Page 33 of Fate & Monsters
“I need to move,” I muttered.
The beast hummed, but didn’t stop me. I explored and he continued reading.
I stepped down onto the stone steps leading into the pond. They were smooth and worn, moss trailing their edges. I dipped a foot into the water. It was cool, not cold, and so clear I could see the strange, luminous fish gliding beneath the surface. Scaled in copper and cobalt, some with fins like lace or gossamer wings, they shimmered with the luminescence of submerged stars.
I leaned forward, watching the swish of tails and the ripple of motion across the surface. The water distorted my reflection. It shifted.
And it wasn’t Astoria I saw.
It was me. A sylph.
White and silver, ethereal and proud, eyes wide with sorrow. Me, before the curse. She stoodin the water’s surface as if waiting for me to remember. To mourn.
I gasped, stumbling back a step.
My heel slipped on the mossy stone. A cry tore from my throat.
A shock of water crashing into me stole the breath from my lungs—cold, instant, biting. My arms flailed. Water closed over my head, dragging me under in a swirl of gold and green. The weight of my dress tangled around my legs. For a terrible second, I couldn’t find the surface.
Then something slammed into the water beside me.
Strong arms wrapped around my waist. Heat pressed against my back, cutting through the chill with the soothing radiance of a welcome flame. We surged upward together, almost effortlessly. We breached the surface with me coughing and the beast prince holding me tight.
Mavros carried me from the pond like I weighed nothing.
I shivered against him, blinking water from my lashes. His body was slick and warm, breath ragged against my temple as he stalked back toward the castle without a word. His grip didn’t loosen even once during the long walk through the endless corridors.
The library fire still burned from earlier. Flames licked up the stone hearth, casting golden light across the high walls and shadowed shelves. The scent of smoke and moss and damp silkhung in the air between us.
Mavros set me down gently on the rug in front of the fire. His clawed hands lingered at my waist for a second too long, fingers pressing, as if reluctant to let go. When he stepped back, the cold rushed in as swift as a ghost’s breath.
I shivered.
The dress clung to my skin, soaked through, heavy and useless. Each movement made it cling tighter, suffocating, cold. I looked down at the water trailing down my arms and legs.
Without thinking, I reached over my shoulder, found the seam, and yanked it down. The soaked fabric slid from my body in one slow motion, pooling at my feet with a soft slap. I stepped out of it, bare, unashamed, and turned back toward the fire. The heat reached out to me in gentle waves, far kinder than the fabric soaked with the pond’s lingering chill. I stretched my hands toward it, sighing softly as warmth began to seep back into my limbs.
Behind me, I heard the sharp intake of breath.
I looked over my shoulder.
Mavros hadn’t moved. He was still crouched where he’d set me down. Watching me. Staring.
The beast’s pupils dilated, eyes black around the edges of molten fire. His mouth had parted slightly, but whatever words he’d meant to speak had died there. His tail slowed to a stilted, occasionally swish.
“What is it?” I asked.
He blinked once. Twice. “Are you not cold?”
My brows pinched. “No?”
His chest heaved. Something wild glinted in his eyes. Not anger, but something deeper and older. Something akin to primal impulse.
I turned to face him fully, as bare as the day I was reborn. I didn’t understand his stillness, or the tension in his shoulders, or the way he looked at me like I was both a temptation and a curse. In the wild, there was no modesty. No shame in skin, no hiding from warmth. Bodies were only bodies. Mine just happened to be on fire whenever he looked at me.
I took a step toward him. “Not when my body feels so warm when you’re near me. When you touch me.”
He stared at me like I’d just broken something inside him.
