Page 33 of Monster’s Obsessive Hunger

THORRIN

T he journey back to my lair is a pilgrimage of shame.

Each step takes me further from Lyssa, from the impossible warmth of Kaerith’s home, and deeper into the familiar, crushing silence of my own desolate world.

My territory feels alien now, the ancient trees and stones mere witnesses to my failure.

When I finally arrive at the mouth of my cave, the darkness within seems to mock me.

It is not a sanctuary; it is a tomb, and I am its sole, undead inhabitant.

The cold inside is absolute, a physical presence that seeps into my very bones.

The air is stale with the scent of old kills and a loneliness so profound it has become the bedrock of this place.

My gaze falls on the wall beside my sleeping furs, on the two initials I carved there in a fit of possessive desperation.

L. K. The letters are a stark, white scar on the stone, a testament to a claim I no longer have the right to make. The sight of them is a fresh torment.

I cannot bear the silence. I cannot bear the emptiness.

If I cannot have her here in flesh, I will have her here in spirit.

The need is a frantic, clawing thing inside me, a desperate attempt to ward off the encroaching gray void.

I find a sharp-edged piece of flint, its point perfect for carving, and I turn to the wide, blank expanse of the cave wall.

If this place is to be my tomb, then it will be one that tells her story.

I begin to carve. My claws, which have only ever been instruments of destruction, now become tools of a desperate, reverent creation.

I etch the words of the first story she ever told me into the cold, unyielding stone.

The tale of the small, wounded pavo . The work is slow, painstaking.

The scrape of flint on rock is the only sound, a funereal rhythm in the suffocating quiet.

I am not just carving words; I am carving my penance.

I am making her memory a permanent part of this desolate place, just as she has become a permanent part of me.

As I work, I speak the words aloud, My voice a strange and clumsy vessel for her memory.

I mimic her tone, the gentle rise and fall of her cadence, trying to recapture the magic of her telling.

But when I come to the parts where she laughed, the sound that comes from my throat is a grotesque parody.

It is not the bright, warm yellow of her joy.

It is a hollow, broken thing, tinged with the deep, aching blue of my own sorrow.

The mimicry is a failure. It is a ghost without a soul, an echo in an empty chamber.

The sound of my own loneliness mocking me in her perfect, stolen voice is a new and exquisite form of torture.

I finish the first story, the words a rough, pale script on the dark wall.

My work is clumsy, amateurish, a child’s scrawl compared to the elegant, living thing her story was.

I step back, and my gaze falls on a crumpled piece of fabric her tunic.

The one she was wearing the night I broke her.

It is stained with dirt and with the dark, faded patches of her blood.

It is the physical proof of my failure, the shroud of the beautiful, trusting thing I almost destroyed.

I cannot bear the sight of it. It is a poison in this place, a relic of my own monstrous nature.

I snatch it from the floor and carry it outside into the cold, unforgiving night.

With my bare claws, I tear at the frozen earth at the base of a silent, watchful pine.

The dirt is hard as iron, but my grief gives me a strength that is born of desperation.

I dig a shallow pit, a grave for my own unforgivable sin.

I place the tattered, blood-stained fabric within it, and I cover it with stones and snow.

It is a burial. It is a funeral for the part of me that is too dangerous to be near her.

As I place the last stone on the small mound, a whisper escapes my lips, carried away on the sighing wind.

“You deserve a gentler monster.”

I speak the words into the wind, a final act of letting her go, a sentence I have passed on myself. I expect only the indifferent silence of the mountains in reply. I am a beast of the dark, and the dark, alone. That is my penance. That is my fate.

But a different voice answers, quiet but clear, carried on the frozen air from the edge of my territory.

“I don’t want a gentler one. I want you .”

I freeze. My non-existent heart seizes in my chest. It is a trick. A phantom of my own tortured mind, my obsession finally given its own voice. It cannot be real. I turn slowly, my entire being a single, taut nerve of disbelief and a hope so fierce it is a physical pain.

She is there. Standing at the edge of the clearing, a small, dark figure against the vast, white expanse of the snow.

She is wrapped in a thick, dark cloak, her face a pale oval in the moonlight.

She should be miles away, in the warmth and safety of Kaerith’s home.

She should be healing. She should be as far from me as possible.

But she is here. She has crossed the dangerous, frozen wilderness. She has come back to me.

The sight of her, the scent of her, shatters the cold, desolate peace of my self-imposed exile.

She takes a hesitant step forward, into my territory, into my world, and my entire being seems to crack open.

The dim, sick green of my guilt is consumed by a sudden, violent, blazing flare of gold.

It is the color of wonder, of a miracle I did not dare to ask for.

She is real. She is here. And she has chosen to return to the very monster who broke her.

The agonizing weight of my guilt does not disappear, but for the first time, it is met by a hope so powerful, so blinding, that I feel I might be undone by it all over again.