Page 26 of Monster’s Obsessive Hunger

LYSSA

I wake to silence and a strange, magical numbness.

The sharp, white-hot agony that consumed me in the forest has receded, leaving behind a deep, dull ache in my side that feels like a memory of pain rather than the thing itself.

I am lying on a bed, not a pile of furs, and the sheets beneath my cheek are impossibly smooth, cool as river water.

My eyes flutter open. The ceiling above me is not the rough, familiar stone of Thorrin’s lair, but a vault of polished black obsidian that seems to drink the light.

Glimmering crystals are embedded in the rock, casting a cold, sterile blue-white glow that illuminates a room devoid of any warmth or comfort.

The air is thin, smelling of strange, astringent herbs and the faint, crackling scent of ozone, like the air after a lightning strike.

This is an elven room. Sharp angles and cold beauty, and it feels more alien and unnerving than Thorrin’s bone-strewn cave ever did.

A flutter of panic tightens my chest. Where is he?

The last thing I remember is his desperate flight through the snow, his guilty, terrified presence a strange and powerful comfort.

I push myself up, my muscles protesting, the ache in my side sharpening to a clear, insistent throb.

The movement is painful, but it is manageable. I am alive. I am healing.

A figure shifts in a high-backed chair, a shadow detaching itself from the deeper gloom. Elira. She has been watching me, her posture still, her gaze sharp and unreadable. There is a cup of steaming liquid in her hands, but she makes no move to offer it to me.

“You’re awake,” she states, her voice flat, devoid of warmth. It is not a question.

My voice is a dry, rusty croak. “Where is he?” It is the only question that matters. “Where is Thorrin?”

Elira takes a slow, deliberate sip from her cup, her dark eyes never leaving my face.

The silence stretches, a calculated pause designed to unnerve me, to assert her control over this situation.

I refuse to look away, meeting her hard gaze with a fragile defiance of my own.

I won't intimidated. Not when it comes to him.

“You’ve been unconscious for a full day,” she says finally, her tone still cool and clinical. “The magus says the healing took. You were lucky. Another hour in the cold and it wouldn’t have mattered what he did.”

“Where is he?” I repeat, my voice stronger this time. I won't deflected.

She sets her cup down on a small stone table beside her, the clink of ceramic on stone the only sound in the sterile room. A faint, contemptuous smile touches her lips. “Waiting,” she says, the word laced with disdain. “Outside the gate. Like a starving dog at the door.”

Her description of him, so cruel and dismissive, ignites a protective fire in my chest. She sees him as a pathetic, slavering beast. She doesn’t know him. She doesn’t understand. I struggle to sit up further, ignoring the sharp protest from my ribs.

“He is not a dog,” I say. “He saved my life. He brought me here, to you. To his enemies.”

“He is the one who broke you in the first place,” she counters, her voice like ice.

“It was an accident!” The words tumble out of me in a desperate, breathless rush. I have to make her see. “He doesn’t… he’s not like the other Waira. He doesn’t feed on flesh. He feeds on voices. On stories. I was telling him stories, and he listened. He never tried to hurt me. He was lonely.”

The word is simple, pathetic truth that feels like the key to the entire, impossible puzzle. I watch her, waiting for her to scoff, to tell me I am a naive fool who has mistaken a predator’s trick for a soul.

But she doesn’t. Elira’s hard gaze wavers, just for a second.

She looks away from me, her eyes fixing on some distant point on the cold stone wall, and a flicker of some old, painful memory crosses her features.

The mask of the hardened survivor cracks, and for a moment, I see the girl she must have been, the girl who was also claimed by a monster in the dark.

When she speaks again, her voice is different. The sharp, contemptuous edge is gone, replaced by a quiet, weary resignation. “So was Kaerith.”

The admission is a profound and unexpected offering, a bridge of shared understanding thrown across the chasm that separates us.

She understands. She has seen the same monstrous loneliness, the same desperate, alien need for connection in her own Waira.

This is not forgiveness for Thorrin, not by a long shot.

But it is a glimmer of empathy. She is not just looking at a foolish girl who fell for a monster. She is looking at a reflection.

Tears I didn’t know I was holding back well up in my eyes, blurring the cold, sterile room into a swirl of blue light and shadow.

The relief is so profound it leaves me weak.

I am not alone in this. There is another woman in this world who knows what it is to love a shadow beast such as he; to find a heart in his hunger.

Elira looks back at me, her expression softening into something that is not quite kindness, but is no longer pure hostility. It is the weary, knowing look of a veteran speaking to a new recruit in a war that never ends.

“Rest,” she says. “You are safe here for now. We will talk more when you are stronger.”

She stands and leaves the room, leaving me alone with the quiet hum of the healing magic and the echo of her words.

So was Kaerith. For the first time, I feel a sliver of hope that is not just for my own survival, but for a future I might share with Thorrin.

If this fierce, strong woman could find a way to build a life with her monster, then maybe, I can too.