Chapter 9 Kael
The sound of scrubbing echoed through the kitchen, each swish of my hand against the plates an outlet for the restless energy building inside me. I stood at the sink, my hands submerged in the soapy water. It was warm against my hands, but I hardly noticed. My mind was far away, trapped in the swirling chaos of memories and the weight of secrets I’d spent so long keeping buried.
Seranni’s presence was impossible to ignore. She sat at the table near the fire, her quill scratching against parchment as she worked on one of her spell books. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, but every now and then, her eyes flicked to me, curious but hesitant. I pretended not to notice, but each glance pierced me like an arrow. It took every ounce of my willpower not to turn and meet her eyes.
I rinsed another plate, the cool stone walls of the kitchen pressing in around me. The firelight danced across the rough-hewn wooden beams overhead, casting flickering shadows that seemed to taunt me.
Since I’d been avoiding Seranni, I had sensed a slow shift in her demeanor. She was more silent and pensive around me—as if she had become guarded and cautious.
And I couldn’t blame her, really, even though I missed the easy friendship we’d had before. How could I expect her to continue being my friend when I hid so much from her?
I hated how quiet it had become between us, how the camaraderie we’d built had soured under the weight of my evasion. It wasn’t fair to her, but what choice did I have?
As if called up by the turmoil in my heart, I could feel the beast stirring, restless and hungry, always waiting for a moment of weakness. The mere thought of it slipping out near Seranni made my stomach churn.
The truth would ruin everything.
The very thought of her discovering my true nature filled me with a sense of dread. Would she recoil in fear? Would she see me as the monster I truly was, a beast masquerading as a human? The idea was too painful to bear. If she knew what I was—what had been done to me—she’d never look at me the same way again.
She deserved better. She deserved a life free of the chaos I carried with me like a shroud.
I scrubbed the dishes with more vigor than necessary, my claws itching to burst forth and shred the porcelain. I had to maintain control, had to keep the beast within me firmly in check. For Seranni’s sake, I couldn’t afford to lose myself to the primal fury that threatened to consume me.
As I rinsed the last plate, I heard Seranni clear her throat.
“Kael.”
Her voice broke through my thoughts, soft but insistent. I froze, the plate slipping from my hands back into the soapy water with a splash. Slowly, I turned to face her.
She was sitting upright now, the quill still in her hand, though she’d stopped writing. Her eyes, warm and amber like the embers in the hearth, searched mine. She looked...nervous. That alone was enough to set me on edge.
“I...” She hesitated, glancing down at the table before squaring her shoulders. “I was wondering if you might tell me a bit more about your past. Where did you grow up? Where are you from?”
The question struck me like a physical blow. I gripped the edge of the sink, my knuckles turning white as I fought to keep my composure. My throat felt like sandpaper.
I swallowed hard, my fingers tightening around the dish towel as I tried to formulate a response. My past? How could I tell her that I had grown up in Kalinovo, a stone’s throw from the border of Telluria? I wasn’t even a countryman of hers. I was from the Four Kingdoms, and an enemy to her king.
Our countries had been at war for almost two years.
If she knew she had been sharing a home with a soldier from Drakazov—living with the enemy—then Seranni would hate me. Worse, she would fear me.
I cleared my suddenly dry throat. “I, uh, I'm afraid my past is rather...complicated. I haven't really spoken much about it, even to those closest to me.”
Seranni’s eyes narrowed slightly as if she didn’t believe me. “I see. And why is that, if you don't mind me asking?”
I let out a heavy sigh, my gaze dropping to the floor. “There are...aspects of my history that I'd rather not dwell on, to be honest.”
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 about my past. 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 is that ?” 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 a genius . 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?”
“What way?”
“There’s no need to be kind to spare my feelings, surely you’ve noticed,” I muttered. “I’m not like most men.”
“I know,” she said carefully, as if she were dealing with a spooked animal.
And maybe she was, I thought despairingly.
“Whatever it is, Kael, you can tell me,” she said softly. “Please, you can trust me.”
