The Beast Prince

by Marian Perera

  “Time to use this,” Marus murmured. “If it works the way you said it would.”

  He held up the stick of dynamite. Kat fumbled in a pocket of her shirt and brought out two matches wrapped in a scrap of sandpaper. She scratched a flame into life with one flick, and touched it to the end of the oiled cord—the end closest to the dynamite.

  The fuse ignited. Then Marus let go and it fell into the center of the tangled coils of glass, a fleck of light swallowed up by ice. Kat turned and scrambled along the beams.

  She was almost at the gap in the roof when the explosion hit like thunder. The slab of wood beneath her shook, nearly toppling her. Crystalline shrapnel flew in all directions. Tiles crashed down with hailstone smashes. She had no idea where the Prince was, and didn’t want to waste even an instant turning to see as she clambered up onto the roof, gasping in the cool clean air outside.

  Still no sign of him. She lay almost flat on the rainslick tiles to spread her weight evenly over a roof weakened further from the explosion. No chance he had been killed in the blast, so what was he doing? She didn’t want to go back in, but if he expected her to be his loyal servant, it wouldn’t look good if she ran for safety and left him behind.

  Then a dark head emerged from the widened gap in the roof and he climbed out slowly. He was naked again, which had to be uncomfortable against the hard edges of the tiles. Still, any cuts or scratches would disappear instantly when he took earth form, so she climbed back down the ladder, found her last match and lit the lantern she had left outside.

  Marus picked his way down the ladder, cursing under his breath when a rung snapped beneath his foot. And when he finally reached the ground and turned to face her, she realized why he’d been delayed—he’d waited to make certain the linx were destroyed. He had to have leaned well over the rafter to watch, because a shard was embedded in his right eye.

  She jolted back when she saw it, and he looked almost as startled as she felt. “What’s wrong?”

  What was wrong? Couldn’t he feel it? She mutely pointed to her own eye.

  “Oh,” Marus said as if that didn’t matter any more than his nudity did. He plucked the shard out and tossed it away. The mud that filled his eye socket showed no indication a wedge of glass had been there. He leaned against the wall of the barracks and looked away from her, unmoving except for the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

  She still couldn’t quite believe they had destroyed the linx—something no one in town would imagine a Prince could do in his flesh form—and the Prince’s silence was disconcerting. He didn’t do anything she expected. He should have been triumphantly smug and satisfied, but instead he just seemed tired.

  She had no idea what it was like to have the power of a Prince, but she knew weariness and defeat only too well. Why those would affect him was a mystery, but she had to say something to end the silence. They couldn’t wait out there all night.

  “That was…clever.” She got the word out with an effort. “How did you think of it?”

  He continued to gaze off into the night, and his voice was remote. “I remembered you said it was ready to reproduce, and I wondered if it might be territorial. Like us.” He turned to face her, but the detached tone was gone, his brows lifted over those unsettling eyes. “You took a risk, jumping down.”

  As if that had been more of a risk than volunteering to take tribute to him. “I didn’t think a rat was enough.”

  “I wasn’t sure that dynamite would be enough, but it was. As powerful as you said, and you brought it here to use on me. Didn’t you?”

  He asked the question as if requesting a glass of water, but his gaze was unwavering and she went cold down to her bones. Of course he’d seen through her, but he’d been waiting until they had nothing more pressing to deal with. Damn the Farlanders to hell for doing this to her, and damn her even more for actually feeling sorry for the Prince.

  “Yes,” she said.

  As if the word was a trigger, he moved. She stumbled back, but the wall of the barracks was behind her. Before she could twist aside, he had her up against hard cool stone, the length of his body all but pressed against hers.

  She went completely still, in shock rather than pain. He didn’t seem to realize he was naked, that his bare chest almost touched the front of her shirt. If he had been a man, her knee would have pistoned up so hard it would have pulped his balls. If only he had been a man, rather than a force of nature that happened to wear the physical form of one.

  And from the composed look on his face, he wasn’t afraid of anything she could do. He put a palm flat against the wall beside her shoulder, as if to hold himself away from her, keeping that last fraction of distance between them. She was still trapped, unable to move, her mind racing. If he was going to kill her, she’d fight back no matter how useless that would be, but if he only wanted to scare her in retaliation, she needed to play along.

  She tried not to imagine how many more alternatives he had between those two extremes.

  “You’re lucky, Katsumi Ito.” His voice was a low murmur. “I hate would-be assassins, but I despise anyone who lies to me. So if you ever again think of lifting a hand against me, keep in mind what just happened. In either of my forms, I’m very good at defending myself—and anything that belongs to me. Will you make that clear to your people?”

  She managed a nod.

  “Good.” A frown appeared between his brows, as if he thought hard about something. “Now, about your lying to me…”

  He was trying to manipulate a reaction out of her, with the suggestive way his voice trailed off. Remain stubbornly silent? So tempting, and not difficult, but that would prolong whatever he thought he was doing. Better give him the scared-little-human response he wanted and get this over with, so she wouldn’t need to keep looking into those ugly pits of mud, smelling the musky sweat on his skin.

