The Spoilt Beauty And Her Beasts

That night, the whole stone palace slowly became quiet.

The laughter from earlier had long faded, the bowls had already been washed and stacked away, and even the fire had been fed one last time so it would last through the deepest part of the cold. Outside, the snow still fell without stopping, covering the ground, the roofs, the watch paths, and the outer walls in clean white layers that looked peaceful from far away.

But peace was only what the night looked like on the surface.

Inside the palace, the warmth of sleep had already settled over most of the rooms. One by one, breaths had evened out, voices had gone silent, and the people who lived there had disappeared behind fur curtains, wooden doors, and thick hide coverings. The winter wind could still be heard when it brushed against stone corners or slipped through far cracks, but inside, everything felt heavy and still in the way a place did when everybody sleeping under one roof trusted their home enough to close their eyes.

Even the beast people who slept there did not sleep like ordinary humans.

Some had tails around them.

Some had ears that still twitched now and then even in sleep.

Some kept a hand near a weapon or a sleeping mate without even meaning to, or protectively.

That was simply how beast blood worked. The body never fully forgot the world outside.

In one part of the palace, Isabella was asleep.

The furs over her were thick and warm, and even in sleep, one of her hands had drifted over the heavy curve of her stomach like it always did now. She slept more deeply tonight only because exhaustion had finally dragged her down. The day had been too long, too full, too sharp, and her body had paid for every part of it. So now she rested, and the soft firelight touching the room made her face look gentler than it had in the day.

Cyrus was with her.

Of course he was.

Even in sleep, he did not stay far. His warmth had settled around her like another fur covering, and the way he slept made it clear that if she so much as shifted too suddenly, he would wake up at once. His snake blood made him too alert for anything else. To other people, he might have looked calm and soft. But the truth was that every peaceful thing about him grew teeth the moment Isabella was involved.

Kian had not come to sleep until much later.

That was because, as usual, he had worked until even his own right-hand man looked at him like perhaps enough was enough. But he had finally rested too, even if rest came to him more stiffly than it came to others. He was not a man who lay down easily. Even in sleep, he looked like he might wake up and continue glaring at fate itself if it annoyed him.

Zyran slept in the way only a shameless beastman like him could.

Comfortably.

Too comfortably.

Like no poison, betrayal, or winter attack in the world could truly stop him from arranging himself exactly how he liked before closing his eyes. Still, under that laziness, he was the kind of person whose eyes could open with his power already ready. That was simply how dangerous men from dangerous places survived.

Osiris, on the other hand, slept badly.

That was nothing new now.

The brand on his back had not fully broken. The crack in it had eased something, yes, but it had not freed him, and so sleep still came to him in fragments. His body might be resting, but his mind never truly trusted the dark. Every now and then, some heat rose from him in faint little bursts, as if even his dreams still burned.

Elsewhere in the palace, guards remained awake.

That was especially true tonight.

Because after the poisoning attempt, nobody with sense believed the matter had ended. So guards stood in the corridors, at turning points, near entrances, along outer walls, and most importantly, outside Zara’s room.

Or rather, Mira’s room.

That false name still sat on her door like a joke nobody found funny anymore.

The guards outside did not look relaxed in the least. They stood with the stillness only beast people could hold, and every small sound in the hall reached them. One of them was a wolf beastman with gray ears that rose and turned whenever the wind shifted in the cracks. The other was a lynx beastman with pale eyes and claws half hidden in his sleeves. Neither one of them trusted the room they were guarding.

Inside that room, however, Zara was not asleep.

She was sitting very still in the dark.

The small fire in her brazier had been allowed to burn low, and the room smelled faintly of smoke, dried herbs, blood from where Cyrus had injured her earlier, and the bitter medicine she had rubbed into her bruised ribs when nobody was looking. Her body hurt badly. Breathing too deeply still made pain flare at her side, and the wall she had been thrown into had left a mark she could already feel turning dark beneath her clothes.

That humiliation had not faded either.

If anything, it had grown sharper in the silence.

Her fingers slowly tightened over the edge of the fur near her lap, and her eyes looked darker than before.

Everything had gone wrong.

Again.

Every single time she reached toward Kian, Isabella stood there first. Every time she tried to gain ground, the whole thing twisted and struck her instead. She had worn another face, another name, another voice, and still she had ended up on the floor bleeding like some fool who had not thought ahead.

And that snake.

That hateful red snake.

The memory of Cyrus’s tail crushing around her body made her chest tighten with both fear and fury. She could still feel the pressure in her ribs when she thought about it.