His Precious Darling Is a Dung Beast Now

My betrothed, Theron, gave me a unicorn — the highest honor our court could grant a lady.

I had it hitched to a dung cart and sent through the lower city.

Only because I had lived this life before.

Last time, I was proud of that creature. I rode it to every hunt, every procession, and people said no beast so pure had ever chosen a rider. My light was the brightest among the elves. Then, season by season, it went out. I withered, I burned away in my own bed, and everyone wept over how strangely the great Lady Eldraine had aged.

I thought it was some illness. I begged every healer in the realm. None of them found a thing.

I only learned the truth after I died.

My spirit watched a girl climb out of that unicorn's body. Elowen. The pale, dying little thing the whole court called a saint — and the woman Theron had wanted all along. She was wearing my light now — my glow, my color, my stolen years. She was radiant. She was alive. And she was in Theron's arms, where I used to stand.

"The binding held," she whispered to him. "Every time she rode me, I drank a little more. Her light. Her magic. Her life. It's all mine now."

Theron didn't even glance at my body. "She gave you her life," he said. "She should be glad."

So I laughed, when I woke again on the morning he led that unicorn into the hall.

I couldn't touch Elowen. Lay a hand on the dying saint everyone adored, and I'd be the jealous monster. No proof. No one would believe a word.

But a beast? A filthy animal that happened to be mine? No one could say a thing about what I did with a beast.

I caught Wren's wrist — my own maid, the only soul I'd brought from home — and pulled her close.

"Find out who hauls the waste in the lower city," I said under my breath. "Quietly. Not a word to anyone."

In the middle of the hall the unicorn stood glowing, and the whole court fawned over it.

"Only the purest heart can call a unicorn, my lady. We've never seen such an honor."

"Lady Elowen blessed it herself, before she fell ill. Even on her sickbed, she thought of you."

The creature crossed to me and pressed its muzzle to my arm, soft and warm. Then I felt it — the cold pull under my skin, sliding up toward my heart. The same pull as last time.

I knew exactly what it would do. After my first ride, three strands of my hair had lost their shine. After the second, my hands. By autumn my eyes had gone cloudy. By winter I couldn't raise my own magic. We live for centuries, our kind, but it took her less than a year to drain me down to a gray husk.

Cold sweat ran down my spine. I pulled my arm back.

The unicorn's dark eye rolled up at me. There was nothing pure in it. Only a gloating little gleam.

"You must name it, my lady." An attendant pressed close, eyes shining. They were all waiting for me to weep with gratitude, the way the old Aurelia would have.

I leaned back and smiled. "There's an old custom," I said. "You give a precious beast an ugly name, so the jealous spirits won't steal it away. I'm only thinking of its safety."

"And the name, my lady?"

"Grub."

The unicorn screamed. It reared, hooves cutting the air, eyes black with hate, and threw itself straight at me.

"Pure as snow, and you call it Grub?" Theron came striding in and put himself between us, frowning. "Aurelia. That's too far."

The court took his side at once.

"Poor Lady Elowen, dying, and still thinking of others. Such a gift, and this is the thanks she gets."

"So gentle, that girl. Some people can't stand even a beast. They ought to fear for their own souls."

I looked at every one of them — people I'd once meant every kindness to. I had served this court. I had never begrudged Elowen a single thing.

And somehow I was the cruel one.

Fine. She wanted to play a sweet little beast and act this out in front of the whole court. I would play along.

A dung cart was nowhere near enough. I'd take back every scrap of light she stole from me, one day at a time, and let her watch herself rot.

This life, no one drinks me dry.