Melusine kept her head down, and constantly pulled at her skirt to ensure that it didn't hike up to the top of her new knee-high boots. She had to ride side-saddle—which was uncomfortable and had poor balance— because of her choice of clothing. If she'd worn pants, however, her transformed legs would be put on display for all to see. Everything still ached, her mind locked in the recollection of her ligaments being torn and reforged. 

"Halt!" A guard ordered once they reached the gates. Like everyone else, he dismissed Melusine as a cripple being escorted out of the city, and spoke to Baugulf alone. "Captain wants all exit traffic to be stopped, sir. There's been a fatal crime in the city."

Mel's muscles locked up and her breath froze in her lungs. Her fingers turned white as a sheet as they clenched around Wolf's reins. 

"I assume you're talking about the fire? I pulled the bodies from the wreck myself. However, I'm on official business by order of the king." Baugulf untied the wooden slate from his saddle and held it up. "I can't afford to be delayed any further."

"Oh, um..." the guard hesitated, his confident stance shrinking in the presence of the tablet. "I'd have to consult with the captain to let you pass."

"Did you not hear me? I assisted at the scene and already explained my mission to your captain. Don't bother your superiors with issues they've already processed." Baugulf glared down his nose at the guard with a haughty scowl. It was so convincing that Mel wasn't sure if it was entirely an act or not.

"But even so, I must confirm—"

Baugulf sighed loudly and put a hand to his temple.

"Suit yourself. It's not my career on the line if we're made to wait, I suppose."

The guard hemmed and hawed, unsure of himself. Inevitably his concern for his career track won out over his meticulous procedure. He stepped aside and let the party of two pass with a shameful bow.

Baugulf gave the guard an approving hum, and clicked his heels into his mount's sides. Mel clucked her tongue and shook Wolf's reins. The horse Baugulf picked out appeared to be well trained, for it needed little encouragement to follow the knight's steed.

Mel peered out from under the edge of her hood, watching the merchants' and families' feet as they waited to be let into Belozer. One by one, each set of footwear shuffled away and turned from Mel as she passed. Too polite to stare at a cripple, so they preferred to not look at all. If only they knew that instead she was a cursed monster, branded now with the sin of murder. Truly, apples did not fall far from the tree in Melusine's lineage.

A fallen house, illegally holding onto a surname that no longer existed, reduced through the centuries to pig farming. Perhaps the superstition that gripped her father in his last few years alive was true. Their line was cursed with misfortune, and Melusine would be no different.

Her mother had always told Mel to dismiss such self-pitying paranoia. "Don't ever blame others for your own mistakes, Melly," she'd say. "Hold your head up high, accept accountability, and don't ever dare to repeat history."

At the time, Mel had been angry with her mother for not taking her father's woes seriously. There had been a sense of betrayal that had stuck to Mel's soul like a tumor.

Which of her parents had been right? The blood on her hands didn't feel like her fault, but was that simply denial? Common morality dictated that she turn herself in. Yet Baugulf—kind and somewhat foolish Baugulf—didn't display any intention of letting her face the weight of her crimes. He hadn't even told her.

What was the right thing to do? What was the wise thing to do? Mel didn't know. The older she got, the less she felt like she knew anything.

Her mind churned with such fretful worries until dusk had come and gone, and the dark moon was in the sky. Baugulf called a stop to their ride, and led Wolf off the road. He reached up to help Melusine off her horse, but she slid out of the saddle on her own instead.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Melusine asked as soon as her feet landed safely, her voice sharp and biting.

"Tell you about what?"

"The deaths!" Melusine whirled on her knight escort, pained and bitter. "That I'm responsible for... how many lives being lost?!"

"Ah... that." Baugulf took in a breath, and let it out as a sigh. He rubbed at the back of his neck and avoided eye contact with Mel. "I wanted you to focus on getting out of the city first. If I had been lucky, the guard wouldn't have mentioned the fatalities. I promise that I was always going to tell you, once it was safe."

Mel's arms wrapped around her and a scoff chortled out of her fanged mouth.

"Well we're alone. So how many?"

Baugulf's answer was simple, given after a few tense moments of hesitation.

"Three."

Melusine was silent for a long time, then squatted down with her horned head in her hands. She felt like she should be weeping, but the tears didn't come. Briefly, she hoped that it was because she lacked the tear ducts, but the reality that she could cry remained true. "You should rest, Miss Melusine... you'll need it."

"I don't know how to use the magic bag." Mel's voice was small and dulled. Still trying to process her emotions and morals, Mel didn't move from her current position. "What I should be doing is facing up for my crimes."

"You didn't murder anyone, Melusine." Baugulf untied a pouch from Marie's saddle, and tugged it open. He dug his hand into the lip and pulled out a sleeping roll that he dropped next to Mel. "Who you are is currently a state secret. If you want to atone, I'm afraid that you'll have to settle for paying restitution out of the funds you'll earn working for the king."

"Funds...? I'll earn money?"

What amount of silver could quantify a human life, let alone three? A hundred? A thousand? Enough to buy one of those fancy mansions in the upper levels of Belozer? Would that even change what had been done? "What, I'll send their families a chest full of coins and attach a note saying, 'sorry that I'm the reason your relative is dead?'"

"I wasn't imagining quite such a callous word choice, but yes." Baugulf pulled out another sleeping roll for himself and dropped it by his own feet. "That's essentially all you'll be able to do. Because you being arrested for accidental arson is not in the cards. And of course you'll be compensated for your work, you aren't a prisoner."

"It might've been unintentional, but I'm still responsible." Talking the issue through had shifted Melusine from despair to frustration, which in her mind meant she'd calmed down. She stood up, grabbed her sleeping roll, and strode over to a tree on wobbly legs. "There has to be something more I can do."

