Chapter 21

[Content Warning: internalized transphobia, intersexphobia.]

The long dark shadows of the night passed by me as I made my way through the town. Feeling off-balance, I stumbled my way back toward the mansion, my mind becoming lost in a deep expanse of thought. The talk with the Praevus kept playing out in my head, like continually repeating scenes from a play, each time making the shadows along the cobbled streets feel continually darker.

“I won’t pretend to know why you enjoy dressing up as a girl, prancing around in dresses as though it were natural.”

My hand came up to rub my nose, and I nearly tripped over my own feet. My stomach, meanwhile, rolled in sickening amounts of shame. I was a fool to think even for a moment that I could be a girl. It didn’t matter that my body was twisting and defiling itself into some other form, nor that it was some deep desire of mine. It would never be real. The Praevus had called it a vice, and he was right. It was just some profane and perverted desire that I couldn’t let go of, a vice that my curse sought to corrupt me with. It was fitting that my curse was turning me into some lust-starved slut somewhere in-between a man and woman. I was a fool to even have begun to give in to the curse’s machinations, to even consider the possibility that I could be even sort-of-a girl.

I took several shaky breaths as I walked. My father should be ashamed of me, disgusted even. Maybe somewhere inside him, he was, but unwilling to voice it. And the Vergent Souls, if they truly once existed, were gone to history now. Perhaps they simply embraced their terrible deviancy, or perhaps I was nothing like them, and they were truly something else, something magical. I was foolish to think I could be anything like what I’d been imagining them to be.

As the mansion approached, I had to push myself to keep going, knowing that Camilla was likely there waiting in her room.

“She’ll likely trust you more not knowing, especially after finding that you’d hidden such a perverse secret from her.”

Did she know that I was a boy, I wondered? I expected not. Surely she would react much the same as the Praevus had. She’d probably be disgusted by it, and rightfully so, inevitably dismissing me as her maid and casting me out of the mansion. A lady has no need for some boy who tricks others into thinking he’s a girl.

And that was all assuming she didn’t do something much worse. If the Praevus was right about her, if she’d become corrupted by her curse, who knew what she’d do to some obscene man who’d grossly tricked her into being her maid? I’d probably deserve it, whatever it was.

I shook my head, and my feet dragged as I entered the large doors to the mansion. Looking down, my eyes caught the maid’s dress hugging my body, and I felt all the more like a fraud, a man dressed up in girls' clothes. The blue dress from my Da was still clutched in one of my hands, and I thought momentarily about disposing of it.

Instead, I hugged it tighter to me, as though it could bring me some amount of comfort, false as it may be. When I got to the room, I found it empty, almost depressingly so.

My eyes trailed over to the sorceress’s desk and the drawer that I was fairly sure hid her journal. Gently, I closed the door behind me and moved slowly toward it. Taking it would be fairly easy, I thought. The drawer didn’t even have a lock. But would it be right? Could I forgive myself if I went through with it? If only there was some other way – if the Praevus had just given me a different task. Part of me couldn’t help but feel a bit hypocritical after having snooped just a week before through her room for secrets. But this was different, wasn’t it? This was looking through what was basically a girl’s diary, or at least giving it to someone else to look through. Or did it simply feel different now that I couldn’t help but view her as a person rather than a simple character in one of my stories?

I bit my lip, my stomach still feeling ill. After staring down at the desk a bit longer, I moved toward the couch and fell into it, the blue dress falling to the floor beside me as my face pressed hard against the couch’s soft fabric. The few tears I’d unwillingly shed had already dried up. For a long while, I laid there in silence, letting my thoughts drift in an almost dream-like and miserable haze.

Some unknown amount of time passed. It was the turning of the door handle that eventually broke my stupor, and I shifted my head to watch as Camilla entered. She thrust the door shut behind her as she marched in, hunched over with a look of exhaustion and clear frustration. Unlike her usual shadowy attire, she was clothed in a proper dress. It made her look almost normal, to my surprise. If not for the horns and scales, one could take her for a simple young woman of my age, with notably dark-gray skin. Her eyes shifted over to me, as though only just noticing my presence, and a gentle smile spread across her face. Camilla’s shoulders relaxed, and she let out a calming breath. Her posture straightened up, back into the confident and collected sorceress that I was used to.

