Make Her, page 1
Make Her
A Dark Beauty and the Beast Fantasy Romance
Transformation Trilogy
Book Three
Cassie Alexander
Copyright © 2023 by Cassie Alexander
All rights reserved.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
www. cassiealexander. com
Cover by the Bookbrander.
Interior hardcover art by IV Benjamin.
Used with permission.
Formatting by Morrigan Author Services.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Take Her
Also by Cassie Alexander
About the Author
1
Lisane
For one perfect moment, I was in a unicorn glade, astride one of the proud beasts’ backs, smiling down at Rhaim and ready to pledge the rest of my life to him.
I didn’t know how to quantify the way that I felt, but I also knew I didn’t need to because I knew he felt it too. Something had changed between us last night, vastly for the better. I could tell in all of the actions he’d taken with me this morning, how he felt free to touch me now, but was gentle when he did so. How he teased me, while still giving me a smile.
Finx could create webbing from himself to use to bind things together, and while what Rhaim and I had was not so literal, we had somehow done the same. There was a thread racing from my heart to Rhaim’s, growing tighter by the moment, and I knew that it was love.
Then my father came to kill him.
I felt the portals opening around us, only I didn’t know what it meant, as Rhaim swept me off of the unicorn and tried to hide me behind himself, and as they were talking, I realized the truth, though I made Rhaim repeat it in my horror: my father had known where I was all along.
And now?
Everything was through.
We were completely outnumbered, and there was only one way for me to save Rhaim’s life from my father and his guards.
“Don’t hurt him!” I shouted, stepping away from his protection. “I’ll come out!”
“Moth,” he growled and reached for me, but I yanked away before he could catch hold.
I had to deny everything between us.
Vehemently enough that everyone would believe it.
Even him.
“How dare you?!” I shouted at him, backing up, as tears started streaming down my face, feeling the thread between our hearts grow taut. “Everything was a lie, and I was your joke! And to think I almost let you ruin me!”
I watched my words hit Rhaim like so many blows. “Do not say those things, Lisane,” he pleaded.
“Or what?” I asked him, begging him to understand, to know that I would choose a life without windows for a thousand years, as long as I knew he was safe. “Or you’ll torture me more?”
“Stay by my side and we can fight or flee, but do not abandon me like this,” he growled, obliviously.
I ran for Jelena and she caught me with open arms. “I could never love you!” I shouted back at him, knowing I was lying. “I could never want to be with you!”
And then I plucked my father’s ring I’d found among his treasures from a pocket and threw it at him. It was the only clue I could give him that I was doing this intentionally—that I had figured out some small piece of my own captivity the prior night and that it hadn’t mattered to me.
Because every moment of this morning among the unicorns, here, with him, had been true, and I would treasure the memory of it for the rest of my candle-lit days.
Jelena grabbed me, and then my father did, and I could feel the thin thread in my heart begin to fray. “I never want to see you again, beast!” I screamed, sobbing, and I saw Rhaim surging forward on instinct, changing into his monstrous form to take me back, even if it cost him his life. “Live with the knowledge of my hatred in your heart!” I shrieked to repel him—and it worked.
He stopped—mid-step, mid-change—and the thread between us snapped.
Rhaim didn’t dare take my love for granted, even though he ought.
Even though I knew I would love him helplessly, until the end of the world.
I stepped into the cold dark of Castillion’s portal, knowing I would never have my freedom again, but at least Rhaim was alive, hearing him, still half a beast, broken-heartedly howling my name.
Rhaim
Lisane was gone.
Of her own volition.
And I was alone like I would always be until she someday took pity on me and came back and killed me.
Or maybe I died, dreaming of her face.
Because I didn’t know what was left for me now.
I fell to my knees in the middle of the glade, all of the unicorns scattering as I panted, unable to manage the intensity of my pain.
Lisane was gone, and at no time had I even begun to plan for this possibility, the one where I gave my heart to a girl and she tore it to pieces before disappearing. I had been hurt by innumerable creatures while learning their ways, been pierced and poisoned, bitten and burnt, but nothing I’d ever encountered had ever destroyed me so utterly as this: my little moth, fluttering away.
Denying me—and everything we had.
Had I been a fool? And Lisane the world’s most impressive actress?
Or had the sudden realization that I’d played even a minor role in her kidnapping truly turned her against me?