  “I won’t do it again,” she said, and did her best to make her voice come out soft and trembly. Shit. She sounded the same as always, and Marus smiled.

  “Of course you will,” he said. “You’re human and you’ll put your people before your duties to me. But I know where I stand with you now.”

  “And where do I stand with you?” Damn it, she was tired of this game. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Not yet.”

  He was so close she felt his breath warm on her face. For a demented moment she thought he was going to kiss her—and she would have to let him do what he wanted, because she had no choice about it. And as retaliation went, sex was bearable, so a kiss was nothing. She didn’t move except for holding on to the wall behind her, nails digging into crumbling mortar. Anything might happen if she let go.

  He didn’t move either, other than his head lowering a fraction. As if that inhuman gaze had moved to her mouth, studying her, drinking her in more completely than the linx would have done. His eyes were half-lidded, but that didn’t hide what they were—liquid earth deeper than quicksand. Heat like a living thing shivered down through her body, and her heart slammed in her chest as she fought to breathe.

  He reached down and picked up the lantern she had lit earlier. “Let’s go inside,” he said, and led the way.

  Chapter Three

  Marus sat on a bench, trying not to show he was moments away from folding like an empty grain sack. Not only from the smell of food hitting him once he was inside the dining hall, but at the knowledge of how close he’d come to being murdered—painfully, as if death alone wasn’t bad enough. Katsumi had told him the dynamite could shatter anything, but until he’d seen what it had done to the linx…

  That was for me, he remembered thinking. That was supposed to be him, turned to shredded meat by the blast, nothing recognizable left. The knowledge of what the humans had meant to do held him frozen in place, his ears ringing from the explosion, the walls ringing too as hundreds of splinters flew at them.


  It was a little while before he’d composed himself enough to climb out onto the roof. How many more such explosives did the humans have? Could she be carrying others, despite her claim to the contrary? He wondered whether to strip her and find out.

  The thought was strangely exciting. She was quite different from the women in Copper Lake, the human town he’d ruled until…until what had happened exactly three weeks ago. Whatever else he had lost, it wasn’t the track of time, and he kept a record in his mind as clearly as if he carved each day into stone. Three weeks, an eternity ago.

  The people of Copper Lake had done well thanks to him, flourishing under a Prince’s patronage, and they had been appropriately grateful. So every woman who’d come to him had been prepared for the occasion, polished fine as a gem. Katsumi was streaked with dust, her hair tumbled every which way. Strong though she might be, she was also whipcord lean except for the slight curves of her breasts, as if she’d never had enough to eat. She looked more battered than he felt, as if she had trudged over half the continent to reach his outpost.

  But she’d held his stare without flinching when she’d admitted to being sent to kill him, the dark centers of her eyes darker for the contrast with the white around them. And he couldn’t forget how she’d jumped down between two linx, something he would never have done. She was a curious contradiction—despite dropping to her knees and groveling prettily the moment she’d laid eyes on him, she’d been fearless.

  And dangerous. Best never forget that. He would have to be insane to let down his guard with a woman who had planned to kill him, and his reaction to her outside…well, that had been understandable. His blood had been up after the fight, after the victory, after looking down at the glittering remnants of the linx and realizing how easily that could have been him.

  He’d needed to forget everything, to be alive again. That was all. And now that he had cleared his head, he was relieved he hadn’t tried to do more. If he pushed her too far, she might fight back and injure him. The moment that happened—the moment he bled instead of instantly reverting to earth form to heal himself—she’d know the truth.

  Soft scuffing footsteps outside were followed by the creak of a door, and he guessed she was checking the barracks to make sure the linx was no longer a threat. She leaned slightly into the dining room as if suspecting some sort of ambush.

  “If you’re hungry, prepare a meal,” he said, hoping his belly wouldn’t give him away by rumbling. “I’ll join you.”

  She took her jerkin off and set to work, putting more wood on the fire before she hung the kettle over it and sliced the bread. Marus opened the jar of honey and spread a little on a slice, forcing himself to eat slowly although his last meal had been a handful of berries the previous day.

  When the kettle boiled, she added dried leaves to two cups and poured steaming water in, then set one before him. The piece of bread seemed to have gone nowhere, but the hot drink made him feel a little less empty, and after the past weeks of grinding hardship, it was infinitely soothing to have someone see to his needs again.

  Even if she seemed considerably less comfortable. She took nothing but half a slice of bread, which meant he couldn’t risk eating more, and sat opposite him with her attention riveted to her plate. He pushed his aside.

  “How much more dynamite is in your town?” he asked.

  She glanced up warily. “Enough to defend ourselves.”

  “Did you make it?”

  “I’m not a chemist.”

  “Then what are you?”

  He let his voice harden, enough to let her know what he thought of the short non-answers, and fortunately the hint wasn’t lost on her. She swallowed the last crumb, lowered her elbows from the table and sat up straighter, which he hadn’t thought possible.

