Page 22 of Monster's Obsessive Hunger
He looks up at me, the bright coal in his sockets no longer burning with guilt, but with a raw, desperate devotion that takes my breath away. This is the truth of him, stripped bare of all pretenses. He is a monster who has learned to kneel.
He takes my other hand in his, his massive claws impossibly gentle as they cradle my fingers. His voice, when he speaks, is a raw, broken vow torn from the depths of his being.
“Then I’ll never hurt you again,” he swears, the words a sacred promise in the cold, hallowed silence of the forest. “Even if I starve.”
The vow is an impossible one, a promise to fight for my sake. The weight of it settles in the air between us, a new and terrifying foundation for whatever future we might build. He is offering mehis control, his restraint, his very life. In return, I have offered him my trust. I kneel in the snow before him, my heart aching with a love so fierce it is almost a pain. I am no longer afraid. In the presence of this kneeling monster, in the heart of this dangerous, wild forest, I have never felt more safe
35
THORRIN
The journey back to my lair is a fragile truce with a world that has tried to tear us apart. I walk beside her, a hulking shadow of bone, my entire being focused on the space between us. I do not touch her. The memory of her brokenness is a searing brand on my soul, and my vow to never hurt her again is a constant, burning mantra in my mind. I am a living weapon that has sworn off violence, a storm that has promised to be still. The effort of it is a physical strain, a coiling of every muscle in my body into a state of absolute, vigilant restraint.
She is the one who closes the distance. Her small hand finds my massive, clawed one, her fingers lacing through mine with a simple, trusting gesture that makes my soul shift with a terrible, beautiful intensity. Her touch is not a question, but a statement.We are together.
When we arrive at the mouth of my cave, I see it through her eyes for the first time. It is not a sanctuary. Cold stone, of shadows, of death. The bones of my past kills, which once seemed like monuments to my power, now look like what they are: the sad, pathetic remnants of forgotten lives. I feel a surgeof shame so profound it is a physical sickness. This is the home I have brought her to. This is the best a monster like me can offer.
But she does not see the bones. Her gaze is fixed on the cave wall, on the rough, pale letters I carved there in a fit of desperate grief. Her fingers, still intertwined with mine, tighten their grip. She moves toward the wall, pulling me with her, and traces the crude etching of her own story, the tale of the woundedpavo.
“You remembered,” she whispers, her voice thick with an emotion I cannot name. It is not sadness. It is not joy. It is something deeper, more complex. Awe, perhaps. The awe of being seen, of being remembered, of having her life given a permanence in stone by the very creature she thought she had lost. Her simple act of seeing my penance and recognizing the love behind it is a kind of forgiveness, and it is a heavier burden than any judgment would have been.
My caution in the hours that follow is so profound it is almost a paralysis. I move through my own lair like a trespasser, my massive frame taking wide, clumsy arcs around her to avoid any possibility of accidental contact. I am a bull in a room made of spun glass, and the glass is her. When she moves too suddenly, a flinch runs through my entire body, my claws retracting with an audible click. I am terrified of my own shadow, of the thousand ways I might inadvertently harm her again.
She watches me, and I can see the soft, knowing smile playing on her lips. She understands my fear, my clumsy, monstrous attempt at gentleness. She does not mock it. She meets it with a grace that is a constant, quiet miracle.
As I nearly trip over my own feet to avoid brushing against her as she reaches for a water skin, she breaks the tense silence. Her voice is light, a gentle, teasing melody that cuts through my self-imposed torment.
“Are you going to flinch every time I blink now?”
The gentle humor is a balm on my raw, frayed nerves. A sound rumbles in my chest, a rough, rusty noise that I recognize with a jolt of surprise as a chuckle. It is the first time I have made such a sound, the first time an emotion other than rage or despair has found a voice. The flame that drives me, which has been a turbulent, anxious swirl of colors, finally settles. It is not the possessive purple of desire or the hungry red of the curse. It is a warm, steady, and contented gold. The tension that has held my body rigid since the moment I hurt her finally, blessedly, begins to recede.