I didn’t know, and I couldn’t hold back my base nature any longer. I couldn’t stand to be a man if it meant hurting like this.
Let him be in charge of me.
Let him be the one in agony.
Because I—I did not want to feel anymore.
Or ever again.
I went wild and shifted, letting my beast take me over.
Lisane
We stepped out of Castillion’s portal in a group, the mage, my father, Helkin, Jelena, and me, into a small bedroom, with a cot for a bed and cushions, a tiny desk, and bathtub—it was well-appointed for a cage and wrapped in dark red fabric at every turn.
“Take the girl and go,” my father commanded Castillion. Castillion gave me a complicated look, and then grabbed Jelena. She squeaked in protest, but went along with him, through what was a fabric door, and I realized we were in a tent. I got a clear flash of the outer world, a place with other tents beneath a bright blue sky—before the tent’s heavy protective fabric fell back into place.
When would I see the sky again?
And—how far away was Rhaim?
“Oh, my daughter,” my father said, giving me a look of pure relief. He stepped up to hold me again, pressing me against his furs, where the green gemstone he wore, Love’s Lost Tear, that symbolized our country, Drelleth, was fittingly crushed against my heart. I stiffened in his arms, fighting not to struggle until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“No. Don’t touch me,” I said, freeing myself, stepping back with wild eyes. I knew I needed to pretend to hate Rhaim for Rhaim’s sake, but that didn’t absolve either of them from what had happened in the least.
Helkin made a pained sound, but my father held up an understanding hand. “You’ve been through a lot, Lisane. I know. ”
“How could you possibly?” I sputtered.
“I got your letter. ”
I blinked and swallowed, spotting the line of lighter skin on his hand from where his ring had been. “You,” I began, then the words drifted away, while I was stunned, fully realizing the depths to which I’d been betrayed.
Castillion was alive.
And I?
I had been given to Rhaim.
So of course he’d delivered my letter.
Why wouldn’t he have?
Why didn’t he tell me?
“What was your bargain with him?” I demanded. I needed to know. My father said nothing, so I turned to my brother, who turned red like I did when stressed, but he followed our father’s lead.
“Everything’s going to be different now, Lisane,” my father went on, brushing past my demand.
“Saved. . . me?” I repeated slowly. “You’ve damned me, more like. ”
Because now I would know what I was missing, for the rest of my life. I could still hear the echoes of Rhaim’s beast’s howls in my soul.
“No, Lissy!” Helkin interjected, using the name he’d used for me all of our childhood. “We all saw you on the unicorn. There are a hundred different men and mages who will attest to it. Your honor is still, somehow, amazingly, intact. And we’ll find you a match—”
“You. . . will find me a match?” I said, repeating his words again, as my voice went high. “You gave me to him!” I said fiercely, and looked between them, for shame or—or—or—something—that showed that they had even an ounce of remorse at my betrayal. And while my twin brother’s face was still red, I could see the line of muscle clenching underneath his jaw, rather than apologize. “You just handed me over,” I said, to myself, since they didn’t care. “None of you told me where I was going, or why, or what would be facing me when I got there. ”
When I thought back to how lost to me everything had seemed in Rhaim’s dungeon—and how badly I felt, knowing Castillion had died—the abuses I had suffered, thinking I had no other choice—and how much worse things could have been, had Rhaim been a different man.
It did not matter how their decision had turned out.
They never should have made it without telling me.
I shook my head wildly, breathing hard.
“Lissy—” Helkin complained, stepping forward again, making me step back further.
“No, Helkin—let her be,” our father said and then gave me an exasperated sigh. “It wasn’t a decision I made easily, Lisane. We needed his help in the war. ”
“He. . . helped you? When?” I asked, but I didn’t need to, because I suddenly realized what had happened. I remembered all the times I’d tormented Rhaim for his inaction. . . not knowing that when he went off to “study” he was truly here.
Fighting the Deathless with my father’s men.
Getting injured. Repeatedly.
Just like I had seen, his cuts and tears and bruises.
Because of the deal he’d struck for me.
Why couldn’t Rhaim have told me?
“And you couldn’t have warned me?” I asked.
“Would you have gone quietly if we did?” my father said, in the same clipped tone of voice I’d heard him use against my mother. When he had decided something was final, no matter what—like the time when he decreed Helkin would leave chambers and spend his nights in the castle above, leaving her and I behind, not long before the Deathless’ first attack.
