Page 93 of An Invocation of Monsters

Even though I was as naked as the day I was born, it seemed strangely frivolous to worry about clothes in the Void. In fact, it felt more unnatural to wear them than not.

So, when I exited the cave in my birthday suit, I didn’t have a single qualm about it.

“Are you well, my beautiful one?” Toth asked, pulling me into his arms.

I breathed his scent deep, wrapping my arms around him and letting the velvet sensation of his skin keep me warm. “I… I don’t really know. I’m probably worrying about nothing, but I can’t help it.”

My body was still relaxed, wrung out from Kiraxis’s attention, but now that I was awake… my mind was whirling again.

“What are your fears?” the monster asked softly.

I rested my forehead against his chest. It seemed to take years to get the words out of my mouth. “Me. I’m afraid of what I am.”

And why wouldn’t I be?

Because people didn’t have magic powers.

Life was not a fairy tale. It was not a storybook with a magical heroine.

I was a walking, talking anomaly in the world, a disruption in the natural order of things.

Why wouldn’t I be afraid for people to know? I’d cut myself off from them for years because of this power, terrified that I would end up locked up in a lab somewhere.

And when Kase had looked at me with complete belief in his eyes as he declared me one of them, he hadn’t realized how deeply he’d shaken me.

Because I was more like them.

I was more like the monsters than the humans I lived among.

“How can you be afraid of yourself?” Toth chided. “You are Elle. You are yourself and none other.”

“Because of these,” I whispered, pressing my palms down against his back. “Because humans don’t do this, Toth. I’m… unnatural.”

“Are you? Or is it completely natural?”

I just shook my head, trying to tamp down on the despair welling up in me. Now the Society knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and they could hold it over my head for the rest of my life.

Because there was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep this to myself.

Toth hesitated, his claws grazing feather-light trails over my shoulder blades.

“They say…” he started, his voice stilted. “They say there are those in the Void who can heal with a touch of their hand.”

“No way,” I groaned.

“Yes.” His voice was stronger now. “There are.”

I dared to peek up at him. His eyes were flaring brightly, casting a red glow on everything.

“You’re bullshitting me,” I accused, and Toth just let out a quiet laugh.

“I do not shit on you,” he told me. “It is true.”

I let him stroke my back, thinking it over.

If that was true… then maybe Kase had hit on something. But it was a little gut-wrenching to think that I had something to do with the Void.

My baby photo popped into my head. The one my mother had taken, and written only my name on the back.

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