Chapter Text
A sky of clouds. In the distance the sun breaks through, only to disappear again.
The trouble started three days before, though in truth it had been building for much longer.
Lord Trentham had been visiting the monastery for a fortnight. He came bearing donations, as nobles often did—gold and grain and promises of continued patronage. The Father received him with the appropriate gratitude, the appropriate deference. These were lean times. The monastery needed benefactors.
Lord Trentham took his meals in the refectory with the rest of us. He walked the halls as if he owned them, which in a sense he did—his family's money kept the roof from leaking, kept food in the stores, the monastery functioning. The Father made excuses for him. His eccentricities. His tendency to linger too long in doorways. His habit of watching.
You saw him watching the younger sisters. Noticed how his gaze followed them during prayers, during meals, during chores. The manufactured opportunities to be alone with them, to corner them in quiet corridors, to offer assistance they hadn't requested.
You'd learned long ago not to intervene in the affairs of normal people. Your presence rarely improved situations. More often it made things worse, adding another layer of complication to problems that were already complex enough. A loathsome thing like you wasn’t meant for human situations.
So you stayed silent. Kept to yourself. Tried to ignore the way Sister Meredith flinched when Lord Trentham passed, the way Sister Clara took longer routes to avoid certain parts of the monastery, the way the younger girls whispered warnings to each other.
Until the night you found him in the storage cellar.
You'd gone there to hunt—there were always rats in the stores, and the hunger had been particularly fierce that day. You descended the stairs quietly, expecting only vermin.
You did indeed find vermin. And Sister Elena.
She couldn't have been more than thirteen. She was pressed against the wall, the Lord’s body blocking her escape, his hand over her mouth to muffle any sounds. Her eyes were wide, tears streaming down her face. He turned when he heard you on the stairs. Saw you standing there in the doorway, backlit by the lamp you'd brought.
"You," he said, his voice thick with wine and annoyance. "Leave. This doesn't concern you."
Sister Elena's eyes found yours. The hunger stirred in your belly, but it wasn't food you were hungry for.
You caught him in the temple before he could react. The sound the lantern made was wet and final—a sound you'd heard a hundred times before. He staggered, one arm dropping from Sister Elena, the other reaching toward you in a clumsy, outraged swipe. He was drunk, but heavy—too heavy to ignore.
He lunged. You met him halfway.
The two of you crashed into a stack of crates, jarring the whole row. He fought with brute-force panic, all thrashing limbs and heaving breath, but he had lost the advantage the moment he turned his back to the stairs. You caught his wrist, twisted, drove him toward the nearest wall. His shoulder struck brick first; his head followed with a dull, breath-punching thud that sagged the fight out of him for a heartbeat.
A heartbeat was enough. You seized his throat.
You slammed him back against the brick, your fingers digging into the soft, yielding flesh of his neck. He clawed at your wrist, eyes bulging as he realized the impossible strength pinning him.
You squeezed.
It didn't feel like fighting a man. It felt like breaking dry wood. Under the pressure of your thumb and fingers, you felt the distinct, sickening crumble of his anatomy. The trachea collapsed with a wet, muted pop, cartilage grinding against cartilage before turning to pulp. His struggles turned to spasms, hands fluttering uselessly against your arms as the soft sickening meat and bone disintegrated in your grasp.
And then, the smell hit you.
It wasn't just the sour wine of the basement anymore. It was the copper tang of hemorrhage, the scent of the blood rushing to his ruined throat, pooling beneath the skin, hot and frantic. The world narrowed down to the pulse fluttering wildly against your palm.
You leaned in, vision swimming in a red, heavy daze. The hunger roared, deafening and absolute. You didn't just want him dead; you wanted him opened. You wanted to tear past the skin and drink the warmth leaving his body, to consume the very life you were extinguishing. Your mouth opened, saliva flooding your tongue, your face pressing into the crook of his neck, ready to tear, ready to eat, ready to…
"No... please, no..."