"Perhaps someday you'll be able to save the lives of those left behind, but right now we have more important matters that I need you to focus on. Like figuring out why this happened in the first place, and how to make you human again."

"It's not as if I can figure it out." Melusine shook out the bedroll and laid it down by the tree trunk. She crawled in and flopped down with her back turned to Baugulf. "Maybe it'll go away on its own after a while. Or maybe I'm stuck like this and I'll have to go live in a cave somewhere."

"Miss Melusine, we need to talk about what happened in the tavern," Baugulf insisted with a firm tone. "I don't think this sort of change occurs on its own."

"I heard Ekaitz's voice in my head," Melusine admitted, curling up into a ball. "He had some kind of control over this. So I guess I need to wait for him to decide to take it away."

Baugulf was struck silent when faced with that information. Out of concern and curiosity Melusine glanced over her shoulder. Baugulf had sat down on his bedroll, one knee propped up to support a hand, fingers tapping away. Tight wrinkles knitted into his brow, and his gaze was focused on his ring without seeing it. Mel returned to the fetal position, rubbing at her sore and deformed legs.

Ekaitz's words replayed in her head, and no matter how much she tried to figure out a solution she came up empty. Attempting to examine her own emotions in the tavern yielded no results—but that was nothing new. Melusine had never been very skilled at putting a name to her own emotions and understanding the root cause.

Disappointment and sadness were the best Mel could identify, but those emotions didn't make sense. It was almost as if she'd developed romantic feelings for Baugulf. Surely that couldn't be it. Right?

Melusine's face burned as hot as Ekaitz's flames, bright red all the way down to the nape of her neck and to the tips of her ears. She buried herself under the blanket of her bedroll. Impossible. Baugulf, that silly idiot? The same silly and engaged idiot who was currently enabling Melusine to run away from responsibility? No, that couldn't happen. Melusine wouldn't allow it to happen. Not on her life, not on anyone's.

Melusine's last clear memory that fitful night was of the new moon's slivered outline, the thinnest of crescents. Only once it was high up in the sky, signaling the witching hour, did Mel finally drift off into slumber.

The world went black, and Melusine heard the steady drip, drip, drip of water hitting stone.

Her eyes opened, but she saw nothing in front of her. No faint silhouette of evergreen trees overhead, no thin crust of moon.

"You've been dragging your feet, little hatchling," Ekaitz's voice hissed across the faintest of breezes. The acrid scent of the Dragon's Labyrinth assaulted Mel's nostrils once again.

Melusine bolted upright, only to be pinned back by a massive claw. "You look the part more now, don't you think?"

"You...!" Mel's voice was a harsh hiss as she kicked her feet up at the monster pinning her. She was barely able to scuff up his scales. "You did this to me!"

"In one way or another, I suppose I did, yes." The dragon's attitude was dry and cavaliere, which infuriated Mel even more.

"What does that even mean?!"

"It means, little hatchling, that you felt heartbreak, and as my Proxy your body responded." Ekaitz lifted his paw off Mel, and laid down next to her.

"Then what was that bit, 'if I have to remind you, I will,' about?"

"Exactly what I said. I was reminding you of our pact."

"Gods, you're as bad at communication as I am." Pressing the heels of her hands to her eye sockets, Melusine ignored the dragon's indignant huffing. "Is it reversible?"

"Not as you are now, but I can propose a temporary solution."

"What sort of solution?" Mel asked with no small amount of caution.

Ekaitz tugged out one of his scales, pinched between two talons. He held it up, puffed out a little bit of flame onto it, and then dropped it on top of Mel.

Instead of a scale the size of a dish plate, what bounced off of Mel's forehead was light and the size of an acorn. It clattered to the ground, and from the sound Mel thought it might've been a coin. When she felt around and picked the unknown item up, she realized that it was a ring that could fit around her middle finger. She couldn't see it clearly in the dark, but she could feel gaps in the band design and a setting for a single stone.

"Don't put it on yet," Ekaitz warned. "It will stabilize your body's response to emotions. Using it will likely wake you up, and we can only communicate like this every new moon."

"So I am dreaming." Playing with the ring, Mel rubbed it along her palm.

"In one sense, yes. In another, you are here."

"And yet again, you lack communication skills," Melusine teased, sniggering when she felt the dragon's huff blow on her face. "If I'm here, yet not here, does that mean my spirit is out of my body right now?"

"Precisely." Ekaitz's hiss was a bit softer, but Melusine couldn't tell if he was proud of her, or patronizing. She was too tired to care at the moment.

"In that case, I need my rest, so you'll have to wait until next time." Mel slid the ring onto the tip of her middle finger, balancing it on her talon. "I'm being brought to the king at the moment, and not even the death of three citizens is enough to deter my escort. I shouldn't be surprised... Baugulf struck me as a noble from the first second I met him."

"The king holds no claim to you, Melusine Tepes." The dragon shifted his weight, making the pebbled underfoot quake.

"Everyone else seems to think otherwise. I don't even know where to begin freeing you, Ekaitz. At the very least, I'll be able to find out more if I follow the current path. But I will free you. I haven't forgotten."

Silence hung in the air for several long moments, but strangely Melusine felt relaxed as she stared up into the darkness with the massive dragon leaning over her.

"Very well. Until the next new moon, little hatchling," Ekaitz muttered.

"Until then, cute dragon."

"What?!"

Melusine burst out into laughter as she pushed the ring further onto her middle finger. Only when she experienced agony twice in the same day did she realize why she would soon wake. The process of returning to normal would be just as painful as turning into a monster.