*Maddy*
When I was a child, my father came home from one of his mysterious merchant trips with a large, fabric bound book. It was large enough to cover my entire lap, and so heavy I couldn’t lift it on my own. The cover was embroidered with whirls and swirls of silver and gold thread, the outer edges detailed with delicate symbols and lettering none of us could read.
“It’s very old, Starling,” he’d said to me, laying the book carefully in my lap as I trembled with childlike excitement. “You must be extremely careful. You never know what kind of magic may be inside, and what gods we’ll upset if any pages are torn.”
He’d said it in jest, of course. At least I thought so at the time. But he’d been right to be careful with the massive text. Inside were stories of a land lost to time, each page illustrated with great care and skill. Myths and legends of the old gods and goddesses and their trials, stories of their people, their subjects, their heroes and enemies.
And their beasts.
They’d been my favorite to read about. The wolf-like creatures of silver and white, with scaled wings and nearly opalescent eyes swirling with mist-like ether. Creatures of extraordinary power, strength, and courage. They could bring armies to their knees, break rifts in space and time, and guarded their assigned gods from birth to death, their long lives spanning centuries, if not millenia.
But they were only myths, like the old gods who maybe, at one point, had been worshiped like we worship the Moon Goddess now. In the legend, a great war several thousand years ago had killed off the last of the beasts, along with the dragons and fae and the lesser gods and godlings, those children born of gods and shifters.
The beasts and their beautiful wings were gone, their myths lost to time. Their history shrouded in speculation and disbelief. The Moon Goddess, according to the book, had two beasts. While they perished in the great war of the gods long, long ago, some of her temples still bear the likeness of them lying at her feet, without their wings of course, to this day. Two wolves with eyes made of moonstone wrapped themselves around her legs at the temple we’d visited only yesterday. I’d noticed them, felt their eyes watching me as the priestess dabbed my forehead with water.
Neither of them had looked like the creature standing only ten yards from where I now lay, propped on my elbows and my mouth parted in mingled fear–and disbelief.
We’re in the grassy plain below the bluff where the great tree shades the grave where I’ve been told Mystica is buried. Golden grasses taller than my head tremble in a soft breeze, the entire area rippling like liquid gold. Each blade is illuminated by the gentle, pale glow of the wolf, his coat ever changing from the brightest white, to the deepest silver, like his own body has a tide.
And his wings… good Goddess above, his wings. They cast a shadow over the clearing, and the rising sun paints them in pastel pink, gold, purple, and blue. He flares them, making their expanse rise over me, and I notice they’re shaped like a bat’s, but each spike is crested with glowing, translucent gems.
And his eyes…. Just like in the book, they glow a pearly white and swirl with silver mist–seeing everything before him and things that are not.
The beast turns to the side, moving in slow motion. He tilts his head to the sky before bellowing–a howl that could cause a rift through space and time, just like in the book. I instinctively cover my ears and feel tears streaming down my face.
I’m dreaming. This has to be a dream, Maddy. This isn’t real. These creatures never existed. It’s a myth.
A blinding glow bursts from the creature, and the space around us explodes in golden stars. They fall around me, and I hold up my palm to catch one. The palest gold, a single speck of stardust falls into my palm and disappears.
When I look back at the creature, he’s not there. Just Isaac, panting, shirtless and in the same black dress pants he’d be wearing when I caught Elodie leaving his room. Moonlight dusts over his skin as he stalks toward me.
“Why?” It’s the only word that comes to mind. I shake my head, and repeat it, over and over as he slowly closes the distance between us. “Why–Why was Elodie in your room?” I have decided to ignore the magnificent creature I just saw before me for now in an attempt to gain an answer to the only question that matters to me at the moment.
He halts his progress and stares down at me. “That’s what you want to talk about right now?”
I find it hard to swallow as I looked up at him. I want to ask how I got here, but I already know the answer. He brought me here using what he’d recently referred to as nothing but a party trick, when in reality he’d turned us both to mist and transported us here. I want to ask if what I’d just seen is real, but I know it is. I can taste the magic coming off him now, still, a coppery tang reminiscent of blood on my tongue.
“She barged into my room dressed in nothing but her robe and told me she was lost, then proceeded to try to seduce me. Does that surprise you?”
“N-no–”
“You’re about to ask why, then, am I drunk and out of sorts?” he cut me off, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Because we’re getting married today. A few hours from now. Before I met you, I never looked forward to this day. Never. It used to make me sick thinking about it and maybe that feeling would have been easier to process than what I’m feeling now!” His voice is sharper than a blade as he yells at me. He’s angry, his cheeks ruddy and eyes crystal clear and ice cold.
