The Spoilt Beauty And Her Beasts-Chapter 350: Why do you even try?

Cyrus walked the corridor with a smile he didn’t bother hiding. It kept tugging at the corner of his mouth like a secret he was bad at keeping.

The morning air was soft and cool, carrying the faint scent of wet stone and the sweeter whisper of roasted nuts from the hearth rooms.

Every time Isabella’s face slid across his thoughts—her expression when he teased her, the way her eyes narrowed like she wasn’t amused even when the corners gave her away—his smile brightened until it threatened to turn into laughter. Pink eyes, bright as berries in sunlight. He felt ridiculous. Ridiculously happy.

He touched a hand to his hair to keep it neat—neat for her, of course. The straight strands slid easily under his fingers, falling back into place without protest.

He tried not to think about how his heart moved differently now, how it turned toward the kitchens the way seedlings turn toward the sun.

Closer. The air changed—warmer, food-scented: fermented palm milk, honey, the clean husk-smell of grated coconut, a whisper of sea salt. The smile returned full force.

Then he heard humming.

The sound rolled lazily out of the kitchen like a cat stretching in sunlight. A tune with mischief in it.

His smile dimmed a fraction. Everyone knew the rule: no one apart from him, Ophelia, and Luca set foot in this room, not since Kian decided the world was suspicious and Isabella’s food had to pass through trusted hands only.

Palace workers respected that—or pretended to while peeking, but they never hummed like they owned the room.

That hum was not a worker.

Cyrus paused outside the archway, listening. The hum bent into something cocky. Oh. Of course. Of all creatures with mouths. Zyran.

The smile slipped off Cyrus’s face like a pebble dropped into deep water. He didn’t frown—he rarely frowned—but the warmth withdrew, leaving his expression calm and blank. He breathed in once, out once, and stepped inside.

The palace kitchen had been woken early: fires banked low and steady, clay pots lining the warm stones, water singing in a shallow pan. Baskets of herbs and tubers crowded the ridges of the long table. A drift of coconut flakes gleamed white as snow against the dark wood.

And at the far end, a bowl that did not belong to anyone but Isabella sat like a sacred thing—small portion of coconut butter milk he’d worked on before dawn, silk-smooth, chilled in a carved gourd, a touch of honey and a whisper of salt, nothing more.

Zyran bent over that bowl like a wolf admiring a reflection.

He was all that dangerous ease he wore like a second skin: long lashes, a mouth that always looked like it had just thought of trouble, a face carved by gods who valued symmetry and bad decisions. One hand braced on the table; the other lifted a wooden spoon, slow, theatrical, as if feeding the room a performance with his taste.

"Oh," Zyran murmured to himself, amused, the spoon hovering near those infuriating lips. "This is what has the palace in a choke hold."

The spoon drifted closer.

Cyrus didn’t think.

His hair shivered, and the sleeping red strand of his hair transformed—tiny serpents uncoiling with a soft hiss of delight. Two slid forward like silk threads. One stretched, tongue tasting the air, and snap—its little scaled head smacked the spoon clean out of Zyran’s hand.

The spoon clattered across the table, bounced off a clay cup, and spun tragically to a stop near the basket of dates.

Zyran went still.

The room went still with him. The hum died mid-note and hung there like a question.

Slowly, he turned his head. He looked at Cyrus. Then the bowl. Back to Cyrus. The tiniest of smiles threatened his mouth, but it didn’t quite arrive. He held that space—the one where he made even silence look attractive.

Cyrus had already moved. His legs shimmered as red scales flowed down his calves; feet vanished; muscle twined and lengthened. In a seamless, sinuous sweep, he slid forward on a thick tail the color of fresh pomegranate and lifted the bowl off the table as if it were a sleeping child. He set it a safe distance from Zyran’s reach, in the triangle of space between the mortar and the warm stone ledge, one coil of tail idly fencing it in.

Zyran tipped his head, as if studying a very interesting insect. "Gosh. It’s just something—" He flicked a finger toward the bowl. "What is that even?"

"None of your business," Cyrus said without heat. "It is meant for Isabella. Not you."