I watch, mesmerized, as she moves around the cave, her presence a transformative force. She does not see a cold, dead lair. She sees a home waiting to be made. She finds the meager supplies I keep—dried meat, some hardy mountain herbs—and begins to prepare a meal over the fire I build for her. She hums a soft, simple tune as she works, uncomplicated domesticity that it feels like a spell, chasing the ancient ghosts from the corners of my home. I sit on a stone ledge, a silent, devoted guardian, and I watch her as if she is a miracle. Because she is. She is an impossible creature of light and warmth who has looked into the abyss of what I am and has chosen, against all logic, to call it home.
She finishes her work and brings two bowls of steaming stew to the fireside, handing one to me. The simple act of her feeding me, of her offering me sustenance she prepared with her own hands, is an intimacy so profound it makes my own monstrous heart ache. We eat in a comfortable silence, the only sounds the crackle of the fire and the soft sigh of the wind outside. For the first time, this cave does not feel like a prison or a tomb. It feels like a sanctuary.
She catches me watching her, my gaze fixed on her face as if I am trying to memorize every detail. Her smile is soft, knowing, full of a wisdom that feels older than my own ancient existence.She sets her empty bowl aside and looks at me, her eyes clear and steady in the firelight.
“You’re not broken,” she says, and her voice is so full of simple, unwavering certainty that it quiets the howling chaos of my own self-doubt. “You’re just learning to love without burning.”
Her words are an absolution. A forgiveness I did not know how to ask for. She does not see me as a failure, as a monster who lost control and must now be feared. She sees me as something new, something in the process of becoming. She understands that this is a journey, a difficult, painful transformation from a beast of pure instinct to something more. Her grace, her faith in the monster before her, is a gift I know I will never deserve. But I will spend the rest of my eternal, cursed existence trying to be worthy of it.
I look at this impossible human, this woman who has walked through the valley of the shadow of death with me and has emerged not broken, but stronger. I do not just feel the desperate, possessive need to keep her. I feel a clear, unwavering sense of purpose. I am learning to love without burning. The path ahead is a razor’s edge, fraught with the constant danger of my own nature. But watching her now, her face soft and serene in the warm glow of our shared fire, I believe, for the first time, that it might be possible.
36
LYSSA
The fire burns low, the embers collapsing in on themselves with soft, sighing sounds. A comfortable quiet has settled in the cave, a silence that is no longer empty, but full. We sit side-by-side on a thick fur rug before the hearth, my shoulder brushing against the hard, cool bone of his arm. The simple, casual contact sends a ripple of warmth through me. Weeks ago, such proximity would have sent my heart into a frantic, terrified rhythm. Now, it is the only thing that makes it beat steadily.
This is our new life. A quiet, domestic rhythm forged in the heart of a monstrous world. By day, we explore the territory he calls his own, my guide in a wilderness that is slowly becoming my home. He shows me which roots are safe to eat, which berries are sweet, and which caves offer the best shelter from the sudden, violent mountain storms. By night, we sit here, in the warm glow of the fire, and I tell him stories. He still listens with that same, unnerving intensity, but it is no longer just the craving of a hungry creature. It is the attention of a partner, of a soul who is learning to see the world through my eyes.
I look at him now, at the way the firelight plays across the harsh, alien planes of his skull-face. He is a monster of legend, abeing of impossible age and power, a monster who once took joy in the terror of my kind. And yet, when he looks at me, his light is a soft, steady gold, the color of a love so profound. I am filled with a sudden, overwhelming need to know more, to see past the monster and the curse, to find the faint, ghostly echo of the person he was before.
“Thorrin,” I say. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone.”
The question seems to startle him. I feel him stiffen beside me, the casual ease of his posture vanishing in an instant. The steady golden light in his chest flickers, a troubled, uncertain blue bleeding into the edges. He has shared his loneliness with me, his guilt, his curse. But his past, the long, gray expanse of time before he met me, is a locked and bolted door. I have never dared to ask what lies behind it. Until now.
He is silent for a long time. I can feel the war inside him, the conflict between the instinct to keep his ancient wounds buried and the new, fragile desire to share himself with me. I think he will refuse, that I have pushed too far, crossed a boundary I did not know existed. I am about to take the question back, to apologize, when he finally speaks.
