Chapter 10

Monsters Do Monstrous Things

Astra squeals and bounds forward.

Brook moves to follow, but I shake my head. My daughter wants to see me, and the least I can do is allow it.

“You’re here!” Astra says, her whole body lighting up with excitement. Her feathers rustle, and she shivers as a grin all but splits her face in half.

I didn’t realize how much I had missed the unfiltered glee Astra possessed until now, when I get to see it again.

I try to return her smile, but moving my face in such a way feels foreign. The tendons that had snapped when my jaw dislocated ache with the movement, and it takes me longer than I know it should to pull my lips up into such a simple expression.

“Are you really back?” Astra asks.

I feel the weight of everyone’s gaze; Brook, Grey and Alex, Ky and Phoenix. The black cat stares at me with a squinted expression. Flames crackle and spark across his dark fur, lighting up the scattering of scars on his own body. He’s waiting, just like everyone else is, and it’s clear he has an expected answer.

“I am,” I say, breaking away from Phoenix’s gaze.

“Are you gonna leave?”

“No,” I reply. “I am not going to leave.”

Astra tilts her head to the side, watches me for a few moments, and then nods. She bounds up to me, lifting her chin so she looks straight up at me. I crane my neck down, but grimace when my muscles spasm and I have to step back and twist my head to meet my daughter’s gaze, moving my eyes more than my spine. The wounds from the snake’s fangs tug and pull, but I ignore it as best I can.

I want to see my daughter, and I hate that my neck and the snake's fangs are keeping me from seeing her with ease.

Astra rubs her cheek along my shoulder and elbow, over scars and places where the fur no longer sits right. I contort my face into another smile to hide how I grit my teeth, though the nerves running under my skin tingle and prickle at the sensation of my daughter’s affection. Twinges of pain race along the nerves, accompanied by numb spots and places that only feel pressure.

Anger flares in my gut, an iceberg of blinding white ice, all sharp angles ready to slice and shred and cut until I don’t know what I have left. Was it really too much to ask to be able to enjoy something as simple as exchanging affection and showing love? I can still remember when Astra began to walk and was soon clambering all over me, still uncoordinated but determined to climb onto my back so she could chew on my ears. I could feel every needlepoint of her claws, the pinch of her dew claws curling into my skin, though never breaking the flesh, the points of her teeth as she bit at me.

Astra as someone older than a young child, yet not quite firmly an adolescent, wouldn’t act the way I remembered her when she was a few months old and still figuring out how her body moved. But still, a part of me longed to feel every sensation again, even though I knew enough nerves had broken that I no longer can.

Why did you do that, King? Why did you have to destroy everything? Why would you make it so simple affection hurts? Why would you take that from me?

“Why do you have so many cuts on your body?” Astra asks, bringing me back from stewing in my mind. She noses at the scars on my forelegs.

Alex and Grey grimace, and Brook opens her mouth to say something, but I shake my head again. Astra can ask her questions. The least I can do is answer whatever she wants to ask. She’s my child, and I have her back again. I don’t want to tell her no, not after we were separated for so long.

“I… I have gotten injured.”

I don’t want to tell her how the scars she’s currently sniffing and examining were self-inflicted. How I couldn’t control what I did in the midst of the worst of the pain, the worst of the disorientation, the worst of the symptoms. How sometimes I had crumbled enough that I just needed something, anything, to try to pull me from it all. How sometimes I’d create a lesser pain I could control to try to snap my focus from the greater pain I couldn’t control.

Astra gasps, eyes wide and ears pricked. “Was it the King? Brook said he is really, really evil. I saw him, too. He’s really mean.”

I nod. “Yes, the King caused the injuries.”

“Are you gonna die?”

I flinch and pause, ears drawing back as I try to think of an answer that doesn’t feel like it might end up as a lie. “No, I don’t think so.”

“So you’re not gonna leave? Brook said you had to so I could stay safe.”

“I don’t intend to leave, Astra.”

“I’ll stay safe so you don’t have to leave and get hurt.” Astra's eyes grow wide, huge pools of deep blue. "I promise I'll stay safe."

“Nothing that the King has done is your fault, Astra. Please remember that. The King is responsible for his own actions.”

“But-.”

I shake my head, lowering myself so I’m eye level with Astra. She has to understand. “The King and only the King is responsible for his actions. Everything he has done he decided to do. You haven’t made him do anything, Astra. Nothing the King has done is your fault.”

