Like the time I was a prisoner in this very tower.
“But I'm not just ‘others,’ Kael,” Seranni pressed, her voice tinged with a hint of hurt. “And you know everything aboutmypast. Don’t you trust me?”
The pain in her words cut me like a knife, and I felt a wave of guilt wash over me. “Seranni, I do trust you. More than you know. It's just...my past is complicated,” I said, my voice tight. “And I fear that if you knew the truth, you would see me as nothing more than a monster.”
She didn’t speak for a moment, and the silence stretched taut between us. Finally, she said, “Kael, you’ve protected me, shared your home with me... That doesn’t come from someone who’s a bad person.”
“You don’t understand,” I said, my voice sharper than I intended. I forced myself to take a breath, my hands trembling as I turned back to the sink. The soapy water rippled under my touch as I tried to regain control. “There are parts of my past that are...ugly. Things I can’t change.”
She stood then, the scrape of her chair loud against the stone floor. My heart sank as I braced for her to leave the room, but instead, she stepped closer.
Seranni’s expression was soft, even as her eyes narrowed. “Kael, whatever it is you’re hiding, I promise I will listen with an open heart and mind.Just please, tell me the truth.”
For a moment, I was tempted to tell her everything. To lay bare the truth of my dragon nature, my capture by the mage, and the scars that still haunted me. But the fear of losing her, of watching the light in her eyes fade, held me back.
Her words were kind, but they only made the weight on my shoulders heavier. I couldn’t let her see me for what I truly was. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
I stayed silent, gripping the edge of the counter until my fingers ached. When I gave no response, the light in Seranni’s eyes dimmed, and her smile dropped.
Eventually, I heard her sigh. “If you ever decide you want to talk,” she said, her voice quieter now, “I’ll be here.”
She turned away then, heading back to the table. I chanced a glance over my shoulder, watching as she picked up her quill and returned to her work, flipping through the pages of the large leatherbound book before her. The firelight illuminated her profile, the delicate curve of her jaw, the determined set of her lips. She looked beautiful. Fragile.
And utterly out of place in my broken world.
As she turned the page of her book, something caught my eye. A diagram, inked in meticulous detail, filled the corner of the parchment. The sight of it sent a jolt of recognition through me, and my heart began to pound.
I knew that symbol. I had stared at it for hours every day, trapped in a cage while the mage muttered incantations over his instruments. With the sound of my comrades from my regiment dying by inches around me as we all sat in cages in the mage’s lab, having experiments done on us, the magic cutting into our bodies and remaking us from the inside out—
That symbol was etched into my memory, a permanent scar on my mind.
The plate in my hands slipped again, clattering against the side of the sink. Seranni looked up, startled.
“What isthat?” I demanded, my voice sharp.
Seranni looked up, frowning. She had paused with her quill in her hand, and a spot of ink fell onto the paper. “This?” she asked, pointing to the diagram. “It’s just a spell I was copying. Why?”
And indeed, it looked like she was copying out spells from the notebook before her.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My legs carried me to her side before I even realized I was moving. I loomed over her, my eyes locked on the page. My blood ran cold. The lines, the runes—they were exactly as I remembered. The same as the ones the cursed mage had used to tether my soul to a dragon’s essence.
“Where did you get this?” I asked, trying not to shout. It was a close thing, I could feel my claws lengthening and cutting into my palms.
Seranni frowned, setting her quill down. “Found it in my room, hidden under a loose floorboard,” she said slowly. “It must have belonged to the mage who used to live here.”
Seranni looked up at me, as if she were checking my reaction.
Her words sent a fresh wave of anger and fear coursing through me. My claws pricked at the edges of my fingertips, threatening to break through. I curled my hands into fists, willing the transformation to stop. My mind was spinning, caught between the memories of the mage’s experiments and the realization that his work was still here, poisoning this place even after his departure—but it was also the key to releasing me from my cursed existence.
Now, finally, maybe I could reverse what was done to me.
When I stayed silent, unable to speak past the roaring in my head, she went on. “It has quite a few useful spells, and some that he seems to have invented.” She sighed. “Looking at his notes, he appears quite…pompous. Seems to think he was better than everyone else. So, I don’t quite want to admit it, but the man is a genius.” She shook her head. “An ass, but a genius.”
I choked back a laugh. “Oh yes, he was agenius. A once-in-a-lifetime genius, he called himself.” I shook my head. “Genius enough to repeat his experiment nine times and succeed every time!”
Seranni went still, her eyes coming up to meet mine. “What experiments?”
I whirled away from her, unable to keep still. If I stayed next to her, I was liable to grab the book from her and shred it to pieces. “How do you think I got to be this way?”