It wasn't him—he was already gone, a heavy, limp sack of meat in your hands. It was a high, thin sound. A whimper.
You froze, teeth mere millimeters from his skin, the taste of his sweat already on your lips. Slowly, painfully, you dragged yourself out of the fugue state and looked over your shoulder.
Sister Elena had fled to the far corner, pressing herself against a crate as if it could swallow her.
She was staring at you.
Her eyes were wide with a terror far deeper than what she had felt for the Lord. She saw the bloodlust in your posture, the animal tilt of your head, the way you held the corpse not like a victim, but a meal.
She saw what you had done. And worse, she saw what you were about to do.
"Go," you told her. Your voice was steadier now. "Tell the Father what he was doing. Tell them all."
She ran.
You stayed with the body, waiting. The hunger began to reassert itself—the corpse was fresh, still warm, and you were alone with it. You tried not to think about how easy it would be to feed, how no one would know, how he didn't deserve dignity in death after what he'd tried to do in life. You told yourself you were guarding the evidence, but the lie tasted like ash. You were waiting. The hunger, momentarily stunned by the shock of violence, began to reassert itself with terrifying speed. The corpse was fresh. It was cooling, yes, but deep inside the meat, the heat still lingered.
You tried not to think about it. You tried to focus on the stone floor, the grain sacks, anything but the scent of the blood you had already spilled. But the logic of the predator whispered to you: He is dead. He feels nothing. He forfeited his dignity when he touched her. Why waste what he no longer needs?
Your resolve splintered. You knelt before you realized you were moving.
You dropped to your knees beside him. You didn't go for the throat—that was too intimate, too human. Instead, you seized his arm, the expensive fabric of his sleeve tearing under your grip.
Your teeth sank into the muscle of his forearm. Not gently, not hesitantly—the hunger didn’t allow hesitance. The fabric gave way, then the skin beneath it, your jaw working with an urgency you hadn’t felt in months. The world narrowed to the taste, the heat, the way your own breath caught and shook as instinct took the reins from reason.
You bit again. And again. Not chewing—claiming. Each bite fueled the next, a terrible momentum that left your thoughts scattered and your pulse roaring in your ears. You weren’t feeding so much as tearing yourself free of restraint. You swallowed thick, copper-rich mouthfuls, groaning as the warmth hit your stomach. For a moment, there was no cellar, no priory, only the exquisite relief of feeding.
Then came the light.
It flooded down the stairwell, harsh and blinding, followed by the thunder of heavy boots. The Father arrived first, six men flanking him like a wall of black wool and judgment. They saw the broken body of Lord Trentham, the blood pooling on the stones. And then, the lanterns swung toward you.
You were crouched over the corpse, head snapped up like a startled wolf. Evidence was written across every surface of you, but the most damning was the crimson smear slicking your chin and dripping heavily from your mouth.
Sister Elena pushed through the wall of monks, voice high and fractured. She tried to explain—stammering out the truth of what Lord Trentham had done, how he had cornered her, how you had stopped him. But she was weeping, and her words were small things against the gruesome tableau on the floor.
The Father’s face grew darker with every sob she uttered, his gaze fixed not on the girl, but on the gore staining your lips.
"She’s lying to protect the creature," Brother Thomas spat, his voice trembling with a mixture of disgust and righteous fear.
You wanted to break him for it. You wanted to cross the room in a blur of motion and tear the accusation out of his throat. A low, wet snarl ripped out of you, vibrating in your chest, animal and threatening.
The sound only sealed your fate. The brothers took a collective step back, hands going to the crucifixes at their belts.
The Father held up a hand for silence. He looked at the mangled arm of the dead Lord. He looked at the blood on the floor. Finally, he looked at you—not with fear, but with cold, hollow disappointment.
"My chambers," he said quietly. "Now."
You sat in his chambers and waited. He paced, hands clasped behind his back, face carved from stone.