Astra drops her gaze to her paws as she curls her tail around a hind leg and hugs her wings to her sides.

Phoenix wrinkles his muzzle but doesn’t say anything.

“Where can a guy get food around here?” he says.

“Food?” Alex replies, turning to the black cat. “There’s a buffet over by the Erebus Tree. It’s a communal food area. I make no promises on how stocked it is or the quality of the food, but it’s at least edible if you’re not in a picky mood.”

“As long as it’s not just veggies I’ll be fine.”

“Who knows, Phoenix,” Ky teases, butting his head into his brother’s neck, “maybe you’ll have to become a rabbit. You’ll wake up one morning and have buck teeth and a fuzzy tail. You have the long ears. Or, at least, one is still long.”

Phoenix flashes his teeth and swipes a paw, claws unsheathed, and Ky dodges. “Fuck off. You’re already basically a rabbit. You have the fluff.”

“Let’s just go,” Grey says.

Astra bounds after Alex and Brook, who lead the way. I follow behind, and Grey keeps pace with my slow speed. He doesn’t complain.

xxxx

True to Alex’s words, there is a buffet by the Erebus Tree.

Also true to her words, there’s few options.

I find a spot in the shade beside a tent identical to all the rest to get out of the sun and stiffly lay down on my side with a long sigh. The walk felt nice, but my joints ache and my paws are sore. I crack open an eye when I hear Grey talk.

“You can stay here, Jabez,” he says. “I will find you something.”

I hum, letting myself try to relax while the rest of the group wanders over to a long, wide table set up nearly touching more tents on the other side of the gap in the Sea. Others move about, and someone leads a horse through. The colt prances beside the person leading them, nostrils flaring when they see Brook. I scrunch my face up as a loud whinny pierces through my head.

People sit scattered about, and the low drone of chatter fills the back of my mind. It’s not enough to distract me from the throbbing ache in my spine at the base of my skull, but the discomfort from the sound takes the edge off the hurt in my paws. I learned years ago that swapping one pain for another could sometimes work. To an extent, at least. I’d end up paying for it either way, but the momentary lessening of one thing was worth it.

“Jabez,” Grey says, bringing me back from my thoughts. “I have a rabbit, if you’d like.”

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I nod, rolling to my stomach. I wince when the bandage around my neck pulls tight, pressing against the raw skin around the puncture wounds from the snake. Exhaling sharply through gritted teeth, I hold back a whimper at the memory of how tight the snake bound around my body.

Grey places the rabbit in front of me, and I paw at it, hooking my claws through its fur and pulling it closer. Alex settles down next to her brother, and Ky and Phoenix each help carry a deer carcass that’s more bone than flesh that they drop in a crumpled heap. As Brook chews on grass, Astra sniffs a mangled leg of the deer. Phoenix uses his back teeth to crack open marrow.

“If you’re gonna eat it, eat it,” he says.

Astra tilts her head to the side, then takes a bite.

Alex watches, as does Brook.

“It’s not like the mice,” Astra tells Brook.

Brook nods, and her purple mane falls over her eyes. “I’m sure it’s not,” she replies after finishing another mouthful of grass. “The animals here are different than they were in the Field.”

Astra bites her lip and tilts her head to the side. Ky moves closer to Phoenix when Astra steps around to take a bite from the deer’s flank. Ky cranes his neck to lick a patch of blood from the faded red bandana wrapped around his shoulders.

“You spilled?” Phoenix asks. He wrinkles his muzzle as he tears off another bite from the deer.

Ky eats another mouthful. “It’s not going anywhere. It’s been ten years. We still have the bandana. And before you say it, Phoenix, we both know nothing’s happening to it.”

“Damn right,” Phoenix mutters.

“Are you going to eat?” Grey asks, voice carefully neutral.

I pull my forelegs in tight beneath my chest, wrapping my tail around my hip. I keep my gaze on the ground, but I can still feel the weight of Grey’s attention. My skin prickles as my forepaws start to tingle from being pinned under my body.

I shrug. “At some point.”

“Ok.”

I can hear the unspoken worry, the poorly hidden please, Jabez, eat.

Astra turns around, and I shrug my shoulders up as my daughter watches. Ears pulling back to my skull, I avoid eye contact.

I paw at the rabbit and bring it closer to me, then take a small bite.

“What are we going to do?” I ask, seeking out a distraction.

“About?” Alex asks.

