Of Beast and Beauty Read Online Free

This path will serve us only once. When the Smooth Skins realize what we’ve done, they’ll shore up their underground defenses, build another impenetrable wall. They already suspect an attack will come. Their guards shot arrows at our scouts as they circled the city. This is our only chance.
     
    Kill her . I hear my brother’s voice in my head. One death is nothing, a drop of water in a sea of the Desert People’s blood .
     
    I flex my hands. My claws grow loose inside the grooves above my nail beds. There’s no choice. There’s no time.
     
    I step from behind the thick tree, out of the shadows, into her line of sight. I bend my knees and bare my teeth. My claws slick from their hiding places as I ready myself for the rush. Her eyes fall on me, huge round eyes in a face so different from my people’s, but somehow still so … familiar.
     
    I hesitate. I shiver.
     
    I didn’t expect the Smooth Skins to look like this. I expected softness like uncooked dough, empty eyes sunk in privilege-rotted flesh. I didn’t expect whisper-thin skin peeling like old tree bark, skin so pale I can see the blue blood flowing beneath. I didn’t expect a sharp chin or a sharper nose or eyes that seem to see everything.
     
    Except me.
     
    She doesn’t see me. She doesn’t startle. She doesn’t scream. Her gaze doesn’t waver. She looks past me, into the orchard. I turn, but there’s no one there. I turn back to find her still motionless, her hand in the flowers, her eyes focused on some faraway nothing. The truth hits, and my claws slide back into their chambers with a shup so hard, it hurts.
     
    She’s blind. I was about to kill a blind girl. Maybe even a simple blind girl. Now that I’ve seen her face, there’s no doubt she’s nearly a woman, but she skips and plays in the flowers like a child. No near adult of the Desert People would behave that way unless they were rattled in the brain.
     
    A strange heat creeps up my neck, making my face burn. Shame.
    That’s what this is. Not something I’ve had reason to feel more than once or twice, but now it curdles inside me.
     
    This isn’t the way. No women or children. We’re not like the Smooth Skins. They are as soulless as a sandstorm. We are better. We know the power of transformation. This planet has changed us, but its magic is good magic. It would be enough to sustain us all if the Smooth Skins hadn’t twisted it to serve their unnatural purposes.
     
    They are the murderers. Their domed cities rob the surrounding lands of vitality. Their prosperity is paid for by the slow death of the desert, and if something doesn’t change, it will lead to the extinction of my people.
    This raid isn’t about killing Smooth Skins; it’s about keeping them from killing any more of us .
     
    I back into the shadows under the orchard trees. I’ll wait. The girl will leave eventually, and then I’ll—
    “Please,” she says.
     
    I freeze, skin crawling, claws slicking out again. Was I wrong? Has she—
    “Show me this garden,” she begs. “Show me myself. Just once.”
     
    She isn’t talking to me. There must be someone else. But where? The flower bed looks dense, the thorns dangerous. I ease closer, circling around her on quiet feet, braced for attack. But there is nothing in the shadows beneath the roses. Only her hand, with a thorn buried deep in one finger and her blood dripping slowly to the earth below.
     
    “You’ve shown me the nobles’ cottages and the soldiers on the walls and the desert outside and the monsters who live there,” she says, spitting each word. “But you refuse to show me what’s right here. Right now. All I want to see is my face! You promised me. You promised!”
     
    The girl is rattled. No question.
     
    “I hate you,” she whispers, sightless eyes narrowing. “I’ll set fire to the entire lot of you.” She laughs, a cruel laugh, not childlike at all. “I’ll do it.
    I swear I will if—”
     
    She breaks off with a cry as