The next guard in line took his turn, running at my father screaming his battle cry. His body landed two stalls away, spilling bolts of fabric into the street.
“Attack!”
The guards inched closer around my father tightening the circle. He spun around, the fur along his back rippling as his shoulders hunched preparing for a fight. They charged. All at once and from every angle.
“Stop,” I screamed again but no one heard me over the noise of the battle. My knees weakened. All the strength in my body drained as I watched the havoc. Helpless to stop the battle that had already begun.
Swords clanged as they clattered to the ground. More bodies flew, blood poisoning the fountains and staining the square. My father yelped as the guards clambered over him, dragging him down. His massive arms swung out, swatting at them like bees. Guards fell, one after the other, none strong enough to take down the beast.
My insides twisted beneath my skin. Each blow hitting me hard, but also providing relief that this nightmare might end soon. The image Veda’s father painted in my mind of the ferocious malevolent beast took form in front of me, but he didn’t know him like I did. His kindness. His strength. His ability to care about his people. This was not the ending for a king, no matter what his form.
I pushed my way through the onlookers onto the battlefield. Pieces of armor lay sprinkled between the aching guards, writhing on the hot stony ground. I picked up a sword, the weight of it heavier than I expected, or maybe the responsibility of it simply weighed more than the iron to make it?
My father jabbed his elbow out sending the last of the guards crashing into the crowd, then howled loud at the sun. I gripped the sword with both hands, bringing the blade up in front of me, and took a cautious step forward.
“King Ezra,” I shouted, as I eased another step closer. “Look at me.”
The beast ignored my plea, stomping around and scratching the claws on his feet across the ground.
“Ezra Balthazar Aldric. Look at me.” No response. It’d worked for my mother, but maybe he was too far gone to recognize himself anymore. Maybe he was now more beast than man. Which meant that only one thing left for me to do.
I tightened my grip on the hilt of the sword. All those lessons in fencing and combat better not fail me now. Lessons the man I poised to kill, had paid for. Lessons he’d invested time in helping me perfect, spending hours going over the ideal form and stance. Lessons I’d never be able to thank him for.
A thickness built in my throat as the world blended into a watery haze. I swallowed, nearly choking on my own guilt as tears spilled to the bloody ground. I mumbled a prayer under my breath as I inched closer.
“Don’t make me do this, Dad.”
The beast cocked his head my direction and stilled, his stare moving from me to the sword and back again. He let out a pained roar, stumbling back a few feet.
“Dad, can you hear me in there?”
I lowered the weapon to my side, his eyes following my every movement. He grabbed the sides of his head and moaned, surveying the carnage throughout the square.
“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay, Dad. Just come back to the castle. We’ll figure out a way to break the curse and everything will be okay again. I promise.” I held out my hand, my arm shaking.
He hung his head, a sad whimper emitted from deep in his throat. He looked at me, his eyes soft. Deepest brown, warm and familiar, his eyes, my father’s, not the beast’s. He took a lumbering step toward me. Voices gasped in my periphery, but I forced myself to stand tall and tried to steady my hand.
“That’s it. You can do this. Let’s go home.”
Argh! Metal glinted in the sun, the flash hitting me before my ears registered the scream. The heel of a fist slammed into my chest pushing me down onto my back, my head nearly smacking against the cobblestones. A guard, already bloodied from the first round of the fight, rose up and slashed at my father. An agonizing yelp rang out as the blade sliced my father near his shoulder. The fur darkened and he howled louder, throwing his paw over the wound. The guard struck again, cutting across my father’s thigh, the silver sword marked by my father’s red blood.
I pushed to my feet and reached for my fallen sword, but my father struck first, digging his claws into the guard’s shoulder and lifting him off the ground. The guard screamed. I froze.
“Dad, stop! Don’t!”
My father shook him like a doll and threw him down. The hollow sound of bones cracking as they shattered pulsed through me, moving through the crowd, everyone around taking a fraction of the guard’s pain. His eyes closed, the light in them already gone.
I buckled over, gripping my knees, as I retched, the devastating terror too much to contain any longer. I wiped the back of my sleeve over my mouth and stood shaky on my feet, my father’s cries calling to me.
He’d stumbled across the square and fallen into a heap on my mother’s chessboard, the pieces scattered like the wrecked guards around him. Thick pools of blood gathered near his leg and his shoulder painting the white squares of the board
