Page 49 of Kill the Beast
His lips curved into a smile. “No servants, remember? And I can only eat at the Morningstar so many days in a row before my body starts to object rather violently. Molly’s beer may be good, but her food is atrocious.”
“I thought you had a good metabolism.”
“Not for whatever she puts in those pies.” He struggled with opening one of the cans, the liquid inside splattering his cuffs.
“You’re ruining your new shirt,” Lyssa said. “One of thegoodshirts.”
“They’re all good shirts.”
“Roll up your sleeves.”
“I’m fine,” he said, flicking beef juice off his hand.
She narrowed her eyes. It wasn’t just beef juice—there was blood trickling down his palm, too, from some injury beneath his sleeve. “I thought you said the mermaids didn’t touch you.”
“They didn’t.” He looked down at his hand. “You, uh… nicked me with one of your knives when I was dragging you out of the lake.”
“I did?” she asked, horrified.
“It’s fine. Really,” Alderic said quickly.
“I’ll be the judge of that.” She reached for his cuff and he batted her hand away.
“I’d really rather you didn’t.”
“Don’t be stubborn,” Lyssa said. “The last thing we need is for you to get an infection from the lake water.” She grabbed his sleeve and wrenched it up before he could stop her.
Both of them froze, until a concerned whine from Brandy broke the stunned silence.
“Shit,” Lyssa muttered, gaping at the old, jagged scars along Alderic’s wrists. They were large, twisted things—deep wounds, like claw marks or knife slashes. A little higher, there were whorls of pink skin that disappeared beneath the fabric covering his biceps.
They met and held each other’s gaze for a beat too long before she snatched her hand away from his sleeve. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” he snapped, grabbing the alcohol and a gauze pad from the med kit.
She watched him swab the cut—admittedly minor, as he’d insisted. His hand was shaking. “What happened?” she asked, before she could stop herself.
Alderic’s cheeks reddened. “These,” he said, pointing at the pink whorls, “are from when my father tried to burn the estate down with the Beast inside. I was inside at the time, too. And these,” he said, pointing to the slashes, “are from when I tried to kill myself.”
Lyssa sucked in a breath. “You tried to kill yourself?”
“A few different times, a few different ways.” He jerked his sleeve back down.
Her eyes snagged again on the scar at his throat. “Why?” It came out a whisper. She knew she had no right to ask, not when she hadn’t even admitted to him why she really wanted to kill the Beast. Not when she had reacted so badly to him asking her how she had gone from suburb to gutter. How could she expect him to tell her something so deeply personal when she kept her own painful cards close to her chest?
But he didn’t tell her it was none of her business. He didn’t push her away or shut down. He replied, so softly it was almost a whisper, “Because the Beast destroyed my life. Why continue living it?”
What had been a mere seedling of affection taking root within Lyssa bloomed with a sudden intensity that overwhelmed her.
She had teetered on that precipice, after Eddie died. In the weeks and months that followed, the lack of him was a hole in her heart as painful as any physical wound, and part of her had wanted to die. She might have, too, if not for the oath she had carved into her palm. It had given her purpose, had inspired her to shed herold life like a molted skin and become the weapon of vengeance known as the Butcher.
Lyssa would still follow her brother into the grave eventually, but she would meet her death with a sword in her hand and her oath fulfilled. She couldn’t imagine wading through the depths of grief, facing day after day, without that promise to fuel her.
“Alderic…” She found herself on the verge of telling him about Eddie, on the verge of laying herself bare in a way she hadn’t done since Honoria had betrayed her. The only thing that stopped her was the sheer strength of the iron cage she’d welded around her heart since then. It was rusted shut and hard to open now, even when she wanted it to. Instead, she took Alderic’s hand. “I swear to you, I will kill it,” she managed to say around the lump in her throat.
An expression she didn’t understand flitted over his face, relief and sorrow somehow mixed together, and he nodded. “I know you will, Carnifex. That’s why I hired you.”
Lyssa woke with a start. The interior of the tent was bright with morning light. Alderic had taken first watch last night after they had finished their dinner, and was supposed to have woken her after a few hours.
