When I burst through the doors, I found Elias standing near my throne. He held himself with one arm and the other he used to cup his chin, his expression grave. He was talking with a couple—a woman with long red hair and a man with blue curls—and I let out a gasp.
I froze. My heart plummeted like an iron weight.
It was the couple from my dream.
But…but how?
I’d never met them before, and yet here they were. And I thought…I thought I’d killed them. I could remember how it felt to tear into flesh, to rip muscle and break bone. But it had been just a dream. It couldn’t have been real.
Then I noticed the blue-haired man had a large gauze pad pressed against his cheek. Already blood was seeping through in a long gash as if he’d been clawed. The red-haired woman alsolooked badly injured. She had a cloth wrapped around her shoulder, a horrible cut tearing her from clavicle to under her arm. Tears shone in her eyes.
Elias’s gaze landed on me when I came in, his mouth pressed into a hard line, then turned back to the couple.
“Please,” he said to them. “Tell me again so I’m not misunderstanding. What happened exactly? Leave no detail out.”
The couple held each other’s hand, squeezing tightly, both of them trembling.
“Sir, I know it sounds unbelievable. But there’s no mistaking what attacked us,” the man said.
“A manananggal,” the woman cried. “It was horrible.”
“A manananggal?” Elias stared at them, eyes wide, alarmed. His wrinkles became more defined, as if he’d aged a hundred years. He was afraid.
“It looked like a woman with long black hair and claws!”
The man continued in a rush. “And her mouth…it was full of fangs! And she had wings like a bat. She swooped down from the roof and killed one of our goats. She tore it to pieces, and we fled.”
The woman nodded vigorously.
Elias shifted nervously and glanced at me again before saying, “We haven’t had a manananggal attack in this region for thousands of years. Are you certain it wasn’t an amalanhig or some other aswang?”
“No! There was no mistaking it! It was a manananggal!” the man said, sounding desperate to be believed. He closed his eyes and clenched his free hand into a fist; he was still shaking. “She—she didn’t have the lower part of her body.”
My insides went cold, like I’d been dropped in ice. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think.
Was my nightmare real? Was this…was this my fault? How? How was any of this possible?
I think I made some kind of sound because the couple turned. When they saw me, they each immediately dropped to one knee and bowed their head. “Your Majesty,” the woman said, her voice thick.
I blinked. My eyes burned at the sight of their wounds. Had I done this? Had I hurt these people?
Elias came to me, took my hand, and guided me to my throne. I think he realized I might faint, because he sat me down. The couple stood before me, somber and ashen-faced, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them.
Did they recognize me? I didn’t think so. They only knew me as their queen. But I knew them. I’d seen their faces last night, seen the terror in their eyes as I got close, smelled their horror, heard the fear pulsing in their hearts. I had intended to kill them. I’dwantedto kill them. I was going to puke.
The woman explained, “I didn’t want to believe what we saw, either. My grandmother used to tell us stories about the wild ones, and it’s exactly like what she said! Bloodshot eyes and everything!” The woman sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Recalling what happened seemed to be causing her distress, and the man held her.
“You have to believe us,” he said, his voice ragged. “Please.”
I was still too stunned to speak, but Elias didn’t need me to. “Of course. We believe you. Sir Lucas!” Elias called.
I dropped my head when I heard the opening doors and the steady clip of Lucas’s boots on the marble floor. I was too numb to do or say anything.
“Yes, sir?” I heard Lucas ask.
Elias instructed him to go back to the couple’s home, to survey the damage and search for any clues as to the feral manananggal’s whereabouts. Their conversation turned into a low drone in my ears, a steady hum, and my vision tunneled. I could still feel skin tearing, still hear the screams, still taste the blood sliding down my throat. What was happening to me?
I felt a firm hand on my shoulder, and I looked up at Elias, who stood tall at my side. Lucas had long gone.