“I do trust you. The one I don’t trust is myself,” I said shortly.
“What do you mean?” Her voice was gentle as she waited for me to speak.
I grabbed for the pendant at my throat. Running the pad of my thumb over the facets of the gem in the center, I paced away from her while I struggled to find the words.
“Does this have something to do with why you’ve been avoiding me?” Seranni’s voice was soft but resolute, and it cut through the fog of my thoughts like a blade. I kept my back to her, unwilling to meet those beseeching amber eyes. They had a way of pulling words out of me that I wasn’t ready to say.
“Why can’t you tell me the truth?” Seranni pressed. There was no accusation in her voice, only quiet pain.
I gritted my teeth and squeezed the pendant at my neck, the black gem in its center gleaming faintly in the firelight. That small, unassuming piece of jewelry was a countdown to my death—a constant reminder that time was running out. One more transformation, one last fight, and the magic that bound me to this existence would burn me away entirely.
The mage’s voice echoed in my mind, smug and clinical as he’d handed out these pendants to the soldiers who guarded his creations. “A failsafe,” he’d explained to them, because to him, we weren’t even human. Just tools. Not worthy of conversation. “This way, I can monitor how often they transform. And when they’re spent, they’ll just burn away into nothingness.” He’d smiled at the soldiers’ impressed looks. “After all, the King doesn’t like loose ends.”
Each of us nine dragon chimaera—those who had survived the experiments—had gotten a pendant, an easy visual marker of how much ‘ammunition’ each chimaera weapon held.
I clenched my jaw at the memory. He’d turned us into weapons—dragon chimaera, forged in a crucible of pain and magic.
When I’d first woken from the experiments, I’d transformed involuntarily twice, unable to control the magic running through my veins.
My body had writhed and snapped like a marionette with its strings cut, reshaping itself into something monstrous. I’d woken in a pile of rubble, my vision sharp enough to see the cracks in stone and the grains of dirt underfoot, my body alight with new strength I hadn’t asked for. I was barely conscious, trembling in a mass of muscle and scales, when the mage’s voice had rung out above me.
“Perfect,” he’d said. “Just perfect.”
Perfect for what? I had wondered then. Now, I knew. Perfect for carnage.
I had vowed then to resist that cursed mage.
I had been forced to transform another time when the mage had used his magic to compel me to fight my old friend Pavel, a comrade from my old regiment and one of the other dragon chimaera. The mage had wanted to gauge our individual magical strengths, so that he could better classify us as weapons for the king.
Then I had transformed one last time when I had rebelled against the mage, refusing to hurt the soldiers of my old regiment. He was stronger, of course, but I had to try. In the end, he’d thrown me into the dungeons and labelled me a failure, siphoning off magic from me to use in his other experiments. Soon, the pendant at my neck had grown dull with the repeated attacks on my magic, as I had lain there in the dark dungeons, all alone.
Now, I knew I had just one more transformation left in me. And this time, it would kill me.
My magic was too unstable. By binding the magical essence of a dragon with a non-magical man like me, the mage was forcing the magic to run through my body, causing it to break down more and more each time I transformed.
How could I tell Seranni that I was a beast who was doomed to die, when because of her, I had just started to feel like a man again?
“Kael,” Seranni’s voice was soft. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I paced up and down the room, avoiding her gaze.
“Kael, please. Whatever it is, I won’t judge you for it. I won’t turn away from you, I promise.” Her voice wavered, and I saw how much my silence was hurting her.
With a curse, I turned to look at her. Whatever I did, it would hurt her.
Which was the lesser of two evils? Would it be better for her to realize she was being manipulated by my magic and that I was trying to protect her, or would she be safer if she thought I was simply a boorish man given to flights of moodiness and irrational surliness?
“I thought we were friends ,” she said softly, and the heartbreak in her voice almost had me caving. She’d told me only a little of her life, but it was enough to know that she, like me, had no one in the world to call her own. Left behind by her father and afraid to form true friendships because of her magic, Seranni craved companionship but was afraid of being rejected.