“Don’t yell at me!”
He shakes his head, nostrils flaring, then removes his hands from his pockets and gestures wildly to the clearing. “You saw what I am, didn’t you? Call off the wedding now, Maddy.”
“What?”
“Call off the wedding.”
What the hell is going on?
“Isaac–”
He runs his fingers through his hair and paces back and forth. I’ve never seen him like this–wholly undone, utterly falling to pieces.
I rise unsteadily to my feet and sway, my entire body tingling. I’m still in the red silk dress, and under the light of the moon and stars it’s nearly black against my pale skin. I notice a glow to my arms as I look down at myself, pulling blades of grass from my dress. “What is this?” I ask, holding out my hands to him.
“Magic,” he shrugs, dropping some of the heated rage in his voice.
“Why did you show me… that?” I wave a hand in his direction. “Or was I dreaming?”
“You weren’t, and I wanted to–to scare you.”
I frown, then notice the pink tinge creeping up his neck. “I’ve never been scared of you.” I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but it seems like it should be.
“This would have been easier if you had been afraid of me. You’ve made my life much harder than it needed to be, you know. You made this situation unbearable.”
“What is your problem?”
“My problem is you, Madeline! I was fine flying off to my death, fullfilling some fucking prophecy and being a beast for whatever war the Moon Goddess need me to fight, for whatever battles the creatures that lurk on the otherside of those mountains are cooking up, but I’m not fine sacrificing a life with you to do so. I have a day left with you. That’s not enough.”
My chest convulses so violently I almost lose my balance. “So you want me to–to leave, to call off our wedding?”
“I’d rather you hate me than put us both through this. I’d rather you be terrified of what I am–”
“I believed in them, you know,” I say, cutting him off. My voice is so small, barely a whisper over the trembling golden grass all around us. “The myths and legends. I did believe. I knew there had to be more to us, our kind, than just the Goddess and Her gifts. My father brought me a book as a gift with all of the legends. It was one of the first things Lousia got rid of. I’m sure she destroyed it. I’m not afraid of what you are, and I’m not going to let you push me away–”
“This is just business between us–”
“You’re being cruel to try to hurt me,” I whimpered. “We both know this isn’t just business anymore. It’s never been just business. Never. Not since the moment you asked me to dance and I laid my hand in yours and I felt–I felt–”
“Don’t say it,” he says, his eyes suddenly glassy. His heartbreak is evident on his face as he stands just out of reach.
“I think we’re mates.”
“I can’t have a mate!”
“Because of what you are?” I snap. “Or because you’ve made yourself believe it to make your decision to sacrifice yourself–”
He looks up suddenly, the sky shifting from the deep purple of full night to something lighter, the first inklings of the sunrise on the horizon. “They’re looking for you. We’ve been gone too long.”
He reaches for me, clasping my wrist. I immediately feel his power radiating over my skin. He’s going to zap us back to the castle and try to end this conversation, but I’m not finished yet.
“Who knows about this? You being the Goddess’s beast?”
“Just you.”
“Who’s the other beast?” I ask, just as my body begins to prickle from his power. “There’s two in the legends.”
“Do you remember how the legend of the war of the gods ended?” he asks, and before I can wrack my brain for the memory, we’re pulled away by a phantom wind, and everything goes black.
* * *
I wake up in my bed, in pajamas, my hair in a long braid. I sit up with a start as the door to my bedroom opens and Isla rushes in, then stops, staring at me in disbelief.
“Goddess, I’ve been looking all over for you. Were you here this whole time?” She’s breathless and a little pale as she closes the door behind her.
I reach up and run my hand over my braid, which I know for a fact I didn’t do myself. I don’t know how I got here. “I–I was in the bathroom–”
“Of course. I’m sorry. I’m losing my mind.” She moves to the windows and opens the curtains. “Ella was up all night despite the healer's new concoction for her. I think it had the opposite of the desired effect.” She absently looks out over the grounds, then turns to me, a gentle, motherly smile on her face. “Are you ready?”
I swing my legs out of bed and stand. Can she tell I’ve been gone all night? Can she sense her son’s powers on my skin?
How could she not know what he is?
“I’m ready.” I pull my hair loose from my braid just as a soft knock sounds on the door and several maids come into my room, followed by Ella and Rosie, who have curlers in their hair. “Isaac hasn’t gone missing, either, has he?”
“No,” she smiles. “I think he’s looking forward to it, honestly.”
After the conversation we just had, I find that very hard to believe.
But we’d have one night together after our wedding. One night to figure it all out.
I’d have one night to convince him that he’ll be coming home to me.
Or I will do everything in my power to bring him back, even if it means going to battle, wolfless.