking another human to live with him, because he could have his pick of anyone in Solstice Harbor now. She might not be the only person to notice his strong, clear-cut features or discover that he fed wild birds for no reason other than to watch them. She might be the only one fool enough to care for him, but hadn’t she known all along that love was far too much of a risk?

  She’d kept that knowledge in her head, all right. It just hadn’t reached her heart, not where he was concerned. And if he wanted to raise the Prince pedestal high to show them he was back in control, selecting another woman would make it clear no human had a hold over him.

  Not even her.

  But whatever his approach to the truth, she wasn’t a liar. “If she agreed, I’d want to shoot her.”

  “It could be a man.”

  “Right, like that would stop you.”

  His head went back as he laughed, and something caught in her chest. He looked relaxed, as if he was genuinely enjoying himself, and probably didn’t know or care that she loved him.

  “But you wouldn’t do it?” he said.

  “I’m not a murderer,” Kat said shortly. “Though if she let anything happen to you, I’d come close.”

  Regaining his power had been the best thing that could happen to all of them, of course—Marus had survived being shot, and now the town had a patron. But she couldn’t help missing who he’d been before, during the days after his injury and the night they’d spent in the tower. He’s been less of a Prince, and more of a man she might have met and worked alongside, shared meals with, desired.
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  The worst part was that he hadn’t changed completely. If he had been coldly arrogant and intimidating, the mask he’d worn when she’d first entered the outpost, it would have been easier to shut him out and go back to her life. But even as a Prince, he was still Marus, a hint of humor softening the cool control, a complete and shameless hedonist who would probably enjoy life even more now that he’d almost lost it.

  And she knew only too well what Marus’s way of enjoying life was.

  The amusement faded to a smile turning up his mouth, and the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. He was so close she saw those as well, and she didn’t know whether to draw away or lean closer.

  “Would I matter that much to you?” he asked.

  “Of course. If you defend our town, it’s only fair that we repay you, and my way of doing that would be to make certain you’re protected too.”

  “Then there’s one thing we have in common.” He wasn’t smiling now, despite the softness in the gaze that rested on her. “We both want to keep each other safe, so the only way to do that is if you stay with me.”

  Something lurched in her chest. The same way she’d felt before, when he’d told her he wanted her to stay in the outpost, and yet it wasn’t the same at all. Not the feeling she had of dawn, of a new start where anything was possible, not the way her body sang when she thought of him.

  “Kat, there’ll never be anyone else.” He lifted a hand to cup her face gently. “Whether it’s guarding me or sharing my bed, I want you. No matter what shape or form I’m in, that won’t change—and I don’t want it to.”

  She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t look away from him either, even though she knew her heart showed in her eyes. “I’m human.”

  “No one’s perfect. Not even me.”

  “You won’t take anything seriously today, will you?”

  Marus shook his head. “Too happy.”

  “Some day my people might return home.” And she wondered why she hadn’t said “we”.