Beauty's Secret (Beast and Beauty Book 2)

by Brantwijn Serrah

  I took it, amused by the way the soft meat held the curved shape of the claw even when extracted. "How much do you remember of the river valley?"

  "Oh, quite a lot," he replied. "I had brothers, like I told you. My mother and father managed the mill, and I had an uncle who worked a fishing boat."

  Schala wound around my calf. I bent to slip her a piece of the crabmeat, and a loud, thrumming purr rose from her scrawny frame.

  "I'm glad you've decided to come with us to Sanraeth," I said. "But did you not think of returning home, like the other Vash slaves did?"

  Rayyan waved a hand. "That life is long gone for me. I don't know if I could stand to look in the faces of my family again, after..."

  His face grew dark. I understood what he intended to say, even if he couldn't make himself say it. After being made into a whore.

  "I'm not sure what I would do, even I did go back." Dropping the shell of the claw back onto his plate, he leaned back, looking up into the sky. "I have no desire to be a fisher, like my uncle, or a miller or shepherd. Maybe a builder, but..."

  His gaze returned to the ship, and he glanced toward the quarter-deck where Bannon, Mara, and the ship's captain, Arne, stood supervising a group of soldiers preparing nets.

  "Before I started serving with the Sanraethi soldiers," Rayyan murmured, "I'd never held a weapon in my hand. They taught me how to use the spear, how to defend myself. And others. So many of the slaves had no one to protect them. That is something I can do now. I am no miller, no fisher. I am definitely not meant to be a bride or bear children."

  I smiled at the brighter tone in his voice. In my heart, I knew what he would say next, but still it overjoyed me to hear it.

  "So, I'll be a soldier. The Red Bear has welcomed me into his horde. The others have accepted me well enough. Most of them don't even know I was ever part of the harem at all. I like that."

  Slipping Schala another piece of crab, I nodded again. For all he sounded as though this had only just come to him, I expected he'd known it, deep inside, for some time.

  I'd known Rayyan as a timid person, a meek little mouse in the claws of a fierce, cruel cat, always toying with him and humiliating him. Working with the Sanraethi, and bearing the mantle of a guard, had brought out his thriving inner strength. I recalled the way he'd looked at the rowers and their hard, physical labors, the way he'd perked up with interest.

  "I am glad," I said to him again. "And I am glad we will be together. From one life to the next. You are so very important to me, Rayyan."

  He smiled at me. I picked up another of the crab legs, dug out my own small knife and worked it under the joint, as he had.

  "And what of you?" Rayyan asked. "Now you are free, and on your way to a strange foreign kingdom, what will you do?"

  I caught another one of the sailors staring at the crimson ink and taut, white lines of my scars and tattoos, and hurriedly glanced away.

  "Hard to say," I mumbled. "I hoped leaving Vashtaren would mean leaving behind all the infamy and gossip. I keep forgetting, though, how all my sins and perversions are marked right on my skin for all to see. Anywhere I go—even across the sea, apparently—I'll still be the dark magician's witch."

  I thought of Torv and the jovial way he'd said it, so casual and unconcerned. "That's not who I wish to be. It's not who I've ever wished to be."

  Rayyan wiped one hand clean and gently touched my wrist. He held my hand up, showing me the cryptic symbols and lines inked across the back of it.

  "You may not be able to erase what's been done to you," Rayyan replied. "But you do have the power to change other things. Things Alaric never would allow you to change."

  Gently I tugged away from him. I closed my eyes and thought of the sunset-colored sari Bannon had brought me. A gift, but also something of my own choosing. A symbol of my freedom to change.

  A symbol which had brought on a wild, emotional attack.

  Rayyan brushed a hand through my blonde mane. "How long has it been since your hair was cut?"

  Maybe a whole year. I combed my fingers through it. "Do you think I should?"

  "I think when I sheared my hair, it felt even more liberating than shedding my collar."

  I touched the base of my throat, where the absence of my own collar still struck me as painful, odd, and wrong.

