Beauty & Rage (Broken Crowns Book 1)

by Natalie Bennett

  INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  NATALIE BENNETT

  Copyright

  Beauty & Rage by Natalie Bennett

  © 2019 by Natalie Bennett. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where the publisher or author specifically grant permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Maria Spada

  Editing by: Pinpoint Editing

  Blurb

  An abomination came in the middle of the night.

  Death and destruction followed in his wake.

  The sun fell from the sky and has yet to return.

  I am now trapped in a world where the savage and corrupt rule. My life has been compromised.

  He stole my crown with bloodstained hands and claimed me as his queen.

  Reyes Straykova is seductively cruel.

  Volatile and ruthless, a vicious beast.

  His sinister game has just begun.

  Bow to the king and watch chaos reign.

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  Upcoming Releases 2019

  Hellions—Badlands Six

  Opaque Melodies—

  Renegades—Badlands Seven

  Sweet Poisons

  Beauty & Wreckage

  Old Money Trilogy

  AUTHOR NOTE

  If you picked this up looking for romance, I do not think this story will appeal to you. If you’re not into PNR, this definitely will not appeal to you. Hate men with little to no redeeming qualities, and that are insanely possessive? That is Reyes.

  Good with all of those?

  Yay!

  Beauty & Rage is the introduction to the Broken Crowns series, a prequel to Beauty & Wreckage. These books will have paranormal royals, mystery, violence (it gets progressively worse), and lots of explicit steam.

  These characters will fall deeply into hate before they come close to love. This is a series with a non-traditional HEA but their journey and growth on the way there made for a much better outcome.

  I hope you enjoy it! 

  Playlist

  Imagine Dragons—Dream

  Karmina—All The King’s Horses

  Breaking Benjamin—What Lies Beneath

  Amber Run—I Found

  Lana Del Rey—Change

  Nikisha Reyes—So Cold

  We Came As Romans—Learning To Survive

  Digital Daggers—Paper Bag Princess

  BANKS—Waiting Game

  Ruelle—War Of Hearts

  The Sweeplings—Under Your Spell

  Billie Eilish—Six Feet Under

  Gin Wigamore—Hallow Fate

  Mumford and Sons—Broken Crown

  Devils Envy—Psycho

  BANKS—Drowning

  Fluerie—Love and War

  Sam Smith—Palace

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  GLOSSARY

  PLAYLIST

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BEAUTY & WRECKAGE

  OTHER BOOKS

  LINKS

  Glossary

  Supe—(Sue-pay) all super-naturals.

  Demi—(Dim-E) all half-breed super-naturals.

  Depire—(D-peer) unknown, manmade supe.

  Smilodon—Type of big cat (Tiger, Lion, etc.)

  Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

  —

  Prologue

  Last night, I dreamed of my death again.

  I felt the sharpness of doubled-edged teeth digging into my flesh and excruciating pain as my throat was torn open.

  Blood ran in thick rivulets over my naked body, staining the forest floor crimson. My heart ceased to beat in the arms of a faceless killer, and then it was over. Everything faded to black.

  I awoke as I usually did with perspiration coating my skin, fingers grasping at my neck as if I could fix what had been shredded.

  Off and on for the past six months, I’d been having this same dream. I never saw my murderer’s face, and my brain still hadn’t caught on to the fact that it was merely a dream.

  None of it was real, yet terror and a deep sense of sadness always remained in the hollows of my chest long after I woke up.

  Swiping strands of hair from my sweaty forehead, I clumsily reached for the cup of water I kept on my nightstand, sighing the second the cool glass touched my fingertips.

  I’d barely lifted it when a bang on the other side of my door made me jump, sending the cylinder dish straight to the floor where it shattered.

  Another bang—more forceful—and someone yelling my name cleared away all lingering drowsiness. The hands of time came to a near stand-still and reality slowly began to seep in.

  Something was burning.

  It was quiet. While not unusual for such an hour, it wasn’t the kind of quiet that came on the heels of peaceful slumber.

  It was unnerving, the type of silence that sent blind panic and blood-curdling dread to the pit of one’s stomach.

  That’s what ultimately sent me stumbling from my bed, feet sliding into slippers, just missing the shards of glass scattered across the hardwood.

  I undid the heavy lock barring me in and everyone else out, and then pulled the door open.

  “Duve!” Toby’s worried face briefly melted in relief. A rushed, “We need to go,” flew from his mouth as his hand shot out to grab my wrist and pull me into an empty hall.

  Two guards should have been stationed on either end while I slept, but both were missing.

  “What’s on fire?” I asked, settling into a speedy jog to match his pace. The further we went from my bedroom, the stronger the acidic stench in the air became.

