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Yet this tiny, weak creature comes to me asking what she knows to be impossible, no doubt warned about this mountain and the creature that lurks here of late…
It must have required a lot of bravery and determination for her to make the journey.
Or perhaps she just hates her deformity and loves beauty that much.
Either way, I am enjoying the feeling of this fresh curiosity when I thought it long dead. I am cursed to live this life, and if this creature seeks the miraculous, then I will merely ask for the same in return as payment.
“I will give you this miracle you seek—”
Hope lights her face like the glow of heaven. “—on one condition.”
“Anything,” she says, too quickly, because she does not know what I will ask.
“I will heal you on the condition that you remain with me as my consort.”
Shock hits her face at my request.
“For how long?” she asks.
I grin into the darkness, my sharp teeth clenching hard for a moment before I tell her my demands. “For forever, of course. In exchange for what you ask, you will become mine.”
Chapter Three
HANNAH
He’s a monster to ask such a thing.
Maybe the roar and the deep, terrifying voice in the dark is just some boys with a voice modulator who wait up here in a cave to scare stupid girls like me for shits and giggles.
I can almost trick myself into believing that except… I can feel his—its—presence. And it came out of the cave to kick my flashlight away. I didn’t imagine that. In the dark, I can feel him hulking over me. I look frantically up, left, and right but can’t see a thing. It’s just this… this, darker darkness.
But he is big. And while my eyes won’t give me much information, all my other senses are taking in a lot.
He doesn’t smell good, that is for damn sure. And all the hairs along my arms stand on end.
Every time he speaks, the ground seems to rumble along with his deep bass. My bones vibrate inside me, too, I swear.
All of it adds up to…
Crazily, I believe what he says.
I believe he can heal me.
But the price he’s asking. To be his consort? What the hell does that even mean? It’s an old-timey word. Does it just mean companionship or is he asking for…?
“Let me see you,” I say, heart pounding in my ears.
“So you can judge me as you have been judged?” His voice rumbles above me, and he sounds angry. “Do the eyes of mortals judge kindly those they do not deem beautiful?”
My whole body shakes now. I’m both ashamed and terribly, terribly afraid.
I would never judge anyone for not being beautiful.
… I don’t think, anyway.
I have a feeling whatever this… creature is… will test me in ways I have never expected.
Deep down inside, some foolish part of me hopes that once I am healed, I can go back and pick up my life as it was. Except I’d be healed. I could fix things with Drew. The engagement fell apart because he didn’t like the idea of me tramping all over the world looking for a miracle-cure he said we both knew wouldn’t work.
Except… here I am, bowed before a miracle maker.
And if I take what’s being offered to me, there won’t be any going back to Drew. Or my mother. There may never be any going back, not if this creature meant his demands of forever.
But then, forever means I’d be alive to see it, doesn’t it? I have to be alive to see any sort of forever.
Forever means longer than just another fifteen years on this earth, the whole time wondering if death is right around the next bend in the road, never being able to make plans for my future without worrying I won’t be there to see them—
“Yes,” I say before I can think it all the way through and talk myself out of it.
I have come looking for miracles. Beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to these things. “I said I’d pay any price.”
“I’m glad to hear that, I think,” booms the dark voice from high above me.
And then things happen quickly.
So quickly I can barely register what’s happening.
There’s a swooping of wings, and then I’m surrounded by strong odors. I cough but there’s nowhere to turn my face because strong hands grab me underneath my armpits and lift me up, up—
I scream when I’m lifted not just off the ground but up into the air.
The whoosh of air around me gets even louder while I’m dragged against the creature’s chest. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. The sound is everywhere around us. Deafening.
My scream is drowned out as the earth drops away, and my stomach swoops wildly.
Oh my God!
We’re in the air.
It—he—has wings!
I open my eyes for the first time to see wings spread out further than I can imagine—huge dark feathered wings that block out the stars.