Like I was rejecting her.
So be a man, and tell her the truth.
I looked up, just in time to see a tear spill down her cheek. She sniffed angrily and hid her face from me, but it was enough to make my resistance crumble.
“We are friends,” I said hoarsely, unable to stay still. I stalked closer to her and blotted the tear with my thumb, while she gazed at me with her large, liquid amber eyes.
“This is the only way I know how to keep you safe,” I confessed finally, closing my eyes in self-loathing. Now, she would ask me why, and I would have to tell her.
“Keep me safe from what?” she asked softly. “From you?”
I whirled away from her to pace again. “I am more dangerous than you think,” I said sharply. Best that I lance the wound in one stroke, instead of dragging it on like this. Tell her the truth, quickly, and stay away from her.
“What do you mean?” her eyebrows went up, and she waited.
“You know that I have been living in this tower, but you have no idea how I came to be here,” I said stiffly. “I am a prisoner of war, from Drakazov.”
Seranni’s eyes went wide, and she swallowed hard. Despite her shock, she didn’t stop her questions. “But you speak Tellurian so well…”
“I’m from one of the border towns. Everyone in Kalinovo speaks both languages.” I smiled, remembering happier days. “Before the war, it was common for traders and peddlers to cross the borders from Drakazov into Telluria and back.” I shrugged. “Trade and commerce flowed across the borders, and there were a lot of inter-marriages, too.”
“But the war—”
“Yes,” I said darkly. “The war . I joined the army like all the other lads in my village, because I had no trade, no father to leave me a farm, and no master I could apprentice with. Becoming a soldier was an honest way to earn a living, and I would be protecting my country. My people. What more could a young lad want?” I shook my head. “And then we marched into this godforsaken country.”
Her eyes narrowed at the insult to her homeland, but I was too angry to care. “After three months of fighting, our regiment was ambushed. I was taken prisoner. And that was when I met him . The cursed mage.”
Her eyes went round, and she stared. “The mage?” she asked shakily. “What did he do to you?”
I laughed, and even I winced at how crazed it sounded. “What didn’t he do to me? There were ten ‘test subjects’ handed over to him here, in his cursed magical laboratory, hidden in the middle of this damned forest where no one would know.”
She reached out a hand to me, as if for support, but I didn’t take it. Nothing could calm me now.
“You wanted to know about his experiments, didn’t you?” I pointed at the book before her, and laughed. I knew I sounded a little crazy, but I couldn’t stop. “Well, here I am.” I spread my arms wide. “Meet the mage’s experiment!”
Seranni gasped, one hand going up to her mouth. “He…did he experiment…on you ?” her voice was low and pained.
I nodded, turning away again to continue pacing. The more I thought about the past, the more agitated I became, and I didn’t want to take out any more of my frustration on her. The truth continued to tumble from my mouth like a festering boil being lanced, spilling my pain and anger into the dark night air.
“For a whole year. We were nothing more than ingredients to him. Your king ,” I threw a furious glance at her, causing her to shrink into her seat, “had asked him to create a weapon that could turn the tides of the war. A secret weapon.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “How would—”
“He was trying to create a dragon chimaera.”
She looked up, her eyes wide and fearful.
“Then that means—he was using you all—trying to combine you with dragons—”
“He succeeded,” I said shortly. “He turned me into a dragon chimaera—a creature caught between two worlds. Neither man nor beast, but something in between. He created dragons that could shift into the form of a man and back, at will.” I laughed darkly. “So what if half of us died in the process? Everyone knows you need to break the eggs when you want to fry them. Besides, your army could always get more prisoners for the mage.”
At my words, Seranni’s eyes filled with unshed tears and she looked away, her shoulders trembling. “That’s monstrous,” she said, her voice shaking. “How could anyone—?”
“Because they didn’t care,” I said flatly. “We were just assets to them. The mage, the soldiers, even your King. None of them cared how many of us died, as long as the experiment worked.”
