Page 46 of Kill the Beast
Alderic had fetched the med kit without her having to ask, and she accepted it wordlessly. Took a swig from the little bottle of liquor to warm her up and steady her shaking hands before she started, then re-sterilized the needle and cleaned the wound on her thigh, gritting her teeth against the sting.
“Was it worth it?” Alderic asked while he watched her stitch herself up.
She paused, looking up at him. He was standing by the fire, fiddling with his buttons again, as if he needed something to do with his hands. “Yes.” She went back to stitching. “Nothing—human or faerie—hurts the ones I love and gets away with it. I would have killed every last one of them if you hadn’t stopped me.”
“You would have died if I hadn’t stopped you,” he corrected her.
Her hand stilled, and she glowered up at him. “Let me make something abundantly clear,” she said. “I didn’t need anyone to saveme, least of allyou.I have been doing this for a very long time, and I am perfectly aware of my own limitations.” It rang hollow in the face of the sharp pain in her lungs, her own blood dripping onto the ground, and he seemed to know it.
“Are you?” he asked. “Because it looked to me like you were a few seconds away from drowning, or freezing to death, or being disemboweled by a mermaid, all because you let yourself lose control. If I hadn’t been there—”
“You shouldn’t have been.” She pulled the thread taut, clenching her teeth at the pain its tugging caused. “I told you to stay here. That’stwoorders you’ve disobeyed, after promising—”
“I heard the dock collapse, and when I got down there you were gone.” The muscles in his jaw worked, and when he spoke he sounded as pissed off as she was. “Did you really expect me to sit idly by when I thought you were in trouble?”
“Iexpectyou to let me do my job,” she spat.
“Yourjobisn’t to kill a few inconsequential mermaids,” he said. “Yourjobis to kill the Beast.”
Her expression darkened. “A jobyoujeopardized by not doing what I asked you to. Besides, those mermaids tried to kill Brandy. That’s not inconsequential to me.”
“Well, they didn’t kill him,” Alderic snapped. “You’re welcome, by the way. I don’t remember hearing a ‘thank you’ before you went off to turn yourself into fish food.” The anger in his voice chafed, and her own rage rose to meet it.
“You’re saying I should have just forgiven—”
“I’m saying that you should have let it go!” he shouted at her. “There’s nothing to ‘forgive,’ Lyssa—they’reanimals,killing out of instinct and hunger alone!You,on the other hand, have a rational human brain inside that thick skull of yours. Maybe you should use it once in a while.”
His words hit some nerve she hadn’t even known was there. “Why do you give a shit what I do?” she shouted back.
“Because I don’t want you to die, you fucking idiot!”
For some reason, the sound of the expletive on his lips was like a slap across the face. She blinked at him, at the redness of his cheeks, the fury flashing in his eyes. It confused her at first, but then it hit her: if she died, it wasn’t just her own chance for vengeance that died with her. It was his, too.
And as much as she hated to admit it, he was right. She had pushed herself to the very brink, skirting the point of no return without recognizing how close she was to the line.
She tied off the thread and snipped it with her scissors. “I’m sorry I scared you,” she began. “I know you need my services, and—”
“It’s one thing, dying to protect a life,” he interrupted, his eyes still blazing, his tone still as sharp as one of her knives. “To avenge a life, even. But this? This waspointless.You didn’t kill those mermaids for Brandy. He was already safe, thanks to me. You didn’t even do it to get the canteen back. You did it for yourself, and no one else. Because you were upset, and desperate to feel something other than powerless.”
“Don’t pretend like you understand me,” she snapped, shaken by how effortlessly he had dissected her. “You know nothing about me.”
“I don’t have to,” he snapped back. “Deliberately causing harm is always about power. About control. But it’s an illusion. Let your anger consume you, and it’s only a matter of time before you lose yourself to it completely.”
“I…” She started to argue that she knew what she was doing, that all it took to wield fury like a weapon was discipline and practice, but the excuses died in her throat. She looked down at herself, at her hands slicked with her own blood, the gaping meat of her thigh puckered with ragged stitches. How close had she come to losing herself tonight?
To losing everything?
Alderic’s expression softened. “I understand. Believe me, I do. But being able to control your emotions—having the foresight tounderstand the consequences of your actions and choosing a less destructive path—is one of the gifts of being human. Rejecting that in favor of mindless rage makes you no better than those mermaids. Or the Beast.”
Lyssa flinched, his words more painful than any of her wounds. Bite marks would heal. This would drive deeper and deeper into her heart, haunting her in the darkest hours of the night.
“Howdareyou!” she growled, ready to lash out at him, to cuthimto the bone. But then Brandy whined, pushing his nose into her hand, and her anger dissipated.
Without Alderic, the bullmastiff would probably be at the bottom of the lake right now, his bones stripped clean by mermaid teeth.
And, maybe, so would she.
The realization filled her with shame. She had been furious with Eddie for dying to protect her instead of saving himself, but she had just done something worse—she had risked her life for no fucking reason, other than because she was angry and afraid, and had learned no other way to channel those feelings than punching someone or stabbing faeries.
