chapter twenty-six

The beast didn't move at first. He kept looking at the dark tunnels he had sent the girl running down. She was perhaps the first person to look at him like a human, yet he had acted like a beast. He looked down at the rose in his grasp, noticing how heavy it suddenly felt.

It had to be done.

The girl's fate was sealed the moment she stepped into the labyrinth. Whether she was truly a criminal or not, he couldn't save her from that fate, though he hadn't been able to grant her the swift end he had promised, either. His stomach turned as he thought about her starving until she could barely lift that pretty little head. He had been too weak to kill her, and now she had to suffer the consequences.

He stepped back into his cave, letting the silence surround him until it was interrupted by a rumble in the labyrinth's floor that nearly tripped his hooves.

"Don't be cross with me," he spat at the labyrinth floor. "I did what I had to do. She didn't want to be killed yet, so I let her go. As for the rose, she had no right to keep it. For all I know, she stole it from my family and invented the whole story."

The labyrinth rumbled again, this time hard enough that he needed to brace himself on the stone table.

"What's done is done!" the beast said with gritted teeth. "If it makes you happy, I can go find her and end her life while she's asleep."

His stomach twisted at the thought. Even without those enchanting eyes in front of him, he could still feel them digging into him. Could he really drain them of life when they were already bursting full of it?

It doesn't matter. She's gone now and probably won't want to ever see me again, anyway.

He rubbed at his temple, careful not to scratch himself, as he took a seat on one of the boulder chairs. He turned his attention to the rose, hopeful that he could distract himself by diving into the mystery behind its magic. He spun the rose around to look at the center of it, but when he did, he noticed that it looked different than before.

"What?" He narrowed his eyes on the flower, feeling his heart rate increase as he searched for the bright glow that was no longer present. "What's wrong? Why does it look so dull? "

The vibrant shade of red had begun to darken like drying blood, and the warm glow that illuminated the shadows was all but faded. It was just like the rosebushes in the labyrinth... but this one was wilting before his eyes. The petals were curling, the stem softening, and the color kept getting darker by the second.

"Stop! You can't die!" He tried to lift the petals with the tip of his claw, but the second he touched it, the petal turned brittle and fell right off.

It wilted from my touch.

He dropped the flower, letting it fall to the table with a soft thud that felt so much louder in the beast's mind. Not even a second after the flower left his grip, life returned to the bloom. The stem stiffened and turned back to a dark green; the petals flourished like they'd just received a much-needed drink of water, and the magical glow slowly returned. The only evidence that anything had happened to the rose at all was the crumpled petal that had fallen by the beast's hooves.

"I can't touch it..." the beast breathed.

The curse can be broken by this rose, but not by you, by someone sent to you.

The words from his mother's letter ran in his head, and he found himself spinning the golden ring on his finger. He'd nearly forgotten that pesky detail. Did that mean he needed the girl after all?

Maybe not her, but at least someone unaffected by my curse. Blast it.

He plucked the ring off his finger and shifted the band so he could read the engraved names on the interior of the gold band.

Malik and Evelyn.

Malik... the creator of his prison, and now the crafter of the key. The father he didn't remember but could never forget. Did he even know the rose had made it down here? Did this Ceyden know about the rose's true purpose so he could send it to his lost brother? Doubtful... A thousand questions pattered against his skull like a shower of gravel. The only true answer he had was that this rose couldn't be wielded by him, which meant that it was definitely the one he had been searching for.

And the girl was telling the truth... She'd been given the flower by the younger son of Lord Malik.

What else had she been honest about? The beast gnawed his lip, wondering just how beastly she had been. She claimed she wasn't a criminal, so what other reason could she have for entering the labyrinth? It couldn't have been for him. No one cared about him, yet...

He thought back to her big eyes, and the way they didn't want to believe that there was a monster inside him.

"I need to find her again, don't I?" the beast grumbled to himself, earning a low rumble from the labyrinth's ceiling. "That is, if she'll even let me get close to her after what I did. Perhaps I should wait a few days until she's hungry? Then it will be hard for her to refuse me."

The labyrinth walls rumbled, but he wasn't sure if it was its way of scolding him or agreeing.

"Well, she's not going to simply—" His ring warmed, and the labyrinth stilled at the same moment. "Wait..."

He shifted his focus, trying to utilize the ring's magic to detect what had just disturbed the maze's walls. The gates were closed, but had they always been? He'd been so distracted with the girl and the rose that he hadn't even thought to pay attention to the labyrinth's alerts.

"Someone has entered the maze..." the beast breathed, his chest tightening as the ring's magic alerted him to each new footstep that hindered his peace. "Not just one... there's a whole group. Four men."

The girl! Where is the girl?

His ring instantly shifted targets, easily sensing his what he wanted most, which was to know the location of his latest victim. He could sense her movements, along with the brush of her skirt against the stone and the soft puffs of her breath. She was on the move, and she was getting closer to the new group of prisoners.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" he shouted into the maze's ceiling as he snatched up his axe and ran for the exit. He raised the ring to his lips, his voice sharp and dry as he demanded it take him to what he wanted most. "Take me to the girl!"