Page 25 of The Bull's Beauty
“…they said the Minotaurs never let go…”
“…heard they keep them as… pets…”
“…looks well-fed, though. Wonder what they fed her…”
“…she’ll never settle back into a decent life now. Mark my words…”
Their words are tiny, sharp needles, pricking the last, fragile bubble of hope I’d been carrying. The anger that has been my armor for months rises, hot and familiar. Good. I’d rather be angry than feel this… this crushing disappointment.
I walk on, my gaze fixed on the little cottage with the blue door.Aunt Hettie.She raised me. She has to be different.
The door flies open before I reach it. She stands there, her hand fluttering to her chest. I watch the emotions war on her face, and my own hope curdles in my stomach. For one breathtaking second, it’s just shock—pure, unguarded recognition. Then, a flicker of something soft, something thatlooks like the love I’ve been starving for. My heart lurches toward it.
But it’s gone in an instant.
I see the exact moment she remembers the gossip, the shame, the risk I might represent. Her eyes shutter, her mouth tightening into a thin, cautious line. The warmth is doused by her fear; it’s so cold it feels like a door slamming in my face. She’s not just seeing me anymore. She’s seeing a problem. A complication. A ruined thing that crawled back from the monsters.
“Beatrice?” Her voice is a thin reed. “Gods be good, is it you?”
“It’s me.”
She steps forward and pulls me into a hug. It’s brief. Stiff. Her hands pat my back like she’s dusting off a flour sack. When she pulls away, she holds me at arm’s length, her eyes searching my face for a girl who doesn’t live here anymore.
“We heard…stories,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper. “What the Bull-men do to their…spoils. We mourned you. We had a service.” A tear tracks through the wrinkles on her cheek. For a second, my stupid, hopeful heart leaps.She grieved for me.Then she speaks again, and her words are a guillotine, severing me from my past life in one clean, cruel cut. “I lit a candle for you. For all you girls. Almost as if you were my own children.”
Almost.
The word rams into my chest, hollowing me out.
Almost.
And just like that, the last illusion shatters. The memories rearrange themselves, sharpening into a brutal, ugly truth. The way I was always reminded to be grateful. The way my opinions were patted down like unruly hair. The way my fire was called a “temper,” my spirit “unruliness.” I wasn’t a daughter. I was a ward. A Hucow. A useful, milk-producing creature theytolerated until I could be bred to someone convenient. They never saw me. They saw what I could do for them.
Silas…
Silas valued my will, my mind, my…fire. He didn’t want a docile milk-cow. He wanted Beatrice.
The hollow ache in my chest ignites into a white-hot rage.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” a voice sneers, slicing through my revelation. “Or should I say, what the bull dragged out.”
Jacob Carter. He’s leaning against the smithy, a nasty grin on his face. The same Jacob who used to follow Maeve around like a love-sick puppy.
“Your friend Maeve took to it real easy,” he leers, his eyes crawling over me. “Spreading for a monster. You learn any of their animal tricks, Beatrice? You come back to show us?”
Something inside me snaps and, before I even realize I’m moving, my fist is connecting with his nose with a crack that’s the most satisfying sound I’ve heard since I left. It’s for Maeve’s happiness. It’s for Annie’s gentle heart. It’s for every single girl who they ever looked at as less than a person.
“He staggers back, pressing a hand to his bleeding nose, eyes wide with shock. ‘You crazy b—’”
“Shut your mouth!” I snarl. “You don’t get to speak her name. You don’t get to speak to me. You’re nothing.”
I look from his bloody face to Aunt Hettie’s horrified one, to the ring of villagers whose stares are now openly hostile. I am a monster here. A dangerous, corrupted thing. This place, with its neat fences and smaller skies, was never my home. It was my pasture.
I don’t say a word. I turn my back on the blue door, on the life that was a lie, and I run.
My boots pound the dirt, kicking up dust, then suddenly I’m through the gate, bursting into the sea of golden grass. The windscreams in my ears, whipping my hair free from its braid. It doesn’t smell like manure and smallness here. It smells like sun and earth and wild, untamed freedom. Every stride is a shedding of a skin I never asked for. I’m not a Hucow. I’m not a ward. I’m Beatrice. I am fire.
And he is my oxygen.
