His Beauty - Jack Harbon Page 0,2
You shouldn’t have come.”
“I couldn’t leave you! I came to bring you home. You should’ve never come here.” I can’t help the anger in my voice. He’s smarter than this. He had to have known the risk of doing something this reckless.
“I needed to protect you and your sister. Provide…when I’m gone.” There’s anguish in his voice, and he shamefully drops his gaze. I fall to my knees before him, holding his hands through the bars.
“You can’t think like that. There’s still plenty of time before that happens, Papa.” When I use that name, the one I stopped using when I was a girl, his gaze rises to mine, and his eyebrows knit together sadly.
“My Isla… I love you. But you have to go. He’s going to come back, and I’d die before I let him hurt you.”
“Who?”
“The Beast of Highburn. The stories are true. They’re true.”
“All of them?”
He must be mistaken. The horrors I’ve heard… The carnage this creature leaves behind in its wake. There’s no way I could possibly leave him to rot in this prison. Not when the only thing standing between us is a locked cell.
“All of them, Isla. Everything you’ve ever heard in town. You have to go.”
I set my jaw. “No.”
Rising from the floor, I reach into my cloak and pull out the dagger I keep close to me at all times. It’s not much, something Elyse swiped for me a few years ago, but it’s gotten me out of more than a few sticky situations. I examine the door to the cell. It’s a simple lock, and hope springs, in my chest. I could break it if I manage to get my dagger in there just right.
“Isla, leave,” Father hisses, but I block him out.
I can do this. I have to do this. I’m bringing him home with me one way or another. I throw my weight into it, trying to snap the lock on the door somehow, but no matter how hard I tug, there’s no give. “Dammit,” I hiss, fighting the urge to scream. The urge to cry. He’s right here, and there’s nothing I can do to save him.
“Isla—”
Rage fills me, and I look Father in his eyes. “I’m not leaving you here, do you understand me? You’re getting out of this prison.”
But my hands cramp, and my muscles ache, and no matter how hard I tug and jerk, the door remains locked. He’s so close, but so far away. A sob escapes me, and I throw the dagger aside, collapsing to my knees in front of Father. He reaches his hands forward to mine, lacing our fingers together. His touch makes me want to cry more. I should’ve been able to do this. I promised Elyse that I would.
“Sweetheart, you have to leave me. Please.”
My throat clenches, and I press my forehead to the bars. Just as I start to speak, every hair on the back of my neck stands up.
“What do we have here?”
It’s a voice that belongs to neither of us. It’s rumbling, a low growl spoken through clenched teeth. My heart stops, and the blood in my veins turns to ice water. I spin around to find the source of the voice, and a strangled scream escapes my ragged throat.
It’s him.
The Beast.
2
He’s an abomination. He towers over Father and me, at least eight feet tall, maybe even nine. Tall enough to force him to hunch over just slightly, larger than the tiny, stifling room he’s holding my father in.
Shrouded in the darkness, I can only see the outline of the creature, his chest broader than any human and his legs like the trunks of trees, heavy, expansive, and covered in a short coat of ashen fur. A hooded cloak covers his body and head, but I can feel his dark eyes staring holes through me even though I’m unable to see his face. The thought of what that must look like sends me shuddering, cowering against the metal bars of Father’s prison.
“Please, Beast,” Father pleads, rising from the floor. “My daughter knew no better. She only came to rescue me. But I’ve told her there’s nothing she can do. I must own my mistakes and stay here. She was just leaving.”
The creature’s head cocks to the side, that rumbling growl growing even louder in the tight confines of the cellar. “She let herself into my home, the same as you.” He drops a heavy foot forward as he approaches. “Like father, like daughter.” There’s some kind