I can’t swallow the cry that forms on my lips when I see his face. It’s not the scratches or the split lip, but the horn growing out of where his left eye was that makes me gasp. It’s no thicker than my index finger and it curls up toward his eyebrow. It was his howl of pain I heard after the fight. “What happened?”
“I killed her.” His voice is like glass over gravel. Like the fight has cost him more than he was prepared to pay.
I reach out to touch his face and he draws back. “You didn’t have to. Not for me.”
I didn’t want this to happen. Tears track over my cheeks as I understand the true cost of the deal I made. I get to live, but he loses everything that made him who he was.
“I didn’t do it for you. She has been after me for a while and growing more powerful with every kill. If I hadn’t done it now, she would’ve killed me next time.”
“But your eye. What happens next time?”
He glares at me, blood weeping from the eye socket like tears. I can’t stop myself from crying for him and me and the damage this place does.
“Stop crying.” He pulls himself onto the ledge, scooping me up and putting me in his lap so that he can sit.
I’d like to stop, but right now I can’t. So I ugly cry in the monster’s lap while his fresh wounds weep and I wish I’d never asked him to help me. I wish I’d died in the puddle.
“It’s not because of you. It would’ve happened, anyway.”
And now he’s trying to comfort me, which only makes me feel worse. His arm is firm around my waist and his bare chest is warm against my back. My wet shirt clings to my skin and I’m cold and scared.
“I want to go home.” I hiccup out. I’ve given up pretending to be brave.
“We all did once, Prey.” His rough voice is soft against my ear.
“Don’t call me that. My name is Julie.”
He is silent.
“What’s your name?” I try, needing to learn something about him.
After several breaths, he says, “I don’t know.”
“How can you not know…you were human once.”
His sigh sounds like the growl of an annoyed dog. “I don’t remember.”
I twist around to look at him. His one beautiful eye is like the coolest blue glacier. I’ve always liked guys with light blue eyes. “You don’t remember your name?”
“Or much of my life from before.” He wipes my cheek with the side of his finger, and his claw sweeps dangerously close to my eye. “I can’t miss what I don’t remember.”
Turning in to a monster to survive is one thing, but forgetting is something else entirely. Not even Gran knows about that, and she’s spent the last twenty years finding out everything she can about Under and its inhabitants.
“When did you forget?”
He shakes his head and looks away. “It was so gradual that I don’t remember. All I know is that I have forgotten my life before.”
I don’t want to imagine what it must be like to have no memory of a life before, only to know that I had one, and that I was human once and to have some inkling of what that meant. “Does it hurt not being able to remember?”
“It didn’t. Now it does.” His grip on me tightens for a second as though he regrets helping me as all I have done is cause him pain.
“I’m sorry.” None of what I learned about Under comes close to the reality of what being here means. Or of what the monsters are actually like. Some are more monstrous than others.
“Don’t be. I made the choice to help you.” He sighs again, and it rumbles through me. “And I knew what it would mean. Maybe I am hoping to be killed before I become so changed that I don’t remember being human at all.”
If he dies, then I will too, and I am not ready to die. Or forget who I am. For the moment it feels safe sitting on the ledge with Horn’s arm wrapped around me.
“Where do we go now?”