Beast Read Online Free Page B

vomit, before collapsing in the snow. Then Wilhelm would fear for her, as he always feared for her, and he would feel the terrible press of great responsibility on his shoulders.
    She should not enjoy such things, but he’d brought Philipe . He’d brought the bastard into their home, into an arrangement that already struggled to survive. Wilhelm had wanted to go to court, to plead with Albart for protection. It had been Johanna’s word that had undone those plans. She hadn’t had the courage to show her beastly face among the fine ladies at the palace. Most of all, she hadn’t wanted to see Philipe.
    It had been a selfish choice, subjecting them both to a life of austere poverty and dangerous exposure in their fallen down castle. Where they had once lived as nobles, now they lived as slaves to the demands for food, shelter, comfort, safety. The time would come when it would not be just an injured prince at their doorstep, and Wilhelm, for all his devotion, would not be able to hold Hazelhurn by himself, forever. It took only the might of one greedy lord, seeking to hold the fearsome fortress for his own, and they would both be dead.
    All because she had been unwilling to reveal the extent of her injuries before a palace full of women who’d been openly delighted when the future princess had been cast aside because of her deformation.
    So many years, and she’d faced Philipe in the end, anyway. She tried to think of it as a sign, but she didn’t believe in such things anymore. No sign had appeared to warn them of the fire that had destroyed their family. No sign had raised her hope when her fiancé had rescinded his love upon learning that she was no longer the beauty of his dreams. She could not believe there was a guiding force making meaningful changes to their lives, not after she’d seen the faces of people she’d loved turned black and bloody by the flames.
    Upstairs, the man who could have honored his agreement, who could have taken her under his protection, laid waiting for her to protect him. Father would have admonished her for hesitating to help a person in need.
    Wilhelm could not understand. Though he had been burned, he had not been cursed by the flames as she had. Some days, she thought she might have preferred to die, as her father and brother had.
    No, not as they had . Peacefully, with less pain. Some had never woken when the smoke had filled the east tower. Her father’s elite black guard had perished in their beds, too exhausted from the day’s celebratory tournament to notice that the air had filled with choking blackness. A celebratory tourney. It seemed ridiculous, that they had celebrated with such spectacle a union that had never been meant to be. Those men that had woken, woke too late to escape the flames. They’d perished, then been cremated, in the stone oven of the tower. Johanna did not like to look upon that tower. The bones of some men remained there. In the days following the fire, every resource had been dedicated to survival. Clearing away the quiet dead had not been a priority.
    She remembered her father’s wordless screaming in those last, long days. She had not seen him, but the stories were horrific. Her brother had died in the same room that she now slept in; Wilhelm bedded down on the very cot. Ever since the fire, their lives had been consumed by death.
    Now, the man who’d been the cause of it, the man who’d promised his love and then had cruelly taken it back when she was no longer the pretty bauble he’d desired, wanted them to save him from that death. It would have been comical, if she’d been watching it in a play.
    “Sister?” Wilhelm’s voice called after her. “Sister, the bleeding has not stopped.”
    Climbing to her feet, she ran through Nurse’s instructions for puncture wounds. It should not bleed too frightfully, but if it does, bind it. If it persists, seal it with heated iron, so that the good humors will not wash away with the bad.
“Heat the