She must have seen something in my face, or perhaps in the way that I was spread out face-down across the couch, because after a moment, her eyes held a sort of gentleness to them and a hint of concern.

“Hello,” she said a little awkwardly, taking an uncertain step toward me. “Rough day?”

A breath passed before I lazily sat up and gave her a shrug.

“You went to see your father, correct? Did something happen?”

I bit at my lip as I stared up at her face, considering what I should say. Again the question came to mind – could I trust her? Was her apparent concern just an act, a way to deceive me for her own purposes? Or was it possible that it was genuine? It felt so foul of me to question that of someone as they stood there in front of me, concern so evident on their face, yet the question was there nonetheless.

“I…” Praevus Emver had said she wasn’t human, that she couldn’t be trusted, and had a darkness corrupting her. But by the same token, wasn’t all that also true of myself? Didn’t that mean that I was no longer truly human as well? “The Praevus asked me to dinner. I just got back.”

“Oh,” she replied. I looked back up to see the complicated expression across her face, one still clearly filled with worry. I couldn’t help but wonder which of us it was she was worried about and grimaced at the dark thought. “What did he want from you?” She took another step forward and hesitated a moment before moving to sit to my right on the couch, sinking into the cushion.

I fought off the urge to shrug once more. “A lot of things,” I said vaguely. “He asked about the people that live here in town.” I stared down at my lap as my grip clenched around the fabric of my dress.

Camilla sucked in a breath, and I glanced over to see her eyeing my hands. She reached out and gently grabbed my right, and I twitched as I remembered the Praevus’s fingers tightening around it, crushing me. As my eyes caught the bruise that had started to form near my knuckles, along with several red marks where his nails had pressed painfully into my skin, I relented to her careful inspection, if only hesitantly.

“Did he do this?” There was a gentleness to her tone, but beneath it, I could tell laid a furious rage.

I opened my mouth to deny it, to defend him. I was the one that had done something wrong, not him. “I lied to him,” I explained. What he’d done had certainly been a bit cruel, but I’d deserved it and perhaps worse for the obvious crime.

Her eyes met mine, a fierceness rolling inside of them, making me flinch back and pull my hand from her grasp. At my reaction, the intensity of her gaze died down but did not fully go away. “It doesn’t matter, he has no right to –” her words cut out, likely realizing that as Praevus, any action he took was, by its own nature, a just execution of the Empire’s law. One of her hands tightened into a fist. “It’s wrong, immoral. You’re just a maid, a girl. He can’t just…”

I winced, the word ‘girl’ cutting deep into me. I’d been so worried about her deceiving me, and yet was I really any different? Had I not been lying to her from the beginning? Perhaps we were much more similar than I’d thought. Or worse, perhaps I was the true monster in the room.

Once more I flinched, as her hand reached out and touched my arm. “It’s not your fault, okay?" Her tone had again switched to being gentle, calming. "Do you want to talk about what he said?”

I shook my head, unwilling to meet her eyes. Instead, my gaze trailed down and over to the blue dress wrinkled up along the floor. For a long moment, neither of us said anything, until eventually, she reached down, picking it up.

“Is this from him?” she asked, the question full of hesitation.

My head shook once more, my face contorting at the idea of him giving me one. I couldn’t help but feel he would do it mockingly, a reminder to me of what I was.

With both hands, she spread it out, the bottom of it falling down to the floor. “Your father?”

I stared hard at the dress as I absently nodded, still somewhat bewildered that he’d gotten it for me, still not really understanding why.

“It’s a nice dress,” she continued. “Simple, but quite practical. Seems like the kind of material that will last a long while.” When I didn’t respond after another moment of silence, she sighed and sat the dress down on the couch beside her. “Pearl.” I met her eyes once more. “I suspect I have an idea of what the Praevus said to you.” I frowned and opened my mouth, ready to voice my denial when she continued, “I know about your past, and I suspect that he learned of it as well.”

My eyes widened in surprise and then fear. “My past?” My voice was a near-whisper.

