Beautiful Salvation by Jennifer Blackstream

and the man causing so much conflict inside her.
     
    “Go where?” Saamal grabbed her arm, keeping her next to him. “Why are you out here, Aiyana? Why are you not in your palace, safe and sound?”
     
    “Safe and sound,” Aiyana spat. Her nostrils flared and she clenched her hands into fists. She tore her arm free from Saamal’s grip. “I hate those words. They mean nothing but trapped, imprisoned. Despite all your pretty words, I know my people are afraid of me and I know those guards that hover around me every second are as much to protect my people from me as they are to protect me from any imaginary threat.”
     
    She clamped her mouth shut, biting off the last word before she could spew anymore personal information. Saamal was a stranger. He shared her curse, but that did not make him a friend, didn’t make him a reliable confidante. Unease rolled through her stomach. As a matter of fact, he was the opposite of reliable. He had welcomed what was done to him, wanted it. She shook her head, backing away. “I have to go.”
     
    “Aiyana, you are not a threat.”
     
    Saamal tried to catch her arm again and she bared her teeth at him, raising one clawed hand in warning.
     
      “I dream of spilling my people’s blood, sacrificing them to the earth in the name of prosperity,” she seethed. “I have dreams of leaping upon unsuspecting youths, challenging them to fight, to prove their strength. I dream of killing them, brushing off their death as proof that they were not strong enough to be worthy of this kingdom.” Tears burned her eyes and she jutted her chin out at Saamal in challenge. “Do you think that’s not evil? That it doesn’t make me a threat to my people? Because if you can look me in the eye and still claim I will make a great queen, then you are just as great a threat as I am.”
     
    “Darkness is every bit as necessary as light.” A muscle in Saamal’s jaw twitched.
     
    He paused and focused on the trees around them as if gathering his thoughts. His arms hung limply at his sides and he ducked his head and closed his eyes a moment. When he met her eyes again, Aiyana’s lips parted and the tension bled from her shoulders. There was sorrow in the set of his shoulders, deep lines in his face that looked like…shame?
     
    “The urges inside you are not so macabre as they may seem.” He met her eyes again, his voice calm, clear. “I can help you understand.”
     
    “I don’t want to understand, I don’t want to hear anything you have to say to try and make me give in to the urge to hurt people.” She whirled around and stalked through the woods, heading in the direction of the lake where Okomi had told her the fairy could be found, more determined than ever to get rid of her curse. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she tossed back over her shoulder. “If all goes as planned, I won’t be this way for much longer.”
     
    Suddenly Saamal was standing in front of her, his feline eyes glowing in the darkness, the air around him vibrating with restrained energy. “What do you mean?”
     
    Aiyana tilted her chin up. “I’m going to see the fairy that lives near the lake. I plan to ask her to banish this darkness from me, prune away the rot so that whatever…power, I have can be allowed to grow in a more positive, less gruesome way.” Okomi’s words tasted strange on her tongue, and she shifted uncomfortably at the way Saamal’s face paled.
     
    He leaned back and for a moment he looked like he might be sick. “You are going to a fairy to have her…exorcise this power from you?”
     
    “Yes.”
     
    The jaguar-man raised a clawed hand to his head, pressing his palm against his temple as if he had a headache. “But what if removing this power from you causes you harm? What if this power is so much a part of you that without it…you would die?”
     
    His voice was low, calm, but there was a trembling undertone that spoke of the effort it took to make it that way. Aiyana