  “Everything but this castle.”

  “Everything?” I struggled to keep my voice level. “Where is the king?”

  He stopped abruptly, using a gentle hand to prevent me from slamming into his back.

  His head turned to the left and then to the right before he looked at me with a somber expression and unmistakable pity in his dark blue eyes.

  “We no longer have a king. We have a queen.”

  “What do you mean, we…?” I trailed off as he pulled me forward again, blinking dumbly at the back of his curly blonde head.

  I didn’t ask for clarification or elaboration. I knew exactly what he meant.

  Without a king, I was to ascend the throne.

  Without a king meant my father was dead. My stomach plummeted, heart splitting right down the center.

  I’d been raised, educated, and sculpted to be queen, but it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

  I staved off the overwhelming urge to fall apart and become deadweight .

  As t
errible and painful as it was, I had neither the luxury or time to grieve.

  “The other supes?” I inquired.

  “Scattered or dead.”

  That had me drawing up short, pulling my wrist free from his grasp.

  “You need to tell me what is going on.”

  “I will tell you everything the moment you are safe. Jacinda and Scarlett have already been escorted to safety. The longer we stay here, the more danger you’re in.”

  Catching myself before I reacted uncouthly, I nodded as if the news regarding my two closest friends didn’t mean more to me than the well-being of my newly acquired kingdom.

  I didn’t like the idea of fleeing. It went against everything I’d been taught, but I knew Toby was loyal and would risk his life to save mine.

  If I needed to evacuate, then I trusted no one more than him to ensure I did so.

  Stiffly nodding again, I said, “Then let’s go,” allowing him to lead me once more.

  Wordlessly, he set off at a rapid pace.

  “How are we able to move so freely?”

  “The very reason the palace is near empty. Your father’s last order was to protect you by all means necessary. Your subjects took it upon themselves to serve as a…distraction. The ones that haven’t fled ,that is.”

  Fled to where? I wanted to ask but knew my energy needed to be solely focused on escaping my burning castle.

  My silken slippers fell in rhythm with Toby’s boots as we passed through the emergency exit that led directly to the woodland.

  The moment we stepped outside, I sensed an immeasurable amount of death. The stench of burning bodies was in the air, along with the sound of a losing battle.

  Leaving like this felt wrong, regardless of my station, and stepping into the trees with no idea where I was going had everything truly beginning to sink in. We may have been escaping, but it was not unscathed. My life as I knew it was over.

  My home. My family…It was all gone.

  ~1~

  Inhaling a deep breath, the chill that accompanied dawn seeped into my lungs. I crumpled the flier within my fist in an attempt to calm myself, letting it fall to the dew covered ground a second later.

  Looking at the sky, one would think it was late afternoon or early evening, but that wasn’t the case. The sun had hidden the morning after my castle went up in flames. There was a constant hazy glow now, and it seemed to be growing darker with each passing day.

  This was all so wrong.

  The infernal regions were specifically broken up to correlate with each season. What had once been states were divided into sections. It was common knowledge, and the way things had been since before I was born. The mere fact that it had begun snowing in Zenith, the region known for spring, was alarming to say the least.

  From behind me came a soft creak, the opening of the worn shack’s door.

  “Anything yet?” Scarlett asked, eyeing the orange paper as she stepped up beside me.

  “Aside from finding another flyer he forgot to burn, no. Has it been too long?”

  “Not yet. Knowing Toby, he’s dragging his paws and giving you time to reconsider.”

  “He keeps trying to shelter me from what’s happening, wasting time on a childish hope that I remain oblivious.”

  Even to my ears, the words sounded bitter, but I was struggling to remain positive as of late.

  Toby continuously claimed things would get better—day in and day out. I was wise enough not to believe such empty words. Over the past four months, everything had gotten far, far worse. Our world was in rapid decline to something it would never heal from. Everything around me was spiraling down, and I could do nothing to stop it. Nothing until now, that is.

  “For the record, I’ve thought this was the way to go from the start. Realistically, how much longer could we have gone on like this, Duvessa?”

  I gave a slight shake of my head, feeling the effects of the past few months down to my bare bones. “We couldn’t. Jacinda needs medical attention. We’re running out of food. Our people are starving, homeless, and unprotected.

  “And then there’s the demis being snatched off the streets for… selection.”

  The word rolled off my tongue like acid, turning my stomach.

  The same thing that had once made our kind outcast was now the very reason for the bounties on our heads. Demis had become a rare commodity over the past few months.

