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“You’re terrified of the demon, aren’t you?”
I recoiled. How the fuck dare she just?—
A breath left her at my reaction. She turned away, her curiosity vanishing into tired frustration.
Somehow, that small action brought everything in me to a halt.
Damn me, I was driving her away. Punishing her for my own problems and treating her like she was my enemy.
Again.
And all for a battle I’d already lost.
Gods, I truly was the world’s biggest moron, wasn’t I? What was there to hide now? The demon? Too late there. My past? She already didn’t want me. Nothing I said could make this any worse, and yet here I stood, letting my temper act like a shield when the parts of myself I was protecting had already been ripped open and displayed for her to see.
I couldn’t be any more despicable in her eyes than I was now.
“You shouldn’t be alive.” I was distantly surprised my voice didn’t shake, given how my lungs felt like they were in a vise. “No one in that city should be.”
She turned back, wary confusion on her face that made me think she knew where I was going.
It only further confirmed how hopeless hiding from her had been from the start.
“Everyone dies when it… when I lose control. When the monster takes over.” Shudders rolled through me. “I thought I could contain it. I did, for years. Nobody knew it was there, and nobody needed to know. But then you came into our life, and…”
I grimaced. I was making just as much of a wreck of things as the demon had, making it sound like she was to blame. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I should have left weeks ago because it was getting more and more difficult to keep the demon from breaking free. But when you touched my face in the castle, it helped. It calmed things somehow. So I thought I could contain it again. But I was wrong. When I saw that dragon coming for you, the demon just forced its way out and…”
“You thought the demon was going to kill us all,” she said quietly.
I nodded, unable to meet her eyes any longer.
A moment passed before she spoke again. “Who did it kill before?”
My eyes closed. “My family.”
A tiny breath left her. She made no other sound.
It pulled the words from me all the same.
“We lived in a village in the Velusian mountains. It’s a range in the north of Erenelle. Far from anyone. Not much there. Just goats and old mines, neither of which were good for anything.” My eyes squeezed shut tighter. I was only stalling in an effort to delay the inevitable. “I was out hunting with my father and brothers when the Aneirans came. We saw the smoke and heard the screaming and…”
My fingers curled into fists. The demon wasn’t reacting to the memory, though. No, this was just me trying to hide from the past, while the monster inside me had buried itself so deep, I could almost let myself pretend it was gone.
“The soldiers had already killed most of the adults by the time we got back. Just cut them down in their houses with weapons made specifically to pierce giant skin. But they’d chained up my mother and some of the other women. And the kids, they…” Nausea rolled through me, same as it always did. “The younger ones were small enough that the soldiers thought they could take them and… and use them and…”
I couldn’t finish. Even after all these years, the memories still made my gorge rise, each one as raw as a brand burned into my skin. My mother in chains, screaming as she strained against the enchanted locks to reach my sisters and brothers. The children struggling and crying while those bastards laughed.
Just laughed.
“That’s horrible.” Gwyneira’s voice was barely a whisper.
I nodded tightly. “We tried to save them. But the soldiers saw us coming. They stabbed my mother right there, grinning like they just wanted us to watch her die. Other soldiers shot at us with crossbows, and when the bolts hit me, I shifted. But the pain was too much and—” I pushed out a sharp breath, making myself continue. “And I lost control. I burned… everything. Everyone.”
She was silent. I risked a glance over at her, bracing myself for what I would see.
But there was only sorrow.
“Had you ever changed like that before?” she asked softly.