I jerk my head to the side to gesture to the Sea and the King’s castle, then clench my jaw as a jolt of pain lances up and down my spine as the embedded snake fangs catch. Exhaling slowly, I take a moment, then reply. “The King. Everything. I… I wish I could say I didn’t think he would, but… the King, he will react. I left him, I broke the curse, I’m as free of him as I can ever get. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

I take another bite of the rabbit. It’s awkward chewing with a crooked jaw, and my teeth don’t line up quite right, but I manage.

“-The fuck? We’re gonna kill the cream puff. Do you really think no one’s gonna get hurt? That’s what he does, Jabez. You know him so well, so you should fucking know that. He’s a piece of absolute shit. He’s gonna hurt people. That’s his whole shtick. He kills, he hurts, he destroys every single thing he touches,” Phoenix spits the words, low and as sharp as arrows, as he stalks toward me until he’s standing over me, flames bright against his black fur and reflecting in his fangs and yellow horns. He leans in close and I force myself not to shy back. “Look at yourself. Answer me this. Be honest. How much has the cream puff destroyed you?”

Ky lurches to his paws and barrels into his brother. “Phoenix!”

“That was mean,” Astra cries.

Alex gets to her feet, pewter pendant bursting with orange. I jump up, getting between Astra and Phoenix as fast as I can. My heart races in my chest as I watch Ky pinning Phoenix down, teeth bared as he holds the flesh on his brother’s cheek in his mouth. Every muscle in Phoenix’s body is tensed. I ready myself in case he makes a move toward Astra. Brook comes up beside me.

“You cannot say that,” Ky says when he relaxes his grip on Phoenix.

The black cat rolls to his paws and shakes off. When he looks between me and his brother, he squints and scoffs.

“Am I wrong though? Look at Jabez. He fucking died, and the cream puff brought him back to life, and then the cream puff went and fucked with him for however many decades he’s been around. Tell me that what the cream puff did to Jabez is natural. Tell me it’s not the cream puff destroying Jabez.”

“You can be angry,” I say, “but I played my own part in what happened to me.”

I never sought out Astra to break the curse the King placed on me. I took it for decades. He didn’t have to do that, but I also could have broken the curse as soon as I found Astra, if I just looked for her. But I took it. The scars I clawed into my own forelegs burn. I can feel the line of each individual one, its exact location. I can remember the pain I felt, the agony that drove me to scratch in the first place, to curl my claws and break skin because I saw no way out. The King never made me do that. Those scars weren’t me destroying myself, but letting the curse stay in place and staying with the King because just maybe he’d finally change was. I chose to do that.

Didn’t I?

“If the cream puff was a decent person who did the bare minimum, he wouldn’t have messed with your kid.”

“I made the choice to agree. I could have said no.”

Phoenix growls, eyes flashing. He morphs before my eyes. He was tense before, but now he looks ready to hunt. “No, you couldn’t have. Astra is your fucking kid. A parent doesn’t leave their kid. Nothing can break that bond.”

I nod. “I agree, but I could have said no. It never crossed my mind, but I possessed the capability.”

“You’d better not fucking abandon your own kid. I’ll kill you if you ever try.” The intensity in Phoenix’s eyes tells me he’s not joking.

I didn’t think he was, though, to begin with.

I glance back at Astra.

She spent ninety years without me. She knows Brook, not me. She still has so long to go in growing up, but she doesn’t know me. She’s spent so long without me so how will she adjust to having me around? Does she really want me here? Maybe it would be better to leave. Brook did a good job raising her. Perhaps better than I could’ve ever done. If I couldn’t keep Astra safe back when the King claimed abuse against her by me and Freedom, how could I now? I couldn’t take what the King gave me and come out unscathed. I have the scars, mental and physical, to prove it. I know Phoenix has a point, but I also agreed to what the King did to me— I took the curse and never once sought out Astra to break it. I would have lived with it forever.

But I’m here. I cannot forget how happy Astra seemed to see me. Maybe if I just give living with her a try. Maybe if I tell the King no enough times, he’ll finally get it and listen. I don’t really want him to die. I just don’t want to see him again. I want to try to forget that I ever knew him, even though I so love the memories of how he was when I was Ice, despite how they’ve grown so painful.

I’m just about to reply when someone a ways from us shouts and jumps to their feet, dropping their plate and all the food falls off it. I can’t tell what they’re pointing at. Grey and Alex turn around.

“Oh, shit,” Grey breathes, silver eyes widening as he gasps. The malachite medallion around his neck flares, glowing on his chest. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Brook shakes her head, expression hardening. Ky and Phoenix perk up. Blood stains Ky’s chin and throat, and I push back the memory of my own blood freezing in a thick, heavy ring, some twisted mockery of a necklace.