I knew my brother blamed himself for not being there to save her—and maybe I did, too.
I certainly blamed them both for this.
“I hate you,” I said softly. The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them, but I wouldn’t have even tried. “I hate you both. And I will never forgive you and I will never let you give me away again. ”
My father’s expression was implacable. “Your hatred will fade in time, Lisane, and you will do what your kingdom requires. Until then, these will be your chambers,” he said, gesturing to the tent we were in. “You will stay here, well-guarded against any who might try to take you, and protected from the Deathless until other arrangements have been made. ”
“Arrangements that I will have no say in?”
My father gave a settling sigh before answering. “I know what’s best for you, Lisane. ”
I inhaled to fight him, because I knew that was a lie. But to argue more was pointless. If I raised my voice, I would only become easier to ignore. And I would not gain control of the situation by begging for it, or pleading, as my childhood had proved.
I could not demand power from a man who believed my life was of no consequence, who had already shown himself to be callous and cruel, far beyond whatever I had ever thought Rhaim capable of being.
So I said the only thing I could. “Yes, Father,” I agreed, mimicking his tone of voice. If he bothered to notice, he showed no sign, before turning and walking out the door. Helkin stayed behind for another moment.
“I told him not to,” he said, defending himself.
“But you didn’t stop him,” I said. “And? You didn’t warn me. ”
“No—but the guilt from that wracked me every day, Lissy. It was why I sent Vethys to save you, without telling him,” he said, looking to where our father had stood. “And then that monster killed him, and very nearly started a different war—if Vethys hadn’t been the fifth Ker in his family—”
Helkin kept talking as I put my hands to my face. “That. . . monster,” I whispered, remembering when Rhaim had saved me from being pulled aboard the airship.
“And when I’d heard that he’d bitten you,” Helkin went on more loudly, putting a knuckle to his teeth. “I will find him some day, when this war is through, and I will make him pay, I swear it. ”
I knew I was better suited to hurting Rhaim than Helkin was, though I could hardly tell him that.
Nor could I tell him the reason that I’d gotten bitten—or what it’d subsequently allowed me to do. “Please,” I said instead. “Just—stop doing things for me. Especially ones you don’t bother to tell me about first. ” Helkin looked hurt, but that didn’t stop me. “I don’t want your help. I don’t want anything from you anymore. ”
I realized the words were true as I said them.
The only thing I wanted was what I’d had, for a few brief moments, among the unicorns.
Something I likely would never have again.
I put a hand to my heart, where I thought I could feel it breaking, as Helkin shook his head to deny me. “You’re just tired, Lissy—you’ll feel differently once you’ve rested. You need food, and water—I’ll send in a maid—”
A stranger looking at me with wide eyes might make me use up whatever magic I had left. I frowned, and Helkin tracked it.
“What about the girl from town?”
Jelena? “Only if you promise to ask her first,” I said. “Promise me. ”
“I swear I will. ” He leaned in, trapped between decorum and attempting a hug, before giving up. “I’m glad you’re back, Lissy. And at least you’re above ground, now,” he said, trying to say something to lift my spirits.
“I am,” I agreed, with a sigh.
Just not as high as I once had been, on top of a unicorn.
Helkin left quickly after that, and when he did I saw the temptation of the outer world—and guards outside I did not recognize—before the tent’s flap swung into place again, sealing me away. It might as well have been made of stone.
I sank to the cot and put my elbows on my knees, absorbing my new reality.
I was trapped in chambers, I had no idea where Rhaim was or if I would ever see him again, and I was still to be given away.
And my brother—without any thought to what I might like or want or hope for my future—was glad I was back.
I had the wisdom to stuff a pillow on my face first before I screamed because I didn’t want anyone else to know how badly I was hurting—not that anyone would care.
But I had to protect Rhaim, even though I was pissed off at him.
Funny how loving him, and knowing he would hurt me, had trained me to hold both feelings in my heart at once.
And then I felt a tapping on my boot.
I moved the pillow aside, saw a disembodied black paw swiping at me, and almost screamed again, this time without the pillow. “Finx!” I hissed, the second I calmed down, as he crawled out, and pivoted quickly, back and forth, looking around the tent. “How did you—”
