To Marry A Monster (by Brey Mitchell) novel Chapter 213

CELESTE’S POV

“It’s finally done,” Celeste mumbled, she didn’t bother hiding the relief that she felt as she stepped out of the carriage with knees that still felt unsteady, the cold air burning her lungs as if she had been the one fighting.

Snow was churned up everywhere, boot prints, drag marks, splashes of blood already turning dark against the ice. The guards had formed a loose circle around the carriage, some catching their breath, others scanning the tree line with weapons drawn. The forest had gone still again, but it was the wrong kind of silence.

And in the center of it all, Atasha knelt in the snow.

Celeste stopped where she stood.

She had seen Atasha heal before. She had watched wounds close under those hands with unnatural ease, had seen bruises fade in seconds and cuts vanish as if they had never existed. But watching her now, outside the safety of the North, surrounded by soldiers who were still shaking from the attack, something settled in Celeste’s mind with more weight than before.

Atasha was far too important to be let go.

One soldier was collapsed on his back, breath hitching through clenched teeth. An arrow had gone deep into his side, lodged between ribs. The man’s eyes were wide with pain, sweat freezing on his brow. His comrades hovered nearby helplessly, unsure whether to drop to their knees or stay standing guard.

Atasha leaned close, her cloak spread over the soldier’s chest to keep the cold from biting too sharply. Her hands pressed against his skin around the wound, fingers steady even though she was shaking from the adrenaline of the attack. The arrow was still there, shaft broken, feathers torn.

Celeste watched the moment the soldier’s breath hitched in fear when Atasha touched him.

Then she watched it change.

Atasha murmured something Celeste could not hear, her voice low and steady enough to coax the man’s jaw unclenched. She gripped the shaft with one hand and pulled it free in one swift motion. Blood welled up, bright against the snow, and the soldier gasped so hard his head lifted off the ground.

Before he could cry out, Atasha pressed both palms flat over the wound. And almost immediately, Celeste saw it, the slight shimmer, the way the soldier’s muscles stopped spasming, the way his breathing eased. The torn flesh knitted back together beneath her fingers, the bleeding stopped entirely, and the jagged puncture softened until it was nothing more than a pink mark.

The soldiers around them stared as if they were watching a miracle they had no right to describe,

One of them whispered, “She saved him. Again.”

Another soldier staggered toward her, holding his own arm tight where a blade had cut deep. There was blood slipping between his fingers. Atasha didn’t wait for him to speak. She rose, steadying herself, and moved to him instead. She touched his forearm, slid her hand down to where the wound gaped, and pressed.

Celeste watched the man stiffen, then watched the pain drain out of his face as if someone had wiped it clean. His arm trembled once, then stilled. When Atasha pulled her hand back, the skin was sealed.

It was not just healing. It was claiming these men back from the edge of something final.

More approached her, some limping, some carried by comrades, some barely conscious. Atasha tended to every one of them, her breath visible in sharp bursts, her hair clinging damply to her forehead. Each soldier she touched calmed. Each one she healed watched her with something bordering on reverence.

They were northerners. They fought under Cassian’s banner. They had no reason to look at a southern–born consort the way they were looking at her now.

Celeste felt her heartbeat pick up.

This was not the frightened girl their father used to dismiss. This was not the sister who hid her trembling hands under her sleeves during training. This was a woman who stood in the aftermath of a coordinated ambush and held the line with nothing but her hands.

Celeste did not miss how the guards positioned themselves after Atasha healed them. They stepped closer to her. Their stances shifted, protectiveness sharpening around her like an instinct. She was small compared to them, pale in the cold, wrapped in a cloak that did little to hide her exhaustion, but they reacted as if she were the anchor of the entire formation.

And maybe she was.

Celeste’s breath fogged in front of her as she watched Atasha push back her hair, wipe her hands on her cloak, and move toward another injured soldier without hesitation. Grace hovered nearby with her sword out, bleeding arm ignored entirely. Celeste’s eyes narrowed as a realization took shape.

Atasha was the most valuable piece on this board.

No one else in these lands, north, south, or anywhere between, could do what she could.

She could keep men alive. She could turn death away. She could make warriors ready to fight again by the time the next enemy wave arrived. She could shape battles without lifting a weapon.

This was power.

And power like this was worth killing for.

Worth stealing for.

Worth guarding until your fingers bled.

Celeste swallowed, her mind racing again, sharper than before. This attack… the witches… Demon Fangs… whoever wanted Atasha had not been wrong. They were willing to strike in northern territory knowing full well they risked Cassian’s retaliation.

Atasha finished with the last soldier. She sat back in the snow, breath shaking, hands trembling from the strain she tried to hide.

Celeste stepped forward and forced a soft expression onto her face.

But inside her chest, something twisted with cold certainty.

Atasha was too valuable to be abandoned. Too valuable to be trusted to anyone else’s hands.

And too valuable to ever be allowed to slip out of her grasp again.

“I apologize, my lady but please maintain your distance…” Grace’s voice interrupted her stupor. She turned and found the woman standing just beside her.

“Pardon me?” Celeste asked.

Grace stepped between Celeste and Atasha. Her boots left neat impressions in the snow, her posture rigid despite the blood still sliding down her wounded arm.

“From this point forward,” Grace said, “Her Highness will be riding in a separate carriage.”

Celeste’s expression collapsed into something ugly before she could school it. Her breath slipped out in a sharp exhale.

“A different carriage?” she repeated. “Why? She is my sister.”

Grace’s lips curled, not into a smile but into something contemptuous and impatient. She took one step closer, close enough that Celeste could see flecks of dried blood on her cheek.

“That is irrelevant,” Grace said.

Celeste’s jaw dropped. “Irrelevant?” she echoed. “She is family. She is my responsibility. You cannot simply decide to take her away from me because you feel like it.”

Grace snorted, a sound that carried enough disdain to sting.

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