Page 13 of Betraying the Beast

To what end?

She wandered the orchard aimlessly, trailing her hands over the trees, their bark, their leaves, and the heavy fruit. The trees stood in perfect rows, their bark a strange, warm bronze, their leaves dark as midnight silk. The fruit hung heavy on the branches, each one glowing faintly with the same eerie pulse Ceryn had felt in her chest since being confronted with it the previous day.

A heavy presence alerted her to Vael’Zhur and then he was beside her, his shadow falling over her. The fruit glowed brightly under her fingertips, almost blinding, as if it sensed the beast nearby.

He fell into step beside her, silent, his footfalls strangely quiet for someone so massive. No chains bound her wrists. No guards flanked them. Yet she knew this was no stroll—it was a test. Perhaps a seduction. Maybe both.

“The orchard reacts to intent,” he said finally, his voice low. “Touch a fruit in hunger, and it feeds. In greed, it withers. In violence, it poisons. It was not always so. Once, it grew from joy. From love.”

“Until the curse,” Ceryn said softly.

“Until betrayal,” he corrected her. “The roots remember blood, and pain. As do I.”

They stopped before one of the oldest trees—its trunk wider than a cottage, its fruit nearly silver-white.

“Have you always lived here?”

Vael’Zhur placed his clawed hand against the bark. The tree pulsed beneath his palm. “Yes, I lived here long before the curse, long before your village existed. I was not always as you see me now,” he said, his tone taking on a dream-like quality, as if reliving a memory. “I was a scholar, a magister of the realm. I studied all types of magic and nature to uncover its secrets. I discovered the silverfruit and its properties, experimenting with it to discover the key to immortality.”

Ceryn’s eye’s widened. “You cursed yourself?”

He shook his head. “Nay, I refused to share the secret with another witch. Sylaine was my lover, one who I thought loved me, and I didn’t know that she desired power above all else. When I refused to share the secret, she cursed me to be bound to the orchard, only to be sustained by the silverfruit yet cursed by the rage that it also feeds.”

Ceryn inhaled sharply, the pain in his voice almost visceral, yet the story seemed unfinished, incomplete. “Can it be broken?”

“The curse? Maybe, but time grows short. Aldaric is the most recent in a line of men who are seduced by the power of the silverfuit, and are corrupted by it. I have endured many such seekers for its power and all have been defeated.”

His words were devastating. Aldaric specifically commanded her to find a way around the curse. Yet, the Beast had survived despite it. “How have you endured the curse without falling victim to it?”

“Who says I haven’t, little thief? There are bodies buried in this orchard, bodies that sustain the life of these trees, that prove the curse is real. I cannot leave the grounds of this castle without the rage taking over. If I leave, I become a mindless beast, given over to death and destruction. More than I already am. None would survive me.”

Her blood ran cold at the thought of him rampaging through her village. “What if someone took the fruit and left?”

He bared his teeth at her in a semblance of a smile. “They would also be fueled with such rage, that none could stop them. Only death and destruction would be in their wake until all lie dead.”

Vael’Zhur watched the thief’s mind work over the curse and the information he’d shared, deliberately telling her of the mindless rage that consumed him and all who ate the fruit. Even now he felt the pull of the fruit, calling him, taunting him to eat, to give in to the beast and destroy the beauty standing in front of him. She, who walked into his lair so willingly, so trusting, without the terror that so many before her and been saturated with. They had stunk of fear and piss, the smell offensive to his nose.

Aldaric had chosen his champion well this time, a young woman who appealed to the male in him, unlike the warriors he had sent in the past. Warriors who battled their way in but all died the same, crying and pleading for their lives. None had had half the courage this young woman possessed. Though maybe none had had the same reason to live that she had.

If only Vael’Zhur was not bound to the orchard or he would seek the coward Aldaric and free her mother and sister. But if he left the grounds, the rage would take over and he would be as likely to kill her family as he would destroy Aldaric. He could not risk harming innocents, though in his experience there are few guiltless people in their world. Everyone wanted something. It was only a matter of time before Aldaric moved openly against him. He’d seen it before.

He had not lied when he spoke of the curse, how the orchard lay on bloody ground. Ceryn didn’t know how bloody that ground was. He prayed she never discovered the truth. It would both damn him and destroy her.

As she walked away from him, among the trees in the orchard that he was bound to protect and serve, he watched the trees sway in the breeze, the branches subtly shift towards her, reaching for her. Anyone could be mistaken for the movement as something natural, but he knew the truth. The orchard was already reshaping to include Ceryn, to accept her as one of them.

Elodia materialized next to him, faded in the sunlight. “She walks as if she belongs here.”

He growled as a branched dipped low enough to brush Ceryn’s shoulder. “This place will destroy her.”

“As it did you?” Elodia asked quietly.

He snarled but didn’t reply. Elodia continued. “She could be your salvation.”

“I could be her doom.”

“Or you could save each other.”

He couldn’t afford to let hope bloom in his chest. The disappointment would be too devastating.

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