Page 60 of The Lost Child

I didn’t feel like a human. I still felt like a monster.

Because you betrayed her. She tended your wounds and treated you kindly, and you ignored her screams for help. Youarea monster.

Nerissa hadn’t minded my sharp claws or my fangs. She’d moaned when I’d sunk them into her neck. She had wanted me: all of me.

My wings hadn’t turned her away, nor did she balk at my back spines. Nerissa didn’t care how I looked. If I asked her who the monster was between myself and my master, what would she say?

I wasn’t so sure she would name me. Nerissa had never called me a monster in all this time, but the master said it daily. My head hurt from all the thinking.

Nerissa’s scent was strong in front of me, but I hovered in front of the door, uncertain. She wouldn’t want to see me. I’d just refused to help her, after all.

Screaming erupted around me, coming from the shore. The horn blew two short blasts, indicating an attack. I’d rarely heard the horn from my cave below, where it was only a sound in the distance, barely caught by my ears. Here, it was loud enough that I covered my ears in pain.

What was happening?

“KING’S MEN! THEY’RE ONTO US, LADS!”

Men poured out of doorways and into the hall, shoving on boots and grabbing swords and daggers. The crush of people surprised me, and I had no wings to flare or claws to swipe with to make them give me space. I was shoved up against the wall as they bottlenecked together, all trying to get out of the ships at once to face the enemy in the open air.

The ceiling overhead exploded into splinters, and we all struggled to shield our eyes from shrapnel and sharp bits of wood. Most of the debris bounced off my skin, and the telltale shimmer of scales reassured me that I wasn’t completely human in this form.

That was good.

Men dressed in blue uniforms descended from above and easily slaughtered the pirates who were pressed too closely together to even draw their own weapons. Men fell, and other men crushed them down. It didn’t matter if the fallen were dead, wounded, or had simply tripped.

“Help! Please someone help!

A man pressed against me, old and feeble. Bright white eyes clouded with blindness stared up at me, unseeing. Withered hands clutched at my shirt, bony fingers clinging to me in a way that reminded me of my own claws.

I growled deep in my chest, a warning before I would remove him physically. I didn’t wish to harm him, but I hesitated. He reminded me of someone. My arms came around him and I turned, presenting my back to the seething mass of humanity while shielding the man from harm up against the wall.

I’d known another blind man once. Or had I just been dreaming? I’d seen the same, unstaring white eyes before, dragging me forward and giving me over.

Then I’d met the master for the first time.

“W-who are you?” I rasped, my tongue curling oddly around the words. I didn’t speak much, and it showed.

“You’ve grown,” he said softly, his grip on me loosening.

I wasn’t crazy. I had known this man before I’d even known the master. “You brought me here. Where did I come from? Did I have a mother?”

He chuckled fondly, but the sound quickly turned into wracking coughs that sent his entire body into one massive spasm. A soldier with shining brocade down his uniform jacket tried to bring his sword down on my back, but I twisted around and caught his wrist with my hand. I squeezed so hard I heard bones snap and break, and he went down hard. Quickly, one of my master’s pirates cut him down.

“I was only following orders. I regret it though. I’m sorry I brought you here. I know what he’s done to you. He’s a monster, that one. You were just a child. I swear I had no idea what you were or who he’d make you become.”

There were too many men in the hallway; we were going to be crushed. I didn’t know if shifting back into my larger draken form would help or hurt.

“The master protects his men,” I parroted dutifully like I had for eleven years. A soldier charged toward us, and I stuck out my leg and swept him off his feet. With a cry of victory, a pirate stuck his sword in his chest, cut his throat for good measure, and stumbled away.

I could hear the master shouting orders now from down the hall. He would want me back in my true form. He would want me to fight and bleed and kill.

I didn’t want to, though. I wanted to stay here with this man. I wanted to keep him safe so he could tell me my own secrets; filling in gaps in my memory that felt just out of reach.

I tucked him under my arm like I had Nerissa on several occasions, and fought my way down the hallway, in the other direction I knew the master was in. Pirates whirled to face me then hesitated, giving way at seeing that I clearly wasn’t a soldier, but not recognizing me either. A few older ones saw my hair and the look in my eyes, and they knew.

I shoved people out of my way no matter whose side they were on until the crush of men became so much I couldn’t breathe as they pressed around me.

I knew what I had to do.

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