In his twenty six years of life, six of which were spent out at war, seven in the form of a monster, Kyzar had never felt fear as he felt now. Chrys’s dilated eyes, her blood-smeared mouth and pale complexion, her deteriorating body – he barely knew this woman, but he trembled at the thought of losing her.

He had her by her elbows, tentative, afraid he might hurt her if he held her too firmly. This was the closest he had ever been to a fellow human in seven years. Her eyes lost clarity, and he caught her as she fell forward. She slumped against his chest, limp, and a strange sense of protectiveness came over him. All thoughts of his curse were vanquished from his mind. He could only worry about this precious young lady who had tried to save him, who now laid in his arms stiller than a dead fish.

The purple glow around her was slowly fading away. Chrys was special. She had great magical powers, but using them clearly took a toll on her health. It could not happen again. He drew her close, cradling her for a short moment before picking her up and striding into her bedroom. Elliot ran after him, his ever faithful butler and de facto executor of the Shervonseau name.

“May I assist you in any way?”

Kyzar tapped at Chrys’s bloodstained dress. After seven years together, Elliot had grown adept at reading his gestures. Within minutes, he presented a fresh change of clothes. But he was still caught off guard when his master pointed a stubby finger at the door. When he did not move, Kyzar whipped his head at him and shot laser beams at him with his eyes. 

“You…want me to leave you with her?”

Nod.

“Are you going to dress her yourself?”

Nod.

“If you would return to your chambers, I could call a maid to come up and help the lady.”

His difficult monster of a master grunted in disapproval. Elliot sighed on his way to the door. Before closing it behind him, he reminded Kyzar that the curse would kill Chrys if he tried to break it without first gaining her consent.

Kyzar grunted again, miffed. How could his butler think him capable of raping this woman, when her very existence had begun to take root in the deepest part of his heart? Sure, a few weeks ago, he was rolling his eyes at Elliot’s excitement, dissing him for his blind and misplaced faith in Chrys as his beacon of hope, but monster or not, Kyzar was nothing if not an upstanding man.

Grumbling under his breath, he unbuttoned the front of Chrys’s dress, gingerly unfolding the thick cloth from her limp body. He could not help but stare, and it was not for any good reason. She was slim, bordering on thin, no doubt even thinner had Elliot not been taking extra care with her meals, but her frame was not his sole focus. Meandering all over her arms, her shoulders and her collarbones, disappearing into her thinly veiled cleavage, snaking out from under the sheer fabric covering her thighs, all the way down to her feet, were purple twines stippled with barbs. They looked like they hurt, and he guessed they were the source of her purple glow when she had relieved him of his agony. If he was right, she was under a curse, too.

Her underdress was not soiled, so he saw no need to strip it off her. He fumbled with removing her dress from her lower limbs, and it was becoming apparent how difficult it was to deal with heavy fabrics on an unconscious person. It was not as if he could hang her over his shoulder while he undressed her, not when it was full of spikes. When he finally succeeded in dragging her clothes fully off her, he was huffing like his knights after twenty laps around the drill hall. If he was human, he imagined sweating buckets. Then again, if he was human, the task of undressing her would not be strenuous because he would not be burdened by the constant fear of hurting her.

“What…are you doing?”

He stilled. Chrys was gazing at him weakly, and this was not a favourable situation. She was unclothed, he was holding the dress he had just gotten off her, and he could be easily misunderstood as having impure intentions with her unconscious body. Hastily, he put his hands up and turned his head away.

I didn’t look, he wanted to say, but he had looked, more than a mere bit if he was being honest. Ashamed, he could only grunt. 

“Were you helping me change?”

He nodded his head vigorously. Chrys was an angel he would not soon let go of.

“Thank you,” she said evenly. “May I bathe and retire?”

It was late, but Kyzar did not want to leave her just yet. With his gaze still averted, he held out his hands, almost imploring, but he doubted she understood him. Elliot had taken nearly a year to even grasp a fraction of his beastly antics, so he could not expect Chrys to achieve the same in a twelfth of that.

“Are you…afraid I might drown myself?”

Her question was unexpected, but underneath his and Elliot’s calm demeanours, the unease of taking women in all these years and the weight of their lives in his hands had never waned. It was possible that their behaviour around her may have alluded to those anxieties. But, right now, he only wanted to stay close to her. She was still wary around him, but she was talking to him. She was not bolting at the sight of him.

No.

Chrys appeared unsure and uncomfortable. “I’ll go bathe now, okay?”

Sheepishly, he handed her the clean dress. Without missing a beat, she leaned over, grabbed the bloodstained dress from his lap, and draped it over his head. Yet again, she had rendered his brain a blank slate. By the time he pried the dress off his horns, she had already disappeared into the bathroom. A part of him felt warm, fluffy even. He did not take her for a playful person, but he was hopeful that she was perhaps loosening up around him, shedding her fear. Perhaps, she could be the one to take his hand in this darkness and pull him out of his hell.

It was only twenty minutes when the door to the bathroom creaked open. He sat up straight, eager to receive her. This was not normal for him – from a young age, he did not care very much for social connections or company, and he never sought people out. But when it came to the reserved Chrys, all of a sudden he was a clingy child craving her approval and wanting her to like him. Just a week ago, he ridiculed the notion that there could be someone other than Elliot capable of facing him without pissing themselves. All of these feelings were new to him, and being a monster that could not communicate made expressing himself vexingly impossible.