The Spoilt Beauty And Her Beasts

Then she reached out and tapped the table lightly until Ophelia looked up.

"It isn’t your fault," Isabella said.

Ophelia’s lips parted. "But I left her there. I should have known. I should have..."

"You’re too nice," Isabella said. "Too nice. One day it may be the death of you."

The words sounded harsh.

Still, the way Isabella said them made the warmth inside them obvious.

Ophelia swallowed and nodded, because she knew it was true. Her kindness had almost opened the door to something terrible, and even though Isabella was not blaming her, Ophelia now understood more clearly why Shelia kept scolding her about strangers.

Shelia reached over and squeezed her hand under the table once. That one small gesture steadied her more than any speech could have.

Zyran, who had been listening to everything with the look of a man only half interested, finally spoke up again. "So what do you plan to do with her?"

His tone was casual.

His eyes were not.

Underneath the lazy question was something much sharper. He truly wanted to know. Not because he cared about Zara’s life, but because he wanted to know how much longer he would have to restrain himself from ending it.

Isabella looked at him. "I don’t know. None of your business, Zyran."

He narrowed his eyes. "Everything around you is my business."

"No," Isabella replied calmly. "That is only what you tell yourself so you can annoy me with confidence."

That made Luca laugh.

Zyran looked deeply offended again. "You wound me."

"Good."

The room did not fully relax after that, but the edges of the tension began to soften into something more familiar. People still looked dark when Zara’s name came up. They still looked unsettled by the fact that she had been living among them with another face. But now the sharpest shock had passed, and what remained was the strange half-lighthearted, half-deadly way this group often moved after surviving something ugly together.

At one point, Asael asked the question several others were thinking. "How did you know?"

He was looking at Isabella, but his eyes briefly touched Cyrus and Zyran too.

Cyrus answered first this time. "Her scent never matched her face, it was similar to the same energy she once carried on her before leaving this place."

That answer made the others pause.

Because of course.

A beastman answer.

Not a human one.

Scent told truths that faces could not.

Zyran added lazily, "And her dead feeling was irritating."

That one made Valen look confused again, but no one bothered explaining fully because Zyran’s reasons rarely sounded normal even when they were.

Isabella, meanwhile, only shrugged, only telling half truth. "Once I had the suspicion, her pretending became too obvious."

Osiris frowned. "So everybody knew except me."

Nobody answered.

That silence said enough.

Osiris sat back looking deeply wronged, and for one brief second even Glimora paused and stared at him with what looked like pity.

That made Isabella laugh again.

And because she laughed, the room loosened one more time.

Still, no one forgot the real problem waiting outside their warmth. Zara was in her room. Guards were on her. Her life was hanging by a thread Isabella was choosing not to cut yet. And everyone in this room knew that whenever the time finally came, it would not be quick or gentle.

For now, though, they ate.

Cyrus watched Isabella through the whole meal as if afraid a second bowl might come out of the walls and attack her. Kian remained thoughtful and darker than before.

Zyran sulked on and off with jealousy and murder in equal measure. Osiris kept muttering to himself about being extra mean from now on. Ophelia stayed close to Shelia.

Valen watched the room. Luca kept looking toward the door as if hoping Isabella would suddenly change her mind and let him go kill someone.

And through all of it, Isabella sat there at the center, warm, sharp, beautiful, and very clearly planning something nobody else had fully reached yet.

After a while, the meal was finally coming to an end.

The room had grown much calmer compared to earlier, and even though the matter of Zara was still sitting in everybody’s mind like a thorn that refused to come out, the warmth of the fire, the full stomachs, and Isabella’s presence in the middle of it all had softened the edges a little. The stone room still carried the smell of food, thick furs, warm broth, roasted meat, and the faint scent of snow that clung to those who had stepped in and out through the evening. The fire crackled softly near the wall, and the clay bowls and wooden cups on the table looked like proof that even after danger, life in this world still had to keep moving.

Most of them were already done eating.

Cyrus had finished first, naturally, because most of his attention had gone to Isabella rather than the food. Every few moments, his pink eyes still moved over her face, her hands, her bowl, and even the way she sat, as if he still did not fully trust the room after what had happened.

Kian had also put down his bowl already, though his face still looked cold enough that no one felt like disturbing him unless necessary. Zyran was lazing in his seat like a prince who had survived a great injustice and was now recovering from the pain of being underappreciated.

Shelia, Ophelia, Valen, Luca, and Asael had all more or less finished too, though Luca was still chewing more slowly as if he were using the food to help him recover from the insult of escorting Zara earlier.

Only Osiris was still eating.

That alone should have warned everybody that trouble was coming.

This was because Osiris always ate like a man who felt that food might disappear if he did not get to it fast enough, and even after the amount he had already eaten, he still had a large piece of meat in his hand.

His fiery blond hair looked a little messy from moving around too much, and his bright eyes were fixed on that meat with the kind of focus usually reserved for battle.

Unfortunately for him, he was not the only greedy creature in the room.

Glimora had also noticed the meat.