Did she already know I was a boy? If the Praevus had found out, it made sense that she might have been able to as well. Was this the end then, the moment where she’d tell me she no longer needed me as her maid, where she condemned my perverse desires? Would she hate me for having lied and made a fool of her? For having done something so deplorable?

“It’s okay, Pearl. It doesn’t matter to me who you used to be – that you were a boy. You’re fine just as you are now,” she added, with a confidence that I didn’t feel at all.

She knew. She actually knew. For how long, I wondered? I stopped myself from leaning back as she reached out a hand and gently brushed a tear from my cheek. As she grabbed both of my hands into hers, this time I didn’t flinch.

She knew and she wasn’t immediately disgusted by me, or at least didn’t appear to be, judging through my tear-blurred eyes and from the gentle touch of her hands. Even though she certainly should have been. Did she mean the words she was saying, or was she simply appealing to my emotions? I desperately wanted it to be true, for her words to be real. But regardless of her sincerity, she was wrong, I wasn’t fine as I was. I couldn’t be a girl, a woman.

“Will you tell me what happened, what he said?”

For a moment I hesitated, but as I stared into the concerned warmth of her eyes, I relented. I sniffed and nodded, tears rolling down my face.

And so I began to tell her – about the sentinel coming to the library, meeting the Praevus in the tent, and my request for him to help Lena by stopping her marriage. I wasn’t sure how much sense I was making, as the further I got into it, the more I began to break down into tears. And as much as I willed for them to stop, they instead kept coming. It was just a further reminder of just how terrible of a man I was, to become so emotional over the words of a stranger. I couldn’t be a woman, but I made a terrible man as well. It only furthered my utter sense of shame over everything. Camilla, meanwhile, wrapped her arms around me, pulling me into a gentle hug. It only made the tears worse.

As I got to where I lied to him, of all the things he’d said of me and my vice, and the things he’d said of the Marked as well, my blubbered disorganized words were such a mess that I was quite sure she could barely make any sense of it. Instead, she rubbed my back and did what she could to comfort me.

“It’s okay,” came the soft words from her lips. “It’s alright.”

“I’m sorry,” I sniffled and sobbed out. “I shouldn’t be– I–”

“We all need a good cry from time to time. It’s quite healthy.”

But I was a boy, a man. I was supposed to be strong, to be the one that comforted others. Instead, I was whatever this curse was turning me into. Perhaps not one or the other, just a monster.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered through the tears.

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for.”

Her arms continued to hold me tightly, one hand scratching through the hair along the nape of my neck, almost a little too close for comfort to the budding horns hidden within my hair. My thoughts only continued to darken, to fear the worst about her. It was possible that through all of this, she was somehow using me, deceiving me, that all of this was just a show to bring me on her side and find out more about the Praevus. It felt like such a terribly dark thought, but could she not just be using my emotional state against me?

Yet I couldn’t help but admit to myself that she was at least right on one point. I desperately needed this. I needed someone to confide in. In better circumstances, Lena might have been the right option. But I was here with Camilla, not in Lena’s room. And perhaps she deserved to know what happened in my talk with the Praevus, given that I was tasked with stealing her diary and spying on her. That did little to ease my fear that I was making a mistake. It all came back to one question.

“I’m scared, that –" I blurted out, "that I can't trust you."

Her hand hesitated a moment before she continued to caress my upper neck.

“I understand.” I felt the swelling of her chest as she breathed in a lung full of air and then let it back out. “I don’t know how to convince you,” she admitted, “but I can tell you a little about myself – of a story that may tell you a little of who I am, and,” she paused, “who he is.”

I nodded and we pulled away from each other, ending our prolonged hug. Her eyes held a deep and traumatic sorrow, one that I wondered if anyone could possibly fake. Even the thought of it made me glance down once more in shame.

“Though perhaps this isn’t the right time for it,” she said.

I met her gaze once again, seeing the concerned look on her face, and realized that she was worried about my emotional state, about whether it was perhaps too much for me at such a vulnerable moment.

“I want to hear it. Please.”

I wanted to believe in her, I truly did. It was just so difficult when I didn't know what to think or believe right now. I needed to hear whatever it was she had to say.

Eyeing me for a moment longer, she relented, “Alright. Then make yourself comfortable.”