The Beast of Callaire by Saruuh Kelsey

Author:Saruuh Kelsey [Kelsey, Saruuh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-04-21T22:00:00+00:00

The beast in me is miraculously quiet. Maybe I’ve numbed every part of me.

“Yasmin?”

I blink until my surroundings come into focus. I’m sat on a bench in Callaire’s centre. I wonder if I’ve taken too long for my break. I should get back to the Muffin Emporium.

I startle, fixing wide eyes on the figure in front of me. Fray. She chews her lip as she regards me. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah.”

She joins me on the bench. I look straight ahead but I feel her eyes on me. “I don’t believe that. Is it to do with the body they found? I heard about it on the news this morning. Did the person who did that … did they hurt you? It was one of you, wasn’t it—a Legendary?”

“Yes.” I stand, watching the remnants of the muffin scatter to the floor. “That was one of us. That was me.” I turn my back on her and return to work. She doesn’t follow, but an hour later she sends a text telling me to go to her house if I need to talk.

I don’t plan on it but I find myself unchaining my bike from the side of my apartment building as soon as I’m home.

I cycle right across the Ward around Fray’s house and abandon the bike beneath a tall oak tree.

The painted-pink door opens without me knocking on it. Fray, haloed by amber light, watches me. I stand before her, waiting for the shouts and screams that I’m a murderer, that she’s changed her mind about wanting to know me.

But she says, “You’re not okay, are you?”

I bite down on my tongue, my eyes glazing over. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to come inside either but I don’t argue when Fray bundles me into her living room. She puts a mug of hot chocolate in my hands and though I can’t stomach it, the warmth is nice enough that I just hold it.

“Talk to me.” Fray sits cross-legged on the floor in front of me. There are papers everywhere—on the floor, the coffee table, the arm chair. My gaze slides off them. I don’t want to confess everything to Fray but her sad eyes implore me.

“I killed someone. The man you heard about on the news. I … I woke up and he was in pieces.”

“You don’t remember killing him?”

I fix my eyes on her and she shrinks back. I must look like a monster. I bite back a laugh. I am a monster. “Don’t. Don’t hope. I killed that man. I didn’t see it happen but I ripped him apart like a savage. The beast—” I shut off my words at the look on Fray’s face. “I told you I was dangerous.”

“You killed someone,” she whispers. “You actually killed a man.”

I claw at my coat. I should be at the Academy. Mavers has dealt with someone in my state before, someone who is still monstrous even though the moon has passed. He’d know what to do. “I didn’t mean to.

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