  But when I'd worn the sari, walked out among the sailors and soldiers and refugees wearing something Alaric would never have chosen, something I had desired for myself, it had filled me with such powerful joy.

  My hair had been dyed and damaged, always styled in the straight, flat sheet favored by the Vash. It had taken hours for me to uncover its natural blonde shine again, once I had been free to, and days after that to coax it back to any sort of body and life.

  I like my hair. I genuinely like it, and it never did look right in that lank, straight fashion.

  My gaze roamed over the women on deck, considering their colorful, complex styles.

  As much as I disliked Mara, I'd always admired the way she kept one half of her dark locks tightly braided against her scalp, while the rest of it tumbled free and wild. Some of the other Sanraethi women wore it similarly, sometimes with close, neat braids on either side and a wave of free tresses along the top, all coming together to be tied back and tumble down between their shoulders. Some, like Ashe, wore it all in braids, and others left it totally unbound, adorned with beads and metal charms and wild bird feathers.

  "Do you know anyone who can style it for me like the Sanraethi women?" I asked Rayyan. My voice came out quiet, even shy.

  "Calla." Rayyan picked up his plate and stood. "She served one of the Vash women as a handmaiden, but she's Sanraethi by birth. I think I know what bunk she's been assigned, too. It will be a wonderful surprise for the captain."

  I hesitated before rising also. An unexpected twinge made me rub at my chest, where the first tight twinge had started.

  A surprise? He means to do this right now, before I speak to Bannon?

  I touched the place where the ring of my collar should be, wishing I could worry its familiar smooth curve, spin it in its shackle, as I intoned, "A slave does not preen or pretty herself except as her Master orders."

  Rayyan snorted. "Old rules, given by old, dead men. Bannon will have no objection."

  I swallowed. Rayyan still didn't understand my desire to embrace my servitude and give myself over to my Master's guidance. Bannon may not object to me altering my appearance, but I wasn't supposed to without speaking to him first. He might not object, but it ought to be discussed.

  A slave serves Master's desires. Her dress, her jewelry... her hair.

  Bannon had learned a lot about his role as Master from our book. He could punish me if a careless decision displeased him. What if he didn't appreciate my adopting his people's fashions? If I somehow offended him by styling myself like one of them? Like his own wife, maybe?

  I'd be giving him the right to do it.

  He is not like Alaric. But he is my Master.

  "He will be pleased!" Rayyan insisted. "I saw the way he beamed at you in the dress you chose. Whatever else you decide to do with your appearance, he will adore you even more."

  My heart gave a throb. My fingers searched for the collar and the ring that weren't there. They brushed the sore, reddened bruises from the rigging rope debacle. All at once, a rebellious part of me clashed with my caution.

  Careful, he'd told me. He thought I'd nearly strangled because I'd been careless and clumsy. As though I was some fragile thing. As though I hadn't taken on a warped, hideous god-monster in the desert right alongside him.

  As though I hadn't earned some right to be believed.

  Sullen mutiny smoldered in my gut. Maybe I don't need his permission after all.

  "All right. Take me to Calla."

  Chapter Nine

  Calla—a willowy, very pale Sanraethi, though ferocious and indignant since her liberation—was only too happy to steer me onto a barrel in her bunkroom and h
elp me shed the lingering look of a Vash woman.

  When the knife appeared and she set to work shearing and cutting, my confidence wavered again. My heart thumped heavily in my chest, and I had to close my eyes, wondering all over again if it had been the right decision.

  Too late now. There's no going back.

  Her clever hands worked like swift, determined little birds, parting and weaving, shearing and teasing. When she brought up the polished glass to show me the result, a surge of joy filled me.

  "Eye of Akolet!" I whispered, thrilled and daunted all at once. She'd shorn the hair on the left side of my head nearly down to the scalp, and sectioned the rest into a short, wild, regal mane like a lion's. "I really look like one of your clans."

  Calla wrinkled her nose. "Sanraethi women don't call on the snake god. There's your first lesson, if you really wish to be like us. Though if you ask me, you shouldn't try to imitate a Sanraethi woman. Wearing your hair like us is one thing, but look at you."