  “I used to be the captain of the guard, but I resigned my position to deliver the tribute,” she said. Marus wondered how she had known he needed a servant, before he realized she hadn’t expected to go back alive. She continued, her voice jerky. “No one in the town knows about the dynamite I brought. They sent me to do our duty to a Prince.”

  He knew at once that she hadn’t been alone in that particular underhanded trick, because if so, she wouldn’t have felt any need to assure him of it. Well, he’d get everything he needed out of that town, doubly so after the attempted assassination and the linx’s destruction.

  “You’ll do your duty all right,” he said grimly. “When you go back tomorrow, you’ll make it clear that no one is to enter this place without my permission. If they need to speak with you, they’ll stay outside.”

  “I’ll let them know.”

  He also needed to trust her—as much as he could trust anyone—which meant keeping her with him. “You won’t be paying repeated visits to the town.” If they continued to plot against him, they’d have to do it without her help. “When you go back tomorrow, have them set up a supply system so you won’t need to leave this place again.”

  Her eyes were bleak and hollow, but she nodded without speaking. He felt an odd discomfort that was nothing like hunger, as if he’d treated her unfairly. Which he hadn’t. By the Princes’ standards, he’d been downright merciful in not killing her after he’d discovered what she’d planned to do with the dynamite.

  And now that he came to think of the other Princes…

  “You’ll also implement an advance warning system in case my brothers approach this place,” he said. “I’m fully prepared to hold them off, but I’d like any such fights to happen well away from here, so they don’t damage my new home.”

  The trapped, empty expression left her. “You think other Princes might seek you out?” She was still exhausted and afraid, he could tell, but beneath that was a sharp competence. Of course, she’d been the captain of the guard. “I thought the members of your family avoided each other’s territories.”

  No one had called him and his brothers a family before. “It’s possible one or more other Princes might want my territory or might simply hate humans. So I need to know who’s nearby, whether it’s one of us or even the Queen.” She stared at him, and he smiled without humor. “Yes, that’s the one thing the Princes fear—that some day, our mother will be loosed upon the world.”

  It was a half-truth, because he doubted the Queen would ever be free; one of the few mercies in life was that his mother stayed trapped in the heart of the land, deep beneath the ground’s surface. All her strength—a force that could smash tectonic plates—couldn’t free her, which had turned her even more vicious and crazed.

  Katsumi looked as though every time she thought she’d heard the worst, something happened to prove her wrong. “Is that possible?”

  He shrugged. “There’s a balance of power among the Princes. We’re all capable of turning into rocks or lava, and we’re unable to harm each other that way, so a few of my brothers will do whatever it takes to tilt that balance. I’ll bet you anything they’ve thought of releasing the Queen and turning her against the rest of us. All that’s stopping them is that firstly, they can’t affect the power that binds her, and secondly, they have no way to stop her turning on them too, once she’s freed.”

  “Because she’s insane.”

  “Not so insane she doesn’t remember that after she gave birth, each and every one of her sons promptly ran like rabbits rather than, I don’t know, trying to free her. Then again, we’re proud, greedy and merciless, not stupid.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched in the closest she’d come to a smile since he’d first seen her. He leaned forward, knowing what he had to say next would crush even that tiny trace of amusement, and not caring.

  “So I hope none of you plan to use your explosives on her.” His voice was hard and intent. “Whatever you think of me and my brothers, she’s far more powerful, violent beyond imagining, and not constrained by flesh in any way. At best, you’ll waste your effort. At worst, you�
�ll destroy the magic that keeps her where she is, though I’m sure some of you wouldn’t mind mass suicide as long as it wiped us out too.”

  Knuckles jutted pale beneath her skin where she gripped the edge of the table. “No one will go near the Queen, I promise you that.”

  At least they had a sense of self-preservation, and he nodded curt approval. Maybe this was a good time to dismiss her so he could eat a little more in private.

  But the mention of magic stayed in his mind, working its way in like a thorn. His power had to have been stolen with magic, except none of his brothers was capable of such a trick. Which meant humans, infinitely weaker, certainly couldn’t have done it either.

  He’d almost forgotten, though, that the continent had once been inhabited by someone else—whoever had brought his mother to her figurative knees, imprisoning her in the heart of her own land. That took power too. If he could somehow tap even a little of it…

  “Speaking of the Queen,” he asked, “who among you has studied the magic that confines her?” Better to take it for granted that humans had done something, rather than phrase it as a question to which they could answer no.

  She looked blank. “None of us.”

  “Oh, come now. If there was once a source of power greater than that of the Queen Beneath the Earth, I find it difficult to believe none of you have investigated it.”

  “And how would we do that without going to her valley? The last time a human went to her, thousands of us were murdered.” The last time a human did that, he guessed, the Queen had conceived as a result—bearing children who had her power over earth, and who weren’t trapped by what kept her a prisoner. “That place is forbidden ground. Completely off limits. If I knew anyone was planning to go there, I’d arrest them before the lynch mob could tear them apart.”