Pait dreamed that she was back in Madam Agatha’s basement, alone except for a squalling baby. Bewildered, she hurried over to the baby and tried to calm it. She pulled the tattered brown bag it was wrapped in tighter around it because she couldn’t find a blanket, then picked it up and rocked it gently.
The infant had wisps of reddish-brown hair and big brown eyes, and patches of milky skin down the center of its otherwise brown face, but most of all, it had a pair of fucking lungs. It wailed and cried and thrashed and scratched at her.
A heady concoction of grief and rage boiled up in Pait as she looked down at this scared little baby. Who—what monster—could abandon a baby like this? A helpless, tiny human who hadn’t asked to be brought into this world, and who never would have agreed if they’d known all that they had to look forward to was dirt floors and abandonment. Pait cradled the baby to her chest and wept and sang and promised the baby she would never ever leave it.
As thanks, it opened its jaws and bit her in the head.
“Agh!” Pait jerked up, her scalp stinging, and looked down to see the answer to the secret of the soft warmth of her stolen pillow.
A tiny, half-fluffy, half-scaly monster had nearly chewed itself free of the bag it had been trapped in and was kicking and clawing to get one last leg free, all the while it wailed. Pait scrambled back, smacking her already bleeding head against the alley wall and nearly knocking herself back into dreamland. Without her head weighing it down, the monster finally got its leg free, and Pait clambered away, trying to avoid an attack that never came.
The monster just crawled away from the bag, plopped down onto its butt, legs splayed to the side, and threw its half-and-half head back to wail. A lot like a baby that wanted its mom.
Pait looked around, panicked. The alley was still empty for now, but all the screaming would draw attention in no time. She cast one look toward the shredded bag, decided that belonged to the monster now, and took off down the alley.
Frying pan. Fire. Only this time, the frying pan was following her.
As soon as she passed the little beast, it came bumbling after her, still squalling.
“No!” she hissed at it. She couldn’t have this thing following her into the street. “Go back!”
Now that she had stopped, the monster plopped back down. But did not cease its screaming. “Rahr-raaaaaaaaah!” It sounded eerily human, almost like it was saying Ma-maaa!
“Shut up!” Panicked, Pait dashed back past it down the alley, away from the street, and snatched up the tattered bag, scattering the other assorted objects the bag had once held.
The beast trotted faithfully after her. Pait turned to face it, bag held out before her. Her stomach turned at the thought of what she was about to do, but if she didn’t shut this thing up right now, it was going to get the both of them killed anyway. Pait had been a city girl all her life, the only monsters she’d ever seen were the ones they released into the Arena to kill for entertainment, but this little beast was nothing like those enormous, spidery-legged, curved-clawed, rabid nightmares she had seen eat men alive. This one was even kind of cute.
It threw its head back and its face split open, displaying a black, forked tongue and rows of wicked fangs.
It was a little bit like those other monsters.
Pait stepped toward the beast. When it didn't move, she took another step. Then she bent her knees, preparing to pounce, to press the bag over its head and clamp down until it suffocated—
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
When an all too familiar growl said, “The hell are you doing?”
Mother. Fucking. Light.
Could she not catch one. single. break?
Before Pait had even summoned the mental energy to turn and face him, he had swept past her to look at the screaming monster, which screamed louder in response to his presence.
“Ah,” his words rumbled, “Kitten.”
The monster went quiet, staring up at who Pait now knew to be Daivad Earthbreaker, the Mother-damned Traitor Prince, with wide, yellow-green eyes. It actually hiccuped.
“Wh—?” Pait’s mind reeled. What the fuck was going on? “How did you do that?”
Daivad took an enormous sigh all the way down from his boots, and Pait couldn’t help but relate to the exhaustion she heard in it. Then he lowered to one knee and actually spoke to the mismatched beast in something like an exasperated purr. “You want to go back to Nyxabella?”
The beast plodded forward and for one wild moment, she thought it had understood him, but then it just stuck its nose up to sniff his bloody pant leg. The beast just liked what it smelled on him. Whatever—Pait was just glad the thing had shut up.
“Look, just—” she said in a rasp, her throat still burning from all the running and smoke. She stuck her hand in her pocket and fished out the tiny white stone, then threw it down the alley. “There’s your fucking stone—go fetch it and get off my ass!”
The monster licked and nibbled at Daivad’s pant leg, and he let it, looking over at her—big as he was, he was just about her height when kneeling. “You have somewhere to go?”
She stared at him. “Mother Light—your face.”
“That ‘shark-looking fucker’ didn’t go down easy. Do you have somewhere to go?”
Pait hid her arm deeper in her own cloak. “I’ll be fine.”
His ice-blue eyes pierced her. “Not alone. Not without a place where no one will blink at that mark on your arm because they’re wearing one of their own.”
Pait flinched, her arm throbbing. “I don’t—” What point was there in lying? “How’d you know?”
“Nyxabella told me,” he said.
She blinked. “Who the fuck is Nyxabella?”
“The owner of that bag you stole, after she risked her life for your freedom.” He didn’t say it harsh, but Pait’s intestines still squirmed. He continued, “You can’t cover that thing, not forever. Can’t burn it off or carve it out. And one day it will get you caught. Then you’ll get dragged to some Mother-forsaken prison camp where, if you’re lucky, maybe I come break you out one day. Or you could save yourself the trouble and just come with me now.”
Pait glanced at the mouth of the alley. It felt like two cats who hated each other had been sewed up inside her gut and were doing their level best to try to kill each other and take her with them. She felt everything all at once. Panic and fear and hope and grief and rage and longing. Belle—Nyxabella, whatever—had said his camp was beautiful and safe. And she had believed those words when she said them.
But Pait had just berated herself for getting sucked into shit like this time and again. For relying on anyone but herself, for letting herself believe that one day she might be safe and happy and loved. Or, Mother, at least just tolerated.
She wouldn’t be able to survive it again. She couldn’t climb the mountain in search of Hope’s Peak only to be tossed once again off a cliff of despair. She knew she would not survive that.
Pait realized she was crying, but she was too fucking tired to care. Pretending he hadn’t noticed, Daivad reached to pet the little monster, which promptly clamped down on his massive hand, adding to the collection of scars already present on his brown skin.
Daivad swore and pried the beast’s jaw open with his other hand. He barely even glanced at the crescent of red punctures just behind his knuckles, simply shaking his hand to cast off some blood.
“Come on, you little shit,” he growled, and Pait wasn’t entirely sure if he was talking to the monster or her. He pressed his injured hand into his knee to help himself stand and then looked at Pait. “At least follow me out of the city. You pick your own path once we’re outside the walls. But,” he made a face at the monster that was now trying to climb his tattered pant leg, “before we get beyond them, I have an errand to run.”
After a beat, he asked her, “What are the chances you’ve got an apple in one of those pockets?”