"Do you understand what you've done?" he asked finally.
"I saved her."
"You killed a nobleman. A benefactor. A man whose family has supported this monastery for three generations."
"He was hurting her."
"That's not for you to decide!" His voice rose, echoing off the walls. "You are no judge. No executioner. You are barely even—" He stopped himself, but you both knew what he'd been about to say.
Barely even human.
"His family will want justice," the Father continued, his voice controlled again. "They'll demand recompense. They could destroy us. Close the monastery. Turn out everyone who lives here." He looked at you, and for the first time you saw genuine fear in his eyes. Not fear of you—fear of what you'd brought down on all of them.
"I'll take responsibility," you said. "Tell them it was only me. That you had no control over—"
"No one believes we have control over you." He said it flatly, stating a simple fact. "You are an aberration we've sheltered out of misplaced charity. This will only confirm what everyone already suspects—that you're dangerous, that you should never have been allowed to remain."
You said nothing. What was there to say? He was right.
The Father sat down heavily in his chair. He was silent for a long moment, and you could see him thinking, calculating, trying to find a way out of this that didn't end with the monastery in ruins.
"I've prayed," he said finally. "Sought guidance."
You doubted this, but remained silent.
"God has answered." He looked at you, and relief was written plainly across his face—relief at having found a solution, any solution. "He says you are meant to go somewhere far away. To the Lands Between." He paused. "Perhaps that is where you belong. With others who understand darkness."
You understood, even then. Exile dressed up as divine instruction. An opportunity to be rid of you while simultaneously claiming it was God's will, making it holy instead of expedient.
"When?" you asked.
"Tomorrow. Before Lord Trentham's family arrives. Before there are questions we cannot answer." He stood, opened a drawer, counted out a small purse of coins. "Take this. It's all I can spare. Find the Lands Between. If not, just... don't come back."
The last part was said quietly, almost kindly. An honest acknowledgment of what this actually was. You took the coins. They felt heavier than they should.
"Sister Elena?" you asked.
"Will be protected. I'll speak to the others, make sure the girls are never alone with visitors again. What you did was..." He paused, searching for words. "Perhaps necessary. But it cannot be excused. Not here. Not by people who will demand explanations that paint you as anything other than a monster."
Monster. There it was again. The word that followed you your whole life.
"I understand," you said.
And you did. You understood perfectly. You'd done the right thing—saved a child from something horrible—and you were being punished for it anyway. Because the right thing didn't matter when it was done by the wrong person. Justice enacted by a monster was still monstrosity in the eyes of those who had decided what you were.
Loathsome thing that you were, you could not fault them for it.
You left before dawn. No one came to see you off. No one said goodbye.
Sister Elena found you at the gates, though. She pressed something into your hand—a small wooden carving, a saint whose name you didn't know. Her eyes were red from crying, but her voice was steady.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Then she was gone, running back toward the safety of the monastery that would protect her now, now that the threat had been eliminated, now that the monster who'd saved her was leaving.
You looked at the carving for a long moment. Then you put it in your pocket, next to the coins, and walked through the gates.
The sky was full of clouds. In the distance the sun broke through, only to disappear again, as if it couldn't decide whether this day deserved light. You didn't look back. There was nothing to look back for.
Lord Trentham's body would be found. His family would be told he'd been attacked by some wild thing, some creature that had been living in the monastery. The Father would express appropriate horror and grief. Money would change hands. The monastery would survive.
And you would go far, far away, to die or to be welcomed into another group of misfits. Either way, you would be gone. Either way, the problem would be solved.
Loathsome thing that you were, you did not fault them for it. You understood perfectly. You always had.
The road stretched out before you, and you began to walk, hunger already stirring in your belly, the sky above remaining stubbornly gray.
Salvation, the Father had said. You doubted it. But perhaps, if you were lucky, you'd at least find a place where being a monster was useful.
Where loathsome things might, possibly, serve a purpose.