Vein Beauty

By Hannah Carter

Rumors said she went mad for beauty.

And while Briar’s search had begun with a desperate desire to keep the fairy-given beauty… it had evolved into so much more.

She hadn’t gone mad for beauty.

She’d transcended it.

A red horizon lit the battlefield and illuminated the corpses of those who had tried to prevent her enlightenment. Only broken backs and ripped-out throats served as rewards for their vain efforts.

The jagged ends of shattered weapons pierced the sky, and Briar inhaled the aroma of blood—of death. A scent sweeter than the summer breeze. She cackled as she paced around the last remaining survivors of this battle for beauty—the three fairies who had raised her.

“You were such a sweet, innocent child,” Ophelia blubbered. The youngest of Briar’s fairy godmothers, she’d always been the most soft-hearted of the three. “What happened?”

Briar ran a hand over her pale, flawless cheek. “I grew up. That’s all. And you three abandoned me when you let me grow up.”

“We didn’t abandon you.” Cornelia, the eldest, shoved her sisters away from Briar in a protective gesture. “Even we cannot stop time. We gave you gifts—”

“You gave me beauty,” Briar snarled. She hissed at them, her teeth bared in a threat. They could easily join the bodies that surrounded them. “But even fairy-blessed beauty is fleeting. And for a woman, beauty is only beneficial in her youth.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of aging gracefully?” Amelia, the middle fairy, muttered. “Besides, you’re only twenty-seven.”

“An old spinster, a princess past her prime years of marriage eligibility,” Briar sneered. The words, whispered three years ago by one of her father’s boorish advisors, still stung.

After she’d overheard them, Briar had run into her bedroom and stared at the mirror, dissecting every angle of her face, every aspect, for a flaw. She couldn’t find a single imperfection—she was fairy-blessed, after all.

But fairy-blessed beauty was no match for mortality.

She remembered the fear she experienced every birthday, as the calendar reminded her that she inched ever toward her coffin. And her beloved “aunties” had refused to stop it, refused to give her one final gift.

“I only asked for immorality,” Briar whispered. She bent next to a corpse and trailed her finger through the blood on his neck. It stuck to her fingers, and she sniffed it. “Was that too much for you fairies? Can you only give worthless christening gifts and paltry curses?”

“No one is meant to live forever. Not even fairies.” Cornelia’s gray hair fluttered in the wind.

Briar chuckled. “That’s what you told me. But you left something out, didn’t you?” She flashed her newfound fangs and licked the crimson liquid off her hands. “Vampires can.”

“We didn’t think you’d be depraved enough to turn to black magic,” Amelia snapped. “But now I wish we’d given you a beautiful heart instead of a face. Your pride has turned you ugly from the inside out.”

Briar snarled and lunged at the fairies.

She leapt on Amelia first. Briar’s sharp claws dug like thorns into the fairy’s neck. Briar fantasized about snapping it, just like she had with hundreds of her father’s soldiers before the fairies had arrived. She’d drain Amelia of any blood left in her body. How beautiful would Briar be if she drank fairy blood?

Might as well try it.

A blast of Ophelia’s magic caught Briar midair, throwing her off Amelia.

Ophelia sobbed. “Can’t you see reason? We don’t want to hurt you, dear.”

Briar growled as she crouched in a puddle of blood next to a corpse. A man whose face was forever frozen in horror, her wondrous visage the last thing he saw. “Don’t flatter yourself. You can’t hurt me, aunties.” Briar charged at them on all fours and dove for Cornelia in front.

The fairy grabbed Briar’s neck and surged into the air. Briar snapped and kicked. Her fingernails tore at Cornelia’s arms. Blood trickled from the scratches and stirred a primal bloodlust inside Briar. She hissed and stuck her tongue out to catch even one globule of that precious liquid as she and Cornelia soared into the clouds.

“I’m sorry, love,” Cornelia whispered—and released her grip.

Briar plummeted like a bat without wings.

The wind buffeted her face and stole her breath. She slammed into the earth with an awful thud. Ophelia wailed, but her cries stopped as Briar shoved herself upright.

Broken bones mended themselves. She cracked her neck back into place and stood. “I told you. You can’t kill me. I am everything I have ever wanted to be. Beautiful. Young. Immortal. Indestructible.”

Amelia raised her palm. Green magic buzzed around her fingers. “Inhuman.”

A bolt of lightning struck Briar’s chest. She flipped backward and rolled to a stop beside a soldier. She had assumed him to be dead like the rest, but, this close to him, she could hear the faint heartbeats in his chest that still pumped blood through his body.

She grinned and dove for her next meal.

The tiny morsel rejuvenated what energy she’d lost in the skirmish. Once again she faced the three fairies, who stood in a triangle formation with their arms extended.

Blue, red, and green magic intertwined and raced toward Briar. She dodged it and surged at them with vampiric speed.

Cornelia’s eyes locked with Briar’s. “You are not as powerful as you believe you are, Briar.”

She’d pay for that insult.

Briar opened her mouth and dove for her auntie’s neck—only to find a spindle lodged in her own chest. Cornelia used the tiny weapon to shove the princess away, and Briar hit the ground.

“You can’t kill me.” Briar yanked the spindle out.

“No,” Cornelia said. “But we can curse you.”

Briar’s world spun, and she tottered.

Amelia waved. “Pride comes before the fall, love.”

Briar tumbled to her side, caught in the stranglehold of cursed sleep.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hannah Carter is just a girl who wakes up every day hoping it will be the day she discovers she’s secretly a mermaid. Her work has been included in several anthologies: Whispers From Before, The Depths We’ll Go, Havok’s Prismatic, and Finding God in Anime. Her short story, “Lara,” won a competition, and she has two published novellas, “Amir and the Moon” and “Seashells.”

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