Page 24 of The Bull's Beauty
There it is. The wooden, weathered fences of Havenmoor, suddenly looming, separating their neat, tame world from the wild one I represent. Her steps falter, then stop. She turns to me, blue eyes wide and glistening with unshed tears. This is it.
I want to roar. I want to fall to my knees and beg. I want to throw her over my shoulder and carry her back to thestronghold, to my home, which could be our home, if she would only let it.
I do none of those things.
I stand before her, a Bull who has faced down armies, and I have never felt so powerless.
She looks up at me, her lower lip trembling. I reach out, cupping her cheek, my thumb stroking the soft skin there one last time. I pour every ounce of my being into that single touch. All my love, my devotion, my desperate, hopeless want.
“I love you,” I tell her, the words raw and true. “No matter what you find behind that fence. No matter what you choose. That will never change.”
A tear escapes, tracing a path through the dust on her cheek. “I know.”
“I’ll be at last night’s camp,” I say, my voice thick. “I’ll wait until morning. If you… if you change your mind.” I don’t let myself hope. Hope is a luxury that has been carved out of me.
She swallows and nods in a quick, jerky motion, unable to speak.
I lean down, pressing my forehead to hers. We stand like that for a long moment, breathing each other in, two hearts beating together in a frantic, sorrowful rhythm.
“Goodbye, my fire,” I whisper against her skin. Then, I force myself to step back. To let my hand fall. To break the contact.
She wraps her arms around herself, looking small and lost. She gives me one last, devastating look, then turns and walks toward the fence without looking back.
I watch her until she disappears through a gate and into the world that made her, the world that wants to keep her.
And then I am alone.
I turn from the fence, my jaw clenched so tight it aches. The stoic mask I have worn for her benefit cracks, and the agonybeneath is a yawning chasm. Every instinct screams to follow her, to fight for her, to claim what is mine.
But she is not mine. She never was. Not truly. She is her own. Fierce and wild and free. And I love her enough to let her go.
I will return to the camp, wait through the day and the night, and stare at the stars we lay under, remembering the feel of her. And when the sun rises tomorrow, if she does not come, I will walk away. Return to the stronghold, to my duty, to a life that now feels grayscale. I will live with the ghost of her in every corridor, the echo of her laughter in the silence, the memory of her fire keeping me warm in the cold.
It is the hardest battle I have ever fought, this aching restraint. This love, left unspoken on a grassy plain, given wings and set free. And as I walk away from Havenmoor, my heart breaking with every step, I know one thing for certain.
I would rather live a lifetime in the ashes of having loved her, than never been consumed by her fire at all.
Chapter Sixteen
Beatrice
The gate swings shut behind me, the familiar whine of its rusted hinges a sound I’ve heard a thousand times. It’s supposed to be a welcome. A final, comforting click of a lock falling into place. You’re safe. You’re home.
So why does it feel like my cage door slamming?
I take a shaky breath, forcing my feet to move forward. The main lane is the same hard-packed dirt, but it feels different under my boots. The cottages flanking it are too new, their wood still pale and unweathered, the thatch on their roofs too bright a gold. They’re neat replicas, built on the ashes of the ones the Minotaurs burned. I recognize the layout, the ghost of a place I knew, but the soul is wrong. It’s like looking at a stranger wearing a familiar face.
The big oak where we used to swing as kids is still standing in the center of the green, a lone, scarred survivor, its branches a little more barren than I remember. It’s all here, but not. It’s a painting I’ve stared at for months in my mind, and now I’m standing inside a poor, hasty copy.
It feels…wrong.
My skin prickles. The wide-open sky of the grasslands felt like freedom. Here, the sky is just a blue ceiling, hemmed inby fences I used to think were for keeping danger out. Now I wonder if they were always meant for keeping us in.
Old Man Hemlock is the first to see me. His head snaps up from whittling on his porch, his eyes widening. There’s no joy in his face at the sight of me. Just a slow-dawning horror, like he’s seen a ghost carrying a plague. He drops his knife, fumbles for his door handle, and vanishes inside. The click of his lock is louder than the gate’s.
A cold knot tightens in my stomach.
Then, the whispers start. They slither from behind curtained windows, from the shadows of doorways. Women I’ve known my whole life—Sarah, who taught me to mend a hem; Lissa, who I braided daisy chains with—they cluster by the well. Their eyes aren’t friendly. They’re assessing. They rake over my worn trousers, my tangled hair…They don’t see Beatrice. They see a strange animal that’s wandered out of the woods.