Zyran’s lashes lowered in an exaggerated sigh of patience. "As Isabella’s future mate," he said, as though the words were merely an announcement about the weather, "I deserve to taste before she does. In case you place anything inside. Isn’t that how it should be?"

One of Cyrus’s snakes peeked out from behind his ear and blinked at Zyran with polite disdain. Cyrus gave Zyran a glance cut at a perfect angle. "You are not Isabella’s future mate."

Zyran’s chuckle rolled out low and warm—the kind of sound that did not help anyone’s self-control. "Oh, right," he said, gesturing with a lazy hand. "I forgot. You wish for that to happen to you, yes?"

Cyrus did not answer. He let the quiet stand. He set the bowl on the cool stone shelf with a soft clunk and reached for the woven strainer. He checked the tightness of the fibers with his thumb, poured a ribbon of coconut milk through it to shine it, then moved to the hearth to coax the small pot’s fire back to a steady breath. He worked like river water: untroubled, inevitable. Snakes tucked themselves back into his hair, peeking occasionally like nosy children at a storyteller.

Zyran leaned his hip into the table with far too much grace for someone who had just been spoon-slapped, crossing his arms to watch. His eyes flicked to Cyrus’s hands—steady, clean, careful—then up to his face, and then, because he couldn’t help himself, back to the bowl guarded by that casual coil of tail.

"Why do you even try?" Zyran asked at last, all false lightness gone from his voice.

Cyrus’s hands stilled without tremor. The hush caught.

Zyran didn’t stop. "Everyone sees you as a monster." He spoke the words like he was tossing them into the air to see how they fell. "Your bloodline—everyone whispers ’monstrous species’ and pretends they don’t. So why do you think Isabella would want a beast like you?"

The room did not move. Heat from the hearth pressed gently against Cyrus’s cheek; the iron scent of hot stone lifted under it. His tail tightened once around the leg of the table, then eased. His face did not change, but the little snakes slid deeper into his hair and went quiet, only their forked tongues peeking out to taste the shift in the air.

Zyran’s gaze sharpened. He stepped closer, and the light caught the lines of his mouth, that careful cruelty he sometimes put on like jewelry. "How do you know she’s not secretly afraid of you?" he murmured. "Maybe that’s why she keeps you near. To frighten others away."

Something old and mean inside Cyrus shifted—and then let go.

He set the strainer down. He turned. When he looked at Zyran, his pink eyes were cool water. Not empty—never empty—but the light within them did not flicker.

"Isabella does not see me as a monster," he said quietly. "That, I know."

Zyran opened his mouth, then closed it. Cyrus continued, voice still a calm river.

"She took me in when no one would." The words landed on the table between them like smooth stones. "She took me in without hesitation. She saw the light in me when others looked away." A beat. "She did not press where it hurt. She did not ask for my scars before offering me bread." He breathed out. "She trusted me with herself."

The little snakes uncurled and slid forward in silent agreement, their tongues tasting the gentle sweetness that lifted through the room at the memory. Their tiny bodies touched the line of Cyrus’s jaw as if to say yes, that one, keep that one.

Zyran watched him while he spoke, and for the first time this morning, there was no mockery in his face. The playful light that usually made a home in his eyes faded, thinned into something steadier. He tilted his head, something like respect turning over in his chest like a warm stone.

Cyrus set a hand lightly over the bowl he had guarded, palm hovering and then resting just enough to feel its coolness. He looked at Zyran again. "Do not let your actions hurt Isabella."

They held the look. It was neither a threat nor a plea. Just a line drawn on clean sand.

"I will never hurt Isabella," Zyran said.

The promise didn’t crack. It sat between them, heavy and right. He broke the stare first, not out of shame but because his eyes slid to the small pot on the ledge where the coconut butter milk had thickened to a velvet cream. His mouth made the ghost of a smile again, smaller this time, almost private.

"She better love it," he said, nodding toward the pot like a lazy offering.

Cyrus followed the glance, and his mouth did what almost never happened: it softened into something that reached his eyes. "She will."

Footsteps approached the door.