Page 45 of The Monster's Daughter

By the time I make it to the noodle cart near Glimner’s artificial lakes, my stomach’s a knot. The air hums with hoverboards cutting across the plaza, teenagers laughing too loud, neon signs blinking in candy colors. The lake’s surface reflects it all back—perfect, fake, glittering.

And then I see him.

Kage’s hunched awkwardly by the cart, shoulders too broad for the tiny stool, looking like he’d rather be facing down a battalion than figuring out how to order street food. His scalesglint silver in the glow of the lamps. He looks up when I approach, and for a second his whole damn face softens. Like the universe just shifted.

“Bella,” he rumbles, voice too low, too intimate.

“Kage.” I cross my arms, trying not to stare at his frills. They flare when he’s nervous. They’re flaring now.

We sit. The noodles arrive in steaming bowls, broth spitting like lava.

I watch as Kage picks up the chopsticks, studies them like alien tech, then discards them and dives in claws-first. He slurps up an entire bundle of noodles in one go, broth dripping down his chin, eyes closing in satisfaction like he just discovered nirvana.

I choke on my own bite. “Are you—what the hell—are youeating them whole?”

He blinks at me, unbothered. “We didn’t have pasta on Xeros.”

That does it. I break. Laughter punches out of me, ugly and loud, and I’m wiping my eyes with the back of my hand while he just sits there, patient, letting me laugh until my ribs ache.

“God, you’re hopeless,” I manage, grinning despite myself.

“Hopeless,” he repeats, tilting his head. “But fed.”

The laughter fades. The quiet after feels heavier, like we’re teetering on the edge of something sharp.

“So,” I say, swirling broth I’m not hungry for, “how’d you make it? After… after everything.”

Kage sets his bowl down, scales tightening along his jaw. He doesn’t speak right away. When he does, his voice is rough, scraping.

“An escape pod. Blast threw me into one. Woke up days later. My parents pulled me out. We rebuilt. Slowly. Brutally. Everything was gone but… we survived.”

My throat burns. Tears pool before I can stop them, hot and humiliating. “I thought I killed you,” I whisper, staring at the broth. “That night—I thought when I?—”

The memory of his face disappearing as the pod hatch closed slams into me, raw and jagged. My breath stumbles.

Kage reaches across the table. His hand swallows mine, claws careful, weight steady.

“You saved me,” he says, low, certain. “You always save me.”

Something in me fractures at the words. The years, the loss, the guilt—I feel them all crack under the heat in his gaze.

I want to pull away. I don’t.

We walk after, drifting along the lake’s edge where the artificial sunset bleeds gold across the water. The air smells like fried dough and ozone, like a carnival that never ends.

I tell myself not to kiss him. Not to lean into what I’ve missed, what I’ve wanted, what terrifies me more than death.

Then his claw brushes a strand of hair from my face, slow, deliberate. My breath stalls.

I lean in.

The kiss is soft. Familiar. Terrifying.

His mouth is warm, careful, nothing like the rough desperation of caves and storms and war. It feels like starting over. Like breaking.

When it ends, I whisper against his lips, “This can’t be just about the past.”

He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes. “It’s not.”