Page 93 of The Monster's Daughter
I lean into him and let the darkness fall. But it doesn’t feel like a loss. It feels like the beginning.
CHAPTER 52
KAGE
The night is quiet, but not silent. Crickets hum in the distance, the wind whispers through the rooftop foliage surrounding our home, and somewhere a hover-car idles far away. Inside, the lamp on Natalie’s bedside table casts soft amber light. I sit on the edge of her bed, unbuckling my armor: breastplate, gauntlets, greaves. Each click of the clasps echoes in the hush.
Natalie is watching me, wide-eyed. Her scaled skin glints faintly in the light. Her horns cast little shadows on her cheeks. She shifts forward. “Daddy?” she says. “Can I… see?”
I pause halfway. My back is covered in scars—long and short, raised ridges, faded lines. I rub a hand over the first one. “Are you sure?”
She nods, voice trembling. I gently turn around. She crawls up behind me, kneeling on the bed behind my shoulders. Her hands hover, tracing the shadows before touching.
“This one,” she murmurs, pointing to a long pale ridge across my left shoulder blade. “What happened there?”
I take a breath. The memory flickers to life. “Skimmer crash, early campaign. They sent me in to evac a wounded unit—didn’tthink the support would hold. I bailed out too late. Landed on sharp rock. Took months to heal.”
She presses a fingertip there, feeling the groove. “It’s still… raised.”
“Yeah. That one never fully settled. Reminds me of that day.” I sigh. “Pain is memory, kid. Every scar speaks.”
She moves lower, over small horizontal lines across my spine. “And these?”
I smile ruefully, wincing as she traces a tender dot scar from my ribs. “Gunfire. Multiple runs. I can’t always remember where each came from.” I pause. “Some I do. Others… I let them drift, like ghosts you don’t greet.”
Her voice soft, “Do they hurt?”
“Some do.” I shift slightly, muscles tight. “Others just feel like skin now.” I turn my head to look over my shoulder. “You want to hear all the stories?”
She nods, pressing closer. “Tell me.”
So I tell her.
I describe the siege where I lost a comrade, the night sky burning overhead, the scream of metal overhead. I tell her about the ambush where they carved up my flanks with plasma fire. I tell her about the day the AI whisper tried to overwrite me, the betrayal of code. She listens, her small hand sliding over each scar, warming it with her touch.
At the end I say, “People fight because they’re scared. Because they think they’re alone. Because they forget they’re not. We fight so we remember.”
Natalie is quiet for a long beat. Then she lifts her sheet and shows me a tiny mark on her arm, pale but jagged. “From when I fell off a skimmer,” she says. Her lip quivers. “I tried to fly.”
I catch her arm carefully, brush the skin. “It’s a good scar. You dared something.” Then she lifts her other sleeve slightly, revealing faint silver shimmer under her skin—traces where thenanites once glowed, still just under the surface. “The nanites,” she whispers. “They’re gone, Daddy, right?”
I nod, voice thick. “Gone. But proof remains. That shimmer? It’s part of your story. It doesn’t break you.”
Her voice cracks. “I’m not broken. I’m just … weird.”
I pull her into my arms. Her head rests against my shoulder. I whisper, “Weird is how we win.”
She breathes out, small and trembling. I keep my arms around her until she falls asleep, fingers splayed across my chest.
Later, I slip from her room. The house is hushed.
I walk into the kitchen. The soft hum of the refrigerator. The fragrance of faint herbs, mint and night-blossom.
I find Bella there—she’s leaned against the counter, a cup of synth-tea in hand, staring out the window at the stars. Her hair falls in loose strands; her face is pale in the moonlight.
She doesn’t look away when I slip in behind her, resting my arms around her waist.
She leans back into me, her breath soft, steady. The tea’s steam drifts past us. I press my face to her hair, inhale the warmth, the scent of lavender and hope.
