He raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth lifting in a subtle, cynical curve. “Give into my instincts.” At the puzzled look she gave him, he exhaled through his nose, his temples flexing. “We all hear stories that teach a man to love: a man cursed as a monster, the only escape being the love of another—someone who can love him despite what he is. Ones like Absolon and Elvire. If they really existed. But…that wasn’t enough for her.” He paused, staring at nothing. “My curse requires a woman, yes. But instead of her love it requires her…death.” He met her eyes. “A beauty for the beast, a sacrifice.”

“You…have to kill someone in order to be free?”

He nodded. “What starts with a death ends with a death.”

“The women you took…Nicole. Your instinct…?”

His eyes shifted away from hers. “I never would have done it, Elizabeth. There were times I was…” He sighed, straightening. “I’ve been tempted before. In fact, it happens often. And the urge is difficult to tame. Sometimes, the only thing that helps is taking it out on an animal.” His eyes fell in shame, and she recalled the night he’d pinned her to a tree. The blood in his fangs. The deer carcasses Eustace had mentioned. The bear he’d nearly torn in half before her eyes. “But I never would have killed the women,” he added. “I could never allow myself to accept that nature. I could never allow myself to give into it.”

His eyes wore a shield, much like the one he used to wear. “So that’s it. You know everything. Now do you see why I’m the monster I am?”

“No,” she argued, desperate for him to believe it. “If you were, you would have done it a long time ago. You would have given in to that instinct.”

“There are different kinds of monsters. I’m just not the killing kind.”

“Is that what she told you?”

He recoiled. “I did take them, the women. I did think about it.”

“But you didn’t do it,” she said, not missing a beat. “That’s what’s important. Henry, you’ve been placed in the most unfair position, and thinking those thoughts isn’t just normal for a beast, but for any human being. Even following through with those thoughts would be normal for some.”

Keeping his hand in hers, he looked down. “Whatever it says or doesn’t say about me, it doesn’t matter. Because I’ll always be cursed. That’s her intention.”

“I know,” Elizabeth murmured, reading the pages before her. They explained how Aglaé gains more power the longer she keeps her cursed ones cursed, and loses it for a time if the curse is broken. “Because if you broke your curse,” Elizabeth went on, “she would have to leave this area—and you—alone forever.”

“She knew I would never do what’s necessary to break it, and so…she’s won.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

He smiled crookedly. “You think I should kill someone, is that what you’re saying?”

“No, but…everything has a loophole.”

He looked to the side, shaking off her response as though it was ridiculous. Perhaps it was. “I just don’t understand,” he said instead. “Why is she back? The night she cursed me, she said she would come back if I ever came close to breaking my curse. She would stop me. But I’ve never been further from it. If ever I was going to break the curse, it would never be through you.”

A thought struck her and she looked to the book, hurrying to find the place she sought. She flipped to the next page, her eyes scanning frantically over the words. They got in the way of her search, all these typeset, irrelevant hurdles. Finally, she found it: the part mentioning the lengths Aglaé would go to, to keep her cursed ones cursed. Her eyes shot to Henry. “I don’t know why she thinks you’re close to breaking it, but Henry, I don’t think I’m her target.”

He furrowed his brow then took the book from her, reading. While he did, she said, “It says if she ends the life of one of her cursed, it takes some of her power. But not as much as breaking the curse would. Sometimes they do that: kill their cursed when they sense the curse is close to being broken.”

His eyes lifted to hers, unreadable.

“She wants to kill you. If she could get away with it, she wouldn’t have to worry about you breaking your curse.” She lifted a hand to her hanging mouth. Her exhalation hurt, but she shot to her feet anyway, looking around the room. She began scooting the coffee table aside. “If I make room, you can stay here at night—”

“Elizabeth,” he said, stopping her. He grabbed her arms and she looked at him, reluctantly since her eyes were afire with tears. Damn tears. Her heart beat wildly with fear, with desperation to keep him from Aglaé. “Nothing will happen to me.” He forced a smile. “I won’t fit in here, so I’m not even going to try. Believe it or not, I can be pretty fierce. I can take care of myself out there. You just have to trust me. Think about it: it’s best this way, having you stay inside at night. If I’m out there alone, as far away from you as possible, maybe she won’t feel the need to stay.”

She stared at him in disbelief, knowing he knew as well as she did how wrong that assumption was. He was grappling for something that didn’t exist: a solution. Yet all she could do was nod. And all she wanted was to be free of this knowledge, to be back in the place they were that morning, with carefree love in their veins—the place where making love was a powerful enough force to conquer any demon.

***

The setting sun left the sky pink and as Elizabeth and Henry held each other on her back porch, she wished she could freeze time. They’d spent only an hour at a darkened, empty Jean’s—just enough time to eat dessert while sunk on the floor, hiding behind the counter, and then leave, back here to say goodbye. The goodbye felt heavy and somber, as though the next morning didn’t await them, and she held to him more tightly.

That was when the tremor moved through his body. She removed her head from him at the same time he exhaled sharply, and in a matter of a second, his skin had become hot and moist. She felt it through his clothing, burning. His exhalations were short and shallow and through his mouth, and she could tell he tried to hide the pain. “It’s time,” he said, breathless.

She pulled his face close, her brow creased. Maybe if she wished it hard enough, she could take the pain from him by pure will.

“I’m all right,” he assured, and began unbuttoning his shirt. After she helped him, he ripped it off. He buckled over slightly, groaning even more slightly, but he visibly shook. He kissed her, and it was passionate, almost aggressive. She held to his face, not bothering to wipe the tears from hers.

When he released her and turned, she called him back. “Stay until you’re transformed?”

His chest heaved as he watched her with hesitant eyes.

Taking his face again, she pulled it close. “Please,” she whispered.

He barely nodded, his body jolting again, and this time he grunted, closing his eyes tightly. He walked down the steps and removed his pants, letting them fall to the ground, and in the unusual light that could neither be called sunlight nor moonlight, he stood with his backside toward her, his naked silhouette beautiful and strangely fitting for this place.

He groaned again, buckling over, and began trembling so violently that even though she was safe on the porch, she took a step backward. He became a giant form of pure energy, heat radiating from his skin.

Then it happened, before she could even feel the distress of how intensely it must hurt him: beginning at the back of his neck, a tremor rolled down his spine, bringing with it the appearance of flesh torn in half, and where that tremor rolled, it left the exterior of the beast in its place. As though that form was hidden inside Henry’s skin, the monster ripped through it in its escape, leaving none of Henry behind. At the same time the rolling change moved throughout him, he at least tripled in size, the massive towering form of the beast now standing in place of the man he used to be—and the whole thing happened within a second, too quickly for her to analyze how it was even physically possible. The man, who was large in stature by human definition, now seemed small.