“Seros,” I spoke the name Calix had used, hoping it would stir the boy. “The tea,” I called over my shoulder when I got no response. “And my bag,” I added as an afterthought. “It’s in the smaller basket, the one I carried.”
Footsteps pattered on the floor, and I checked the boy for a pulse while I waited. It was faint, but there. I carefully pinched the skin on his arm, testing for signs of dehydration. Minor, perhaps.
“Your bag,” Calix said, dropping it beside me as he knelt, waterskin in hand. He brought it to Seros’s lips, and I helped, raising the boy’s chin.
“Just a little,” I instructed Calix. I ran my thumb over the boy’s throat, coaxing him to swallow. When he did, I prompted Calix to give him more. After three more drinks, we both sat back on our heels, waiting.
The boy whimpered, his lip pouting. I released my breath. It was a sign he was coming around, at least. The tea would work.It had to. Though I didn’t understand how such things worked, Neirin and Calix had been certain in this.
“Stay with him,” I said, taking a roll of bread from my bag and handing it to Calix. “When he comes around, encourage him to drink more. If he is hungry, he can eat, but he does so slowly. He will need his strength.”
“What of the chains?” Calix asked.
“The Queen will have the key,” Neirin said, using his torch to light another on the wall. Shadows hardened as more of the horror around us came into view.
I swallowed and placed my hand on Calix’s shoulder. For a moment, he held my gaze, then he turned his attention back to Seros, speaking quiet encouragements and offering the waterskin once again.
Leaving them, I went to Neirin, bile in the back of my throat. Grateful, admittedly, to turn my back to the wall of death if only for a moment.
The small flame of Neirin’s torch flickered. He knelt before a cage of rough iron bars. Crouching beside him, I balanced on my heels. The top of the enclosure came to eye level, and the width of it was no more than that of my forearm. Scarcely large enough to hold a dog.
“My cage,” Neirin said under his breath. “The metal cuffs could not contain me, not when I shifted.”
Bitterness rose in my throat, and I sucked my lips in. A hollow pain ached in my chest. Reaching out, I ran my fingers over the bars, which were rusted slightly and stained with blood.
“I bleed when I shift,” Neirin explained. “Or at least I always used to. Before.” He flexed his fist and stood. “It’s in the past.” His voice grated, hollow, like the ghost of a memory.
I stood. “What she’s doing, Neirin, it’s not in the past.” I gestured to the back wall. “It may be over for you, but what is tostop the Queen from continuing this …” I swallowed the lump in my throat, unable to finish the sentence.
Neirin started to respond, but his eyes caught something over my left shoulder. I turned to find a mirror propped against the stone wall. It spanned floor to ceiling, framed with elegantly carved filigree.I made a step toward it and felt the brush of Neirin’s hand on my arm, but he retracted his touch, and I left his side.
A dusting of dirt coated the reflective surface, making my image appear faded. It had been some time since I’d seen my reflection, and for a moment I studied myself and tried to recall what Mother looked like. More like Aureus, I thought, but the memories were hazy. I was a mess, hair tangled and frizzed, skirts stained by dirt.
My gaze fell, and I drew my brows inward. Roughly three feet up from the ground, the mirror was shattered in several places: Each branching from a singular point of impact. Crimson stained the broken shards.
Neirin joined me before the mirror. In his black leather uniform, he was the same man I’d shared a tryst with the night of the festival. A man of power, of strength. He was a concept, the idea of a man I’d concocted in my mind to avoid closeness, to fashion a night of choices for myself, a night of obscurity and freedom.
Yet the way his jaw hardened and his fists tightened spoke of his pain, his depth. When I beheld him now, I no longer viewed him as that man but as the one I’d come to love. Complex, hurting, frustrating at times, but gods, perfect too, in every way. Even in his faults, in his weaknesses. In everything that made him who he was.
With a snarl, Neirin struck the mirror with a curled fist, and I sucked in a breath, shocked by his aggression and the suddenness of it. The glass broke and shattered with a sound ofcrinkling sharpness. Several shards fell to the ground, and when Neirin withdrew his hand, my breath left me. The impact had left fresh blood from his knuckles. A single drip collected and sank through the dust on the surface of the mirror.
He twitched in a seemingly unnatural way. It sent a shiver of ice down my spine. Neirin gasped for breath, and eyes intent on his own reflection, he began to shift.It was nothing like what I’d seen before. Lacking was any fluidity, elegance, or air of awe. This was the fuel of nightmares, the whisper of demons speaking on the wind.A middle shift.
His form was entirely that of a man, close-fitted in his uniform. Yet from his tousled silver hair, the ears of a beast unfurled and pinned back. A horrid cracking echoed from him, bouncing off the walls of the stone room.Calix’s whispering to his companion hushed, and the room took on a deadly silence.
Neirin wheezed, the sound a hushed exhalation of pain. The structure of his face elongated, no longer that of a man’s, but not quite that of a creature’s either. It was something in between, something broken and all wrong.Fur sprouted out in patches, a mottling of silver and dark gray. A sound came from him, nearly a whimper, restrained and laden with distress.
Despite the pounding in my heart, I stepped to him and placed a hand on his arm. He turned to me, eyes sharp, and snarled. This half-shifted form was even more terrifying face-to-face.
Gods, had the Queen made him stand before his reflection as a boy and witness this? Of course, he would believe her when she told him he was a monster. But this wasn’t him. This was some forged fragmentation of his turmoil and inner anguish.
“Neirin.” I raised my hand to cup his face, feeling the patches of fur and the disjointed bone structure beneath my touch. His eyes, though they bore distrust, were still those of the man Iloved. Fear and pain trickled through our bond, and his distress poured over all else.
“Look at me,” I urged, and coaxed him to turn from the mirror. His body heaving with ragged breaths, Neirin locked his gaze on me. “You are not a monster.”
A muscle twitched at his temple, the only response to my words. I drew a breath. “You are my defender, my protector. You are the clueless, hopeless fool of a romantic that says all the wrong things yet continues to try. And when you say the right things, they’re perfect. You’re the only man I’ve ever given my heart to or fallen asleep beside. And when I wake to your warmth, it fills me with peace and belonging.”
Neirin let out a breath, and the panic through our bond tempered. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and the elongated half-snout he bore came nearly to my nose when he tilted his head down to me. But I wasn’t afraid of him, even in this half-form.
