The Outsider

Prologue

Quiet. She must stay quiet. She hurries along a moss covered path, webbed toes squishing into mushy ground with each quick step. Pale swaths of moon light her way, shining through thatched canopies of leaves. Crooked branches leer overhead, stretching and reaching for her. She can feel red and yellow eyes hot on her neck, feel the gentle scrape of limbs along the iridescent scales of her shoulders. Something slippery and cold slithers around her bicep, caressing almost lovingly, and she jerks her arm out of its grasp. Another tickles the soft flesh of her ankle and she kicks it away, picking up her pace. They're curious, the trees and beasts hiding within. Engrossed with this beautiful, foreign creature trespassing in their woods, but she doesn't have time to indulge their curiosity. She has to run.

Faster even, she skips between the slivers of moonlight, ensuring to miss any dried leaves or crunchy brush hiding along the shadowy floor. Paranoid any sound she makes would alert them of her location...or worse, alert the other things - the horrible fanged things - lurking in these woods.

A breeze whispers through the forest, fluttering leaves in languid waves, and she uses the fleeting noise to slip behind a mammoth tree to rest. With the pale skin of her back pressed roughly against the bark, fear and overexertion leaves her body in silent hiccups. Briny droplets drip from her sodden locks, trickling down her arms and legs. They softly patter against the soil beneath her bare feet, but they sound like sirens echoing into the night. She needs to move and she needs to move now, but she's frozen. Paralyzed. Shock beginning to seep into the cracks adrenaline was temporarily filling. She's exhausted and scared and...alone. She chokes on a sob and her palm quickly muffles the sound as tears blur her vision. How could she do this to her?

Betrayal sits heavy in her gut, reaching up to coil around her heart. It squeezes tightly and her silent cries turn to choppy whimpers. She didn't think about this part when she impulsively jumped off the boat and swam to shore. She just needed to...get away. Save herself, so she can go back and save him. But...where would she go? And...how could she be certain they wouldn't do anything to him before she returned?

As if confirmation of his well being, the palm sized conch shell nestled at her bosom pulses. She glances down at it, seeing the glow of his tiny aquamarine crystal dangling from the inner rim of the shell opposite her serpentine one. Hers glows too; both strong, steady lights cutting into the night.

Her hand wraps around the shell and she closes her eyes, resting her head back against the tree trunk in momentary relief. Something icy presses into her palm and her reprieve drifts. She doesn't need to look down to know what the sensation is from. Between the two crystals hangs a teardrop pearl. Once a gleaming beacon, the creamy gemstone now lays cool and nearly lifeless against her chest. The pearl flickers a hazy radiance, dimming with each feeble beat, and she feels her magic draining along with it. If she had any doubts of mother's transmutation, this washed them away.

Still clutching the little charm, she slips down the tree, bark shaving shimmery scales from her back. They flutter around her as she wraps her other arm around bent legs and rests a cheek on her knees. Without mother's favor, her magic will fade, but Christian is safe. For now. But...what happens if she doesn't make it back? Will he lose mother's favor as well because she's gone? If he does, what will the traitor do to him then? Will she sacrifice him too? She's heard the fanged ones don't like males, but will they make an exception for royalty?

The traitor won't kill him because she needs him. Now you're gone, she and Christian will have Aekor's favor and together...

A crunch to her right snaps her attention. She straightens and drops her hands to the ground. Two fanned appendages peek out from her long, dark tresses on either side of her head. Their five sharp points, linked together by a fleshy translucent membrane, shift as she listens. Only stillness and the quiet hum of the forest responds and a sense of dread churns her stomach. Her body shivers with awareness, goosebumps pricking the back of her neck. Though she doesn't see anything shifting in the tree line, she feels the overwhelming wrongness of eyes on her, but, unlike the creatures of the forest who only wish to study her, this attention feels different. More dangerous. Predatory.