“But—but, the war ended,” she said through pale lips. “It’s over.”
“It’s not over for me!” I roared. “Not until I find a way to turn back into a man.”
“But you are a man,” she said softly.
“I’m a beast in the shape of a man,” I snarled. “A dragon wearing the skin of a human.” I lifted my hand, showing her the claws that had extended from my fingertips in my anger.
“Still don’t believe me?” I smiled, running the tip of my tongue over the canines that had lengthened in my mouth. Her jaw dropped open at the sight and I stepped closer, making her look up to hold my gaze as her mouth shut with a click. My hand automatically went to her neck, my thumb caressing her tripping pulse point.
“The dragon within me likes you. Very much.” My thumb drifted up from her neck to glance fleetingly over her lips, which parted on a whispered gasp. “He wants me to take you—to bury myself in you and make you scream in pleasure—”
Her amber eyes had grown dark and dilated, and her tongue came out to moisten her lips but caught my thumb instead. The wet heat on my skin made me groan, and I pulled her closer with the hand around her throat.
And she would let me, I knew. She would let me do all this, and more. My blood was pounding in my veins and I was hard as a rock—
“But it’s not real.”
Seranni blinked and her eyes, which had been fogged with lust, were now bewildered.
“Whatever you’re feeling right now, it’s not real,” I said, my voice hoarse and strained. My hands twitched at my sides, aching to touch her again, but I forced myself to step back. “The beast within me is calling to the magic within your blood, that’s all.” I dropped her chin and stepped back, doing my best to ignore my body’s reaction to her nearness. My eyes flicked toward the floor, unable to meet hers. The shame was too raw, too heavy. “My dragon has decided that he wants to mate, and the magic in my blood is forcing you to feel the same way.” I turned away, suddenly feeling sick at how close I’d come to hurting Seranni.
The words felt like acid on my tongue, burning away any pretense I’d tried to maintain. Taking a deep breath, I avoided her gaze, hoping that by distancing myself from her, I could quell the storm raging inside me.
“And that’s why I’ve been avoiding you,” I said heavily, feeling hollow. I pressed my hand against the stone wall, the rough surface grounding me as my thoughts spiraled. The silence stretched, oppressive and unrelenting. The warmth of Seranni’s presence behind me was like a pull I couldn’t resist, even as I told myself to stay away. She deserved better than the twisted creature I’d become.
I didn’t want to see her eyes fill with disgust when she finally realized what had almost happened, how I’d betrayed her—
Then something hard smacked into my back.
“What—?”
I turned just as another object flew at me, this time grazing my cheek. I ducked instinctively, looking down to see what she’d thrown. A quill lay on the floor, its feather bent at an odd angle. I stared at it in confusion, my hand brushing against my face where it had landed.
“What are you doing?” I asked, astonished, my voice sharper than I intended.
“You IDIOT!” Seranni’s voice rang out, sharp and exasperated.
I straightened slowly, turning to face her fully. She stood by the table, her hands balled into fists, her cheeks flushed with a fury I hadn’t expected. I blinked, utterly dumbfounded. I had expected heartbreak, despair, betrayal—but not this. Not exasperated ire. She sprang up from her chair and stalked over to face me.
“Is that the only reason you’ve been avoiding me all these days?”
I nodded, still too stunned to form coherent words.
Seranni stopped in front of me, her chest rising and falling with indignation. “Listen to me carefully, Kael,” she said, her voice low and deliberate as she reached up to take my face in her hands. Her touch was firm, grounding me in a way that made my chest ache. “Because I need you to understand something.”
I swallowed, her intense gaze rooting me to the spot. I could feel the warmth of her palms against my skin, and I knew that my dragon—my unruly, reckless dragon—was preening under her touch.
“Other people’s magic doesn’t work on me,” she said, her voice steady despite the fire in her eyes.
“What?” The word slipped out before I could stop it.