Around us, others begin to stir, going quiet as everyone turns their attention to where the person pointed to.

Phoenix chuckles, low and rumbling, and he curls his lips into a wicked smile.

“Fuck, yeah,” he purrs, eyes flashing. He shakes out his coat, then arches his back in a deep stretch. He curls his claws deep into the ground. His long upper canines are streaked with blood. Fire crackles across his fur, short flames licking the air as small puffs of smoke float away, dissipating quickly.

I follow their gaze as Brook moves to stand over Astra, nose twitching as she scents the air and swivels her ears in every direction. Any trace of softness has vanished, replaced by someone with the capability of pain I don’t want to be on the receiving end of.

Across the horizon, a smudge of silhouetted figures draw closer. Some are up on the few horses the King’s Guard and Soldiers have that aren’t used for carrying things around, but the majority are on foot. I can see the faint outline of each of them. They are all headed toward the Sea. As they move, whispers spread through the crowd around me; some ask about what is happening, and others scramble into motion in an effort to get to safety.

“No.” I exhale. “No, the King can’t be doing this.”

Why? You’re angry at me. Be angry at me. I understand, even if I don’t really. You are angry at me, King. Not anyone else. No one else has hurt you. They don’t deserve this. Be angry at me and only me. Why are you doing this?

I watch the silhouettes draw closer, and panic sparks in my gut, a curling kind of feeling that wraps around my insides and pulls and tugs until my skin feels both too big and too small simultaneously. I flick my tail and rock on my paws.

There’s no way I can reach the King’s castle in time, and even if I could, there’s no way I could guarantee Astra’s safety by returning to the King. On my own, I know I could not defeat the Guard and Soldiers approaching. Even with the rest of the group, I don’t know. The Wolf and the Dove are powerful, but neither Grey nor Alex are very practiced with their powers.

“Well, what did you expect someone like him to do?” Phoenix asks. “He’s a monster. Monsters do monstrous things. You literally said it yourself— you knew he’d do something.”

I exhale sharply. “I know, I know I said that. But I didn’t want to think he’d actually do this.”

“Well, he is,” Phoenix snaps back. “Get ready to take your pick of the army.” He pauses, flicking his torn ear. “Stay out of my way, Jabez. I didn’t kill you when you were chained because you didn’t have the choice to move away, but now you do. I will kill you and go through you if it means I get my shot at the cream puff.”

I don’t have to look at Phoenix to know he means it.

“I understand.”

“Hey, Grey?” Phoenix calls.

Both Grey and Alex turn to look at the black cat.

“Fucking kill this time. Ain’t no way the cream puff has given any other order than destroy. I won’t be coming to save you, and I doubt Alex wants to be saving your ass every other second ‘cus you won’t just give a quick lethal blow.”

Grey scowls. “It’s not right. You don’t need to take a life—.”

“I don’t want to hear it. You wind up dead, that’s your problem.”

“You won’t leave, Jabez, right?” I feel Astra press up to my leg.

I turn my head as much as I can, but I can’t crane my neck far enough to be able to fully see her. My neck aches, and the tension in the muscles around my spine sends sharp, biting pain lancing up and down my body.

“I won’t leave,” I reply. “You, Brook, and I will find a safe place.”

“I’ll come with you,” Ky says. “I cannot create portals like Brook can, but I can create illusions if needed. Phoenix can handle himself.”

Phoenix gives Ky a confused look, but he doesn’t say anything or protest.

I turn to Brook. If she trusts Ky, I will, too. She won’t let anyone near Astra.

“Very well,” Brook murmurs.

Wyatt walks into my field of vision, and I focus my attention on them.

“I have a friend,” they say, “who could help you all hide. His tent is on the side of the Sea.”

“What’s his name?”

“Myles,” Wyatt replies. “He will be on your side. He knows of the Wolf and the Dove and supports them. He disagrees with the King’s views on what should happen on Ragdon. He hasn’t heard of you, Jabez, or everything that happened with Astra, but I know him and I know Myles will want to help. And… he has his… own reasons for disobeying the King, though it’s not my story to tell. He wouldn’t mind me saying that much, but the rest is his story to tell.”

Brook studies Wyatt for a moment, then nods.

“Take us to Myles,” she orders, just as the Guard and Soldiers reach the very edges of the Sea.