  Something about our genetic make-up made us an invaluable resource for the King of Purgatory and his followers. Even worse was the uneducated ignorance that had most believing the demis were lucky to be bestowed such fate. After all, they were given a roof over their heads, food, and a bed to sleep in at night.

  Such simple things had become wistful dreams for everyone forced into a lower caste. They failed to realize that same roof held little significance when you were nothing but a slave beneath it, that the bed was the furthest thing from comfort when one was forced to spread their legs on it.

  “I can’t believe how fast they turned on one another,” Scarlett voiced, mind on the same track as mine.

  “I try not to think about that part of it.”

  Honestly, I tried not to think too much about anything. One thought always merged with another. My wounds were still fresh; my father’s death was a constant source of pain, and my heart ached for the condition of our region, for the supes still holding out for better days.

  It was a near crippling blow to see all the achievements that had been worked hard on were now nothing but piles of rubble and rotting corpses. Our people betraying one another for coin and notoriety…gods, he would be ashamed.

  I ran my hands through my hair to detangle the onyx strands. Needing a swift subject change, I finally asked a question that had been plaguing me for weeks. “Do you think Cronus and Mirabelle got out?”

  “You mean, if they weren’t the ones responsible for all of this?” Toby’s voice answered.

  I turned slightly, glancing over my shoulder to where he stood at the side of the shack.

  “How long have you been listening?”

  “Long enough to know you’re still considering something ill-advised.”

  With a shake of my head, I targeted my gaze on the dying pines towering above me. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “I took the scenic route in case I was being tailed.”

  That was wise. “Does that mean you couldn’t find the transporter?”

  “If I say I failed, would it change your mind?” he questioned, creeping closer.

  Scarlett’s green eyes shifted between the two of us in thinly veiled amusement.

  “Why are you so determined to stop me, Toby? You know better than anyone what’s at risk if I do not at least try to salvage all I can before it’s truly gone forever.”

  Feeling him beside me, I turned towards his person just in time to see blonde brows slam together in confusion—or maybe anger.

  “Then what is to become of us if it’s your life he wants?”

  “If he kills me, at least I died doing all I could to save our people. If I gain nothing, what does it matter when we’d have already lost everything?” I fought the urge to lay a grime covered hand on his cheek, instead clutching the worn skirt of my dress. This was not the time for comfort or coddling.

  “You know he is the only one capable of helping us,” Scarlett added.

  Toby looked between the two of us, eyes widening in disbelief. “H-help? Help who? I’m not sure we’re discussing the same man, because that monster does not help unless it benefits him.”

  Lips flattening into a straight line, I huffed out an irritated breath and took two steps back to get a full look at him.

  “For the past few weeks, you’ve been certain it was my stepmother, or Cronus, the man who was like a second father to me. Both are either missing or dead. Now, it could be the Purgatory King?”

  He made a disgruntled sound in the back of his throat, swiping the crumpled flier from the ground. “Tell me,�
�� he began, unraveling the paper. “What is it you see on here?”

  I didn’t need to look. I was fully aware of what was on it. Our names, the astronomical sum that would be awarded to whomever brought us to the self-made king, and clear instructions that we were not to be harmed.

  “It looks like the same flyer that’s posted all through the town that’s falling apart, littered on the streets paved with blood, and being broadcast every hour.”

  “And I see a ploy to lure a desperate queen right into his region so that he can snatch her crown away,” he retorted.

  “For one, do not ever call me desperate again. This is not an act of desperation. It’s a well-considered decision to save the supes you seem so ready to let suffer,” I corrected tersely, “For two, the King of Purgatory suddenly decided to attack Zenith and destroy it for my crown? Is that your new theory? If that’s true, he already failed. I’ll never abdicate—not ever—and unless someone shows up with my corpse, the kingdom is mine.”

  Scarlett’s head bobbed in agreement. “If he wanted this region, he would have announced his claiming of it by now, and his insignia would be all over the place. Nothing is stopping him.”

  “We don’t exactly have an army ready to go balls to the wall for us,” she added dryly.

  “She’s right. Furthermore, he would want our heads delivered on a pike, not our living, breathing bodies unharmed.”

  I gestured to the flyer to hammer in my point.

  Toby scrubbed a hand over the scraggly beard now covering a large portion of his face.

  “You think you’re going to go there and that he will help do what, exactly? Have you not been paying attention? He’s snatching demis off the street left and right and turning them into sex puppets. Do you not think it odd that they vanish afterward? Not a word has been said about what’s been done with them. We can conclude he’s killing them, that those filthy depires are butchering them.”

  I kept my expression stony, weighing it on him until his eyes diverted to mud-covered boots. I wasn’t a fan of the depires either; more so, I was against defamation and accusations that couldn’t be proved.