Of Beast and Beauty Read Online Free Page A

the flowers begin to move. Squirm. Coil like snakes preparing to strike. The giant blossoms roll on their stems, turning to fix me with their alien eyes.
     
    Naira’s visions are sound. The roses do have magic, greater than the planet magic that touched our people in the early years, granting us size
    and strength and protection from the sun and our new predators; greater than the blessings our dead bestow as their final flames burn. And the girl knows the magic. She speaks to the flowers.
     
    A plan takes shape quickly. I’ll trap the girl, creep up behind her, and hold my claws to her throat. I’ll make her dig up one of the bushes and whisper the roses’ secrets while she does it. If she’s helpful and quiet, I’ll let her go. If not, I’ll—
    “No,” she gasps. Her eyes go wide. Her thin chest heaves as her breath grows faster. If I didn’t know she was blind, I’d think—
    “No!” she says, louder this time. “Help me!”
     
    I lunge for her, but she darts away, leaping off the edge of the flower bed, leaving a smattering of blood behind. “The Monstrous are in the city!”
    She runs, as fast as the desert wind, around the flower bed and down a stone path lined with more flowers. “Monstrous! In the royal garden! Help me! Help!”
     
    I race after her. I have no choice. I need her silence before it’s too late, before—
    More Smooth Skins appear at the end of the path, spears raised. I know the moment they see me. I see their silhouettes ripple in the yellow moonlight. I smell their fear. I lift my clawed hands and roar—a warning to my people. Wherever their search has taken them, my father and brother and the others in our raid party will hear me and know I’ve been discovered. They’ll make it to the caverns and into the river before they’re caught, but they’ll do it without the roses we came for. We’ve failed. I’ve failed. I let this girl doom my tribe. I should have killed her. I should have slit her throat and lapped the blood from my claws. Now everyone I love will die—my father, my brother, my friends. My son.
     
    He’s only six weeks old. He’ll be the first on the pyre.
     
    I roar again, a sound so terrible the girl screams and stumbles, falling to the ground. I leap and land on top of her before the guards can throw their spears. They’ll kill me sooner or later, but I’ll kill this girl first. I’ll take her life as payment for the destruction of my people.
     
    I grab her shoulder and flip her onto her back, the better to get at her throat. Her skin gives like water beneath my claws. Her blood is the exact color of the roses, red that swallowed brown and black and holds them prisoner in its belly.
     
    I stare at it. It’s beautiful. Terrifying.
     
    I’ve never killed something so large before. So large or so delicate. I didn’t even mean to cut her. I didn’t—
    “Do it,” she whispers, her voice fearful, but angry, too. She trembles beneath me, her long body quaking, her eyes once again without focus. “Do it! Kill me!”
     
    Her words make my blood burn. “You’re so ready to die?” I demand in her language. “My people would do anything to live. Anything .”
     
    Her eyes bulge in her narrow face. “You—you—s-speak. How—”
     
    A spear falls next to my arm, and another glances off my bare shoulder, but my skin isn’t like theirs, so thin that it’s practically pointless to have skin at all. My hide is thick, scaled across my chest, over my neck and shoulders, and down my back. If they want to kill me, they’ll have to hit my belly. I lift my head, roaring at the two guards who’ve dared come close enough to hurl their weapons.
     
    “Wait!” the girl screams. “Take it alive! Don’t kill it!”
     
    It .
     
    I snarl into her face. She screams, and her eyes squeeze shut. Her hands cover her mouth, muffling her sobs. Another spear flies. And another, but I knock them away, rage making my warrior’s reflexes even swifter.
     
    I am