Page 17 of Fate & Monsters
A fist slammed on the table, and the plates rattled. I flinched away.
“A nightmare? Is this how you see my hospitality?” Mavros bellowed. “Are you this atrocious toward all your hosts, my lady?”
“Only the beasts.” I practically spat the word at his feet.
He paused, breath frozen and eerily still.
“I am a monster, but at least I know who I am.” He tore himself from his seat, bowing over the head of the table like a predator coiling to pounce.
I held my breath yet refused to cower.
His gaze flashed over my plate.
“And all you’ve eaten is vegetables. Do not waste meat in my home. Show some gratitudeand finish your meal!” His thunderous roar reverberated around the room, echoing into the shadows and grated against my bones.
Wood clattered on the ground as I surged from the table, rising to meet his furious challenge. Breath rattling, fists shaking, blood vibrating beneath my fragile flesh, I gritted my teeth right back at him. “I have never in all my years eaten meat, and I won’t start now simply because you demand it!”
Mavros dragged his claws through his hair, fire-eyes wavering with building rage. Then he growled, a sound so akin to a tiger’s roar that my muscles tensed with the instinctive need to flee. I balanced on my toes, chest heaving as he bayed and howled like a maddened wild beast. “Then you will never eat again!”
A jolt of fear struck me to the core. I stepped away from the table, tensed to hide my trembling.
He took a step, immediately following. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’ve lost my appetite,” I said, breathless.
“You will sit. You will finish the meal.”
“No.” I met his eyes, unblinking. “I can’t be commanded.”
His fist crashed into the edge of the table, claws ripping through the cloth and wood, cracking and splintering under the force of the blow. Utensils went flying and porcelain shattered.
My feet carried me back without realizing, and in the next second, the beast prince of Infernus grabbedand tossed the chair I’d been sitting on.
Wood sailed through the air before crashing into the wall and exploding into a hundred splintered pieces.
Adrenaline and a prey animal’s impulse seized me, guiding me to turn on my heel and flee. I fumbled with the skirts hindering my legs, barely lifting them as I reached the double doors.
Oh, what I wouldn’t give to fly…
Glass spiraled in every direction and shattered on the opposite door, kicking an involuntary yelp from me. My bones throbbed, my blood pulsed like sludge under my skin, and my heart raced,faster, faster, fasteras terror sent me tearing from the room.
The roars and sounds of explosive rage followed me across the castle.
He is a monster, and I am doomed.
As I fled, I felt his eyes on my back.
Since the dawn of time no creature or being had ever spoken to me like that. Never dragged me around, or snarled at me, or treated me as anything less than divine. Majestic. Ethereal.
I stormed through the corridors, haunted by the burning coals of his eyes. No witch, wizard, or beast would have ever dared to treat me in such a manner before Aradia bound me to this accursed flesh. Her actions hadn’t saved me, only gifted me another horrid dilemma If shewere alive, I would curse her as she had me.
I needed air or else the acrid smoke in my lungs and mind would suffocate me.
The glass-paned doors to the garden came into view. The night’s chill kissed my flushed cheeks as I burst outside. I paused to inhale and regulate my pounding heart before stepping into the welcoming arms of the star-lit garden. Somewhere in the hedges a shadow hissed softly, then stilled again.
I ignored it and moved on, letting my feet guide me.
Perhaps under the strange stars of a new world I would find myself again. Maybe in the silence of the castle garden I might remember who, what, I was before the threat of magic-users stole it all away. Even the breeze went gentle and quiet as if giving me the space to breath and stew in my thoughts.