  She opened her palm before my face as though to frame and display my distinctive features. I prepared myself for her to point out my tattoos, which I needed no help in recognizing. She surprised me, though.

  "Sanraethi hair is never so straight and fine as yours, nor quite this color. Some of the northernmost clans might have it, in some families, but even there, I doubt you'd find many. And I've never met any Sanraethi with gray eyes."

  Rayyan, sitting on the edge of Calla's bunk and watching with eager enthusiasm, twisted his mouth in an uncertain expression, as though he wished to contradict her. Of course, being Southern Vash, he really couldn't.

  "It doesn't matter," Calla continued breezily. "If you want to be like a Sanraethi woman, I won't stand in your way. I thought you intended to find your real folk, though. I'd expect you to want to adopt their ways."

  Oh. I put a finger to my lips and watched the woman in the mirror do the same. I hadn't even thought of that.

  "As soon as we reach land, you must find a serpent and kill it," Calla instructed, moving smoothly past my awkward silence. She drew my hair back from my face and singled out the one smooth, long braid she'd plaited by my right ear. "We'll fashion an ornament from its skull and hang it from the end of this braid, as symbol of your battle against the serpent in the sands."

  The braid stood out, though she'd woven no charms or decoration into it yet, explaining to me that such adornments were earned through noble acts and victory.

  "Your history with Alaric," she tutted, fluffing up the rest of my hair again. "Not worthy of remembrance. His crusades were evil, and your part in them, an act of shame."

  The accusation stung, but I didn't argue. She was right.

  "But your battle with the serpent god," she continued. "Let it be the first of many such braids, preserved and decorated with tokens of your redemption."

  My heart raced in my chest, half in bright, beautiful glee, and half in dread, unsure whether Bannon would approve of the change, or be annoyed by my vanity.

  What I hadn't expected were the looks of outright horror on the faces of the sailors when Rayyan and I reappeared on deck.

  The sight of me brought several conversations to an abrupt end. Some furrowed their brows in confusion. Others blanched or turned faintly green. I'd intended to go straight to my Master, eager for his response—hoping desperately it would be one of approval—but I'd hardly made it halfway to the quarterdeck when the stares brought me to a halt.

  Eye of Akolet... what is it? What did I do wrong?

  My stomach dropped out from under me. The urge to be sick rose in my gut.

  Ashe broke apart from a group of deck hands who'd been sharing a mug of beer. The urgent expression on her face only worsened my panic.

  "Stay right here," she instructed me, before hurrying down to the lower decks. I traded a worried glance with Rayyan.

  "What's wrong?" I demanded. He shook his head, just as baffled as I.

  Are they angry I wish to look like one of them? Outraged that the witch would dare to imitate their customs?

  Moments later, Ashe jogged back up the stairs. In her hands she held three eggshells. She pushed them into my hands.

  "Drop them and crush them with your feet. Do it quickly! And take off your boots, your feet must be bare!"

  Too surprised to argue, I did as she said. Sliding off my boots, I cast down the shells, and stomped on them.

  "More," Ashe commanded. "Crush the pieces as small as you can. The tinier, the better."

  "Why am I doing this?" I asked as I obeyed, grating and grinding the thin shells against the boards. All around us, people had begun to move again. Some put their hands to their hearts with sighs of relief, while others shot glances of annoyance at me before returning to their work.

  "You never, ever cut your hair while at sea," Ashe told me. "It's terrible luck, a great insult to the sea spirits. You crush the eggshells to prevent angry entities from following you and enacting punishment."

  I ground the last bit of shell under my heel and inspected the remnants. Naturally, I'd make a mistake like this, wouldn't I? First the mob, then the ropes, now an unwitting act of idiocy.

  And now if anything unfortunate happens, if anything goes wrong, it will be my fault. Again. Alaric's witch, dooming the voyage home just as she cursed the liberators of his castle.

  Tears sprung to my eyes. Ashe pressed her lips together in a sympathetic frown and patted my shoulder.

