Lor (Monstrous, #7)

by Lily Mayne

“Remember the legends about the salyik chieftain’s strange mate? The unknown creature that appeared from nowhere? They had to have come from somewhere. Why not some… other world?”

There were still rumours to this day that one had survived whatever fate befell them that day. Travelling folk insisted on seeing a lone isdernuc wandering the lands, sometimes in the company of one of the telyths—the ghoulish creatures from a forgotten age.

And its ears were tiny. Rounded at the top. I eyed them in alarm. Had someone maimed it? How cruel.

This is a weird spaceship, I vacantly thought, but then two werewolves walked in, and I passed out.

At least she had gotten to see Lyri shape his body into the man he had always been. She had immediately called for the royal healthkeeper when he finally told her, years after he had told me, his hand sweating in mine the night we had gone to her chamber for him to finally tell her that he was her son, not her daughter.

His name was Juhgz. What an odd name—so unusual and exotic. I wondered if it held any special meaning in his world, in his language. Maybe it was a noble name, like mine.

“And you… you like me. R-romantically.” Jugs went bright pink again. “I—Y-yeah, I do. Do you… do you like other guys too? Other men?” The look he gave me was filled with such fragile hope that my chest burned with the urge to send an army of baregh through the void to hunt down any humans who had made him feel like his desires were wrong or unnatural.

Sow those wild oats, you know? Or, I mean, not so wild, if you’re in a committed relationship. Sow those committed oats, my man.”

A weak shard of grief stabbed through my chest over the knowledge that I would likely never get to share any of it with him. That one day, Jugs might simply stop coming back, never again stepping through the void from his world. And I would wait, and wait, haunting an empty guestroom in my hyll, praying to the Mabs for just one more chance to see him.

excuse me while i 😭😭😭

“I haven’t really achieved much, but making the decision to come back here, to meet you properly, is the thing I’m most proud of in my life,” he told me quietly. “I love you, Lor. I don’t regret any of it. And that… that helps. It helps me accept what”—his breath shuddered out of him—“what’s going to happen. It was all worth it. I love you.”

“And we still have a bit more time,” he said as he pulled back, smoothing my hair from my damp face. “Let’s do something fun tomorrow. Well, as fun as it can get in this room.” He chuckled. “We’ll do whatever you want,” I whispered, twining our fingers together on the pillow between us and kissing his knuckles. “Anything. We will spend the whole day together.” He smiled back drowsily, eyes already slipping shut, face lined with exhaustion after his emotional onslaught. “Sounds nice.” The next morning, he didn’t wake up.

Ten years. What had his skin tasted like? I could still remember his scent—I had eaten more lokl in the last ten years than the previous forty of my life. But it wasn’t quite right—it was warm and soft like his scent, but still missing something. Something that had been uniquely him. Were his eyes really as blue as the jewel in my lip, or had I misremembered? I still had dreams of him smiling and laughing and gazing down at me in the bed, but the colour of his eyes in those dreams was wrong now, I was sure of it. It wasn’t bright enough. Ten years. I couldn’t remember what it felt like to laugh. I remembered laughing with him, nervously at first, when I had still been shy and unsure during our meetings in the guestroom. Then with my whole belly, harder than I had ever laughed before, as we curled up in bed together and talked for hours.

“I would wait my whole life for you,” he said quietly, trying to steady his voice even as tears continued to stream freely down his cheeks. He pressed his lips to my hand again. “I would wait forever for you, Jugs.”

“I love you,” he whispered back, raising a trembling hand between us to press his fingertips against my bare chest. “I have been so empty without you, Jugs. But you kept my heart safe in here.”

Before he had fallen asleep, he had mumbled that he loved me as he curled up into my side. Chest hitching beneath his warm cheek, I had whispered that I loved him too. I liked that human expression for the way I felt about him—how simply it summed up the overwhelming flood of emotions that teemed in my chest. How it said everything in so few words.