Seraphina(73)

Kiggs blinked rapidly, as if to wake himself up, and made two hand gestures. Before I knew it, one of our guards was marching me down the hallway. He seemed determined I should be made as uncomfortable as possible: we bypassed all the relatively warm latrines of the inner keep and crossed Stone Court, through the snow, out toward a soldiers’ jake-hole on the southern wall. We passed the night guard, clustered around charcoal braziers, cleaning their crossbows and laughing raucously; they fell silent and stared as their comrade herded me past.

I didn’t care. He could have marched me all the way to Trowebridge. I just needed to be somewhere away from Kiggs.

I shut the door of the little room and scrupulously bolted it. The latrine smelled better than I had feared; it was a two-seater and dumped directly into the defensive ditch below. I could see the snowy ground through the holes. An icy wind gusted up, enough to freeze the staunchest soldier’s nether end.

I opened the shutter of the paneless window to let in some light. I knelt upon the wood between the dragon’s eyes (as some call such holes). I rested my elbows upon the windowsill, my head in my hands. I closed my eyes, repeating mantras Orma had taught me to quiet my mind, but one thought kept buzzing around me, stinging me like a hornet, over and over.

I loved Lucian Kiggs.

I emitted a single, sour laugh, because I couldn’t have chosen a more ludicrous place to have this realization. Then I wept. How stupid was I, letting myself feel things I should not feel, imagining the world could be other than it was? I was a scaly fiend; I could have confirmed it with a hand up my sleeve. That could never change.

Thank Allsaints the prince had both principles and a fiancée to act as barriers between us; thank Heaven I’d alienated him by being a filthy liar. I should rejoice in these obstacles; they had saved me from abject humiliation.

And yet my mind, in its perversity, kept returning to what had happened after Imlann flew off. For one moment—a moment transfixed in my obstinate memory—he had loved me too. I knew it, beyond question. One moment, however fleeting, was far more than I had ever believed myself worthy to receive, and it was far short of enough. I should never have allowed even that much; knowing what I was missing only made everything worse.

I opened my eyes. The clouds had parted; the moon shone gloriously across the snowy rooftops of the city. It was beautiful, which only made me hurt the more. How dare the world be beautiful when I was so horrifying? I pulled up my outer sleeves and carefully untied the cloth band binding the sleeve of my chemise. I turned that last sleeve back, exposing my silver scales to the night.

The moon gave enough light that I could discern each scale in the narrow, curling band. The individual scales were tiny compared with a real dragon’s scales, each the size of a fingernail, with hard, sharp edges.

Hatred tore at my insides. I was desperate to stop feeling it; like a fox in a snare, I’d have gnawed my own leg off to escape it. I drew my little dagger from the hem of my cloak and stabbed myself in the arm.

The dagger glanced off, but not without jabbing the tender human skin beside the scales. I clamped my lips together to muffle my cry of surprise, but my dull dagger hadn’t broken the skin. I sliced at the scaly band with the side of the blade this time, which was hard to do quietly; the steel slipped and sparked. I could start a fire with those sparks; I wanted to burn the whole world.

No: I wanted to put the fire out. I could not live, hating myself this hard.

A terrible idea bloomed in me like frost upon glass. I flexed my wrist to bring the edges of the scales up; I edged the knife under the end of one. What if I pulled them off? Would they grow back? If it left my arm scarred, would that really be worse?

I pried. The scale didn’t budge. I worked the knife under slowly, back and forth, as if I were peeling an onion. It hurt, and yet … I felt a glacial coldness wash over my heart, extinguishing the fire of shame. I gritted my teeth and pried harder. A corner came up; I doubled over in pain and inhaled frigid air sharply through my teeth. I felt the freeze again, all through me, and experienced it as relief. I could not hate when my arm hurt this much. I squeezed my eyes shut and gave one final pull.

My scream filled the tiny room. I cradled my arm, weeping. Dark blood welled up where the scale had been. The scale glittered on the end of my knife. I flicked it down the jake-hole; it twinkled as it fell.

I had almost two hundred scales on my arm alone. I couldn’t do it. It was like yanking out my own fingernails.

Orma had once told me that when dragons first learned to take human form, centuries ago, some had been prone to harming themselves, rending their own flesh with their teeth because the intensity of human emotions had taken them unprepared. They had rather endure physical pain than mental anguish. This was one reason among many that they kept their human emotions so tightly under wraps.

If only I could have done that. It never worked; it just put the feeling off until later.

Soldiers were pounding on the door in response to my scream. How long had I been in here? The cold had caught up with me: I shivered as I sheathed my knife and wrapped up my bloody wrist with my chemise binding. I mustered what dignity I could and opened the door.

My guard glared at me from under his helmet visor. “Queen Lavonda and Ardmagar Comonot are awake and waiting on your presence,” he snapped. “St. Masha and St. Daan, what were you doing in there?”

“Female things,” I said, watching him balk at the mention of the unmentionable.