  "Toss the shells overboard," she advised. "The spirits should accept your offering and you will be safe."

  She didn't sound certain of it at all.

  Rayyan held out his hands. "We didn't know."

  Ashe toyed with the ends of her braids and lifted one shoulder in a noncommittal shrug. She turned back toward the sailors she'd been drinking with, tossing one last glance over her shoulder at us as she went.

  "We still need to discuss some of the work to be done. Meet me at the mast again in thirty minutes."

  I clenched my fists at my side and ground my teeth. Rayyan put his arm around my shoulder.

  "It will be all right. It's only superstition. Nothing bad is going to happen."

  Stooping, I gathered up the powdery bits of shell and moved to the railing to cast them overboard. "It's already happening, though, isn't it? Those people on the docks... and those ropes did move on their own! They looped around me and tried to strangle me, I swear it."

  Not just strangle. They meant to pose me. They were pulling me into position just as the Order would have. Just as Alaric would have.

  Sacred serpent. My hand flew to my throat as I stared out over the water. Is he... could he still be...

  I jumped as Rayyan took me by the hand.

  "Come on." He flashed me an encouraging smile. "We still have to show the Red Bear."

  "Rayyan, he'll be furious." I buried my face in my hands. "If I'd spoken with him like I should have, certainly he'd have warned me about the superstitions. He'll punish me for sure."

  The smile faded. Rayyan dropped my hand, looking puzzled and defeated.

  "Well..." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "He'll see it one way or another, won't he?"

  With a sigh, I nodded. "You're right. Might as well have it done with. You don't have to come, though. Go join Ashe and the others. I'll meet you when I'm done."

  He looked as though he wanted to argue, but I nudged him in the direction of the sailors, and he went. I ran my hand through my hair—And I really did like the change. It felt so cathartic! —and set out to find my Master, Schala trotting at my heels.

  Torv stood by the arched wooden doorway to the stern, smoking a long-handled pipe. He eyed my hair with a shrewd expression, taking a long draw, and blew out a puff of fragrant, floral-scented smoke.

  "Suits you," he grunted, then reached over to push open the door. I tried to muster up a grateful smile but thought it must have come off as more of a grimace, as I passed him.

  I found the meeting room by the sound of voices from within. Bann
on, Mara, and Arne, discussing the voyage ahead. I knocked at the door, hoping Bannon himself would answer, but of course it was the lieutenant who opened it. She looked me over, her face unreadable.

  "Red Bear," she said, stepping aside to admit me. Both men looked up from a table of maps, and I braced myself for their disapproval.

  Arne didn't react at all. We hadn't shared more than a perfunctory greeting, and he might not even realize I'd changed my appearance at all. Bannon, on the other hand, stared at me, blinking in surprise.

  "Sadira..."

  He came to me, arms outstretched. Then, a broad grin broke out on his face and he laughed, a hearty, happy sound.

  "Look at you! It's wonderful!"

  A wave of relief overtook me as he wrapped me in an enthusiastic embrace. I laid a hand on his chest and met his eyes, hopeful, as he combed his fingers through the short, shaggy new length of my hair.

  He touched the single braid. "This should have a token added to it."

  "Calla said a serpent's skull." For a moment I almost forgot the others in the room and the business I'd interrupted. "Only there are none on the ship, of course, so I'm to kill one as soon as I'm able, and she'll fashion a token for me then."

  "Perfect." He kissed me. "My beautiful kitten."

  "You aren't angry at me?"

  "Should I be?" He stroked the shorn portion on the left side of my head, sending a shiver of delight down the back of my neck.

  "I didn't discuss it with you first."

  "Ah."

  Mara had returned to the table, and she rolled her eyes. Captain Arne furrowed his brow, drumming his fingers on the maps as he watched our exchange. Bannon glanced his way before returning his attention to me.

  "I suppose you should have at least told me of your intention," he said. "But you're not prisoner to my whims. And you are even more beautiful than ever."

  He ran his hand through my hair again, and I leaned my head into his palm, closing my eyes to bask in his touch.