She nodded, her thumbs brushing gently over my cheekbones. “Magic from others has never worked on me,” she repeated.
I blinked, looking down at her to see if she was lying. But her eyes were wide and earnest, drawing me into their liquid depths.
She shrugged. “When I was a child, a travelling mage from Osmaria stopped by our town. He made his money doing tricks for children, he made the miller’s daughter float in the air, and changed the color of the mayor’s hair and eyes. He did it for all the other children, too, but the only one it didn’t work on was me.” She sighed. “Maybe it is because I have magic, too?” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Her words should have soothed me, but doubt clawed at my chest.
“Do you understand?” Seranni ran her thumbs over my cheeks again when I remained silent. “I’m saying you never affected me with your magic.”
But—
“But I saw you,” I said, shaking my head. I couldn’t look at her, and had to stare at the door behind her, instead. How could I put this delicately ? “I saw how the magic affected you. You were…losing your reason.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Losing my reason? What are you talking about?”
I hesitated, feeling my cheeks heat. How could I explain what I’d seen—the way her eyes had darkened, her breaths had quickened, her lips had parted in that perfect, enticing way? How could I tell her that she had looked like everything I’d ever wanted, and it had terrified me?
“I mean...you were acting...not yourself,” I said awkwardly, taking a step back to put some distance between us. “You seemed...overwhelmed.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re saying I was acting crazy?”
“No, no,” I said, holding up my hands as I quickly took a step back from her.
“Then what do you mean?” she persisted, following me when I tried to retreat from her. Her determination was unyielding, and I felt myself backing into the wall.
“I mean—” I took a breath, trying to find the words. Why couldn’t she understand something so simple?
“Yes?”
“I mean—how can you be feeling this way, if it wasn’t for my magic affecting you?” The words came tumbling out of me, and even as I noticed the appalled look on her face, I couldn’t stop myself. “I’m a beast. Not even a human. Someone like you…” I shook my head. “I know my magic is affecting you because there’s no way you would be attracted to me, otherwise.”
When she stayed silent, I sighed. “I heard the mage say that dragon magic hasn’t been studied very well. I could be controlling your mind without you even knowing.” I looked away. “I’m sorry. It’s why I’ve been avoiding you all these days. I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you because of my dragon’s instincts.” I shuddered. “If I hurt you—if I take away your free will—I’d never forgive myself.”
I turned away so I wouldn’t have to look at her.
A long beat passed in silence, and then I heard the rustle of clothes. So this was the end, then. Seranni was leaving, fleeing the beast who had so nearly—
Her hands on my face made me jump.
Seranni turned my head to look at her and stared at me for a long moment, her lips pressed into a thin line. The firelight danced in her eyes, reflecting something I couldn’t quite decipher.
“What do your dragon instincts say now?” she asked softly, her voice like a challenge.
I swallowed hard, my pulse pounding in my ears. My dragon was screaming at me to claim her, to hold her, to make her mine. The pull was stronger than ever, a visceral, undeniable need that made my breath hitch.
But surely Seranni wasn’t…
She couldn’t…
Seranni put all my doubts to rest by leaning up to meet my lips with hers. It felt like lightning had struck me, like diving into a pool of sweet, cool water after a long summer’s day.
Her kiss was soft, tentative, but it ignited something inside me that I couldn’t contain. My arms moved on their own, wrapping around her waist and pulling her flush against me. She melted into me, her hands sliding into my hair as her lips moved against mine with growing confidence.
I groaned, the sound rumbling in my chest as I deepened the kiss. She tasted like wild honey and something sharper, something uniquely her. The dragon inside me roared with triumph, but for once, it wasn’t just the beast. It was me. Kael. I wanted this. I wanted her.
With an effort, I tore my mouth away from her kiss, resting my forehead against hers as my breaths came ragged. “Are you sure?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper, even as my dragon howled in disappointment.
She smiled, her eyes alight with mischief and something deeper. “You know,” she murmured, brushing her fingers against my jaw. “I’ve always loved to play with fire.”