Firefox

The pain in his neck, from where it had been sliced open, was gone. The pain in his soul was constant, but it was tolerable. When he took his first step forward, he barely felt it.

Instead, Grantham felt the power coursing through his body. Raw, unleashed, and inconceivably strong.

You shall have your vengeance, the voice whispered.

Kill them. Destroy them for what they’ve done to you.

He obliged.

It took him mere seconds to cross the room and grab King Edgar by the throat. The bright blues of his eyes went from terrified to listless with a simple squeeze of his hand. When he cast him back into the chair, he did not rise.

Hemming was different. His hatred for the Bishop mounted inside of him and fueled the flames, and he enjoyed taking his time ripping him limb from limb as he screamed for help.

When the job was done, he turned back to look at his friend, Percival. He was alive, but he lay on the floor, his knife in his hand. Blood rushed down his face from where his eyes had been—he’d gouged his own eyes out.

“Percival,” he uttered. Instantly, he was surprised by the deep, rumbling timbre of his own voice. It was changed. “We need to leave.”

As he approached the doors to the throne room, he caught a glimpse of himself in one of the mirrors that hung upon the wall. He was no longer the handsome warrior he’d once been.

He was a beast. Dark, patchwork hair covered his towering body from head to toe. His jaw had elongated, and protruding teeth curled over his front lips, razor sharp and dangerous. His hands and feet were different now, and although he still had some semblance of fingers, each was marked by a wicked claw.

His eyes, dead and yellow and dangerous, stared back at him.

“What have I become?” he asked the cosmos, and the voice in his head replied in sly, amused tones.

A product of hatred, reversible only by basking in its opposite force—love.

Grantham could not stand to look at his grotesque form any longer. Torn by the betrayal of the crown and what he had become, he ran back and grabbed Percival before heading out the way they came.

It was no wonder his keeper blinded himself—Grantham was too hideous to behold.

And forever hideous he would stay, should the voice inside of him be correct. No woman could ever love him looking the way he did.

For the rest of his days, he would live in solitude, a treacherous beast. The handsome hero that lurked in his soul was dead.