“Noooo!” Marian shrieked, fighting him as he carried her back to the circle. “You cannot! You cannot do this to me! I helped you get free!”

“And now you serve a further purpose, my witch,” he said.

She bucked, scratched, bit.

“Noooo!” she screeched. “Let me gooooo!”

He slammed her to her back on the slab in the center of the circle with such strength, her head cracked against it, her eyelids drooped, and her limbs grew weak.

“I lament you will not see what it is you helped to bring about,” he whispered, his face close to hers.

All she saw was the gray seeping in at the sides of her eyes.

She had to fight it.

She had to stay conscious.

Get focus.

She was a witch.

She had forgotten in her fright, she had magic.

She had to get her focus and use it.

In the meantime, she needed to try to reach him another way.

“Me brutum,” she said desperately.

“Patrona,” he moaned.

That moan gave her hope.

With effort, she blinked away the gray and focused.

“We could do so many wondrous things, you and I,” she told him.

“I find I will miss you,” he said morosely.

Oh gods.

Miss her?

Fear took her in its clutch.

“Then…do not…do what it is…you intend…to do,” she pushed out.

“Oh no.” He shook his head. “This was the mistake I made last time, my witch. And I shan’t make it again.”

Marian had just managed to start the tingle she felt at the small of her back…

When there was nothing she could do but scream.

Gods.

Agony.

“Yes,” he breathed, his voice animal, her eyelids fluttering.

Still, through them, she saw the Beast.

His beauty gone, his breath fetid, his claws embedded in her gut.

Her entire body jerked, pain blistering throughout her frame as he pulled them out, drew back his arm, and she saw his long talons dripping with her blood before she cried out again, this much weaker, as he struck down.

Automatically, she shut her eyes tight as his claws scored into the stone of the slab beside her head and a great light rose out.

“Yes!” he bellowed, and she tightened her eyes tight, for even closed, that light burned them.

She felt his presence leave her, the light dimmed, and her head fell to the side as she again opened her eyes.

“Come, brother!” he shouted, and she watched him from behind as he again drew back his arm and embedded his claws into one of the standing stones.

Bright light poured out and she flinched against it before she saw a figure fall out of the light, out of the stone, into the snow before it.

By the gods.

He had…

The time before, he had emerged from that broken stone.

“Up, brother,” the Beast urged, moving to the next stone, in which he rooted his claws, crying, “Come, sister!”