37. Ugly

Lace had an anxious, feverish night.

She was in and out of consciousness for a lot of it, with little perception of where she was. She was plagued by terrible dreams. Ender was in most of them.

Then, at some point, she felt a comfortable, steady warmth against her. Her dreams stilled, and she didn’t stir after that.

When she awoke, the morning light was streaming in through a window. She tried to sit up, discovered a sharp pain in her stomach, and let herself slump back onto a pillow with a low groan.

She was in the House of Healing, wrestling with clean sheets, in a clean bed.

Mina peeked in through the door, grinned, and popped back out. A few minutes later, Good Doctor came.

“Ah,” the Hero said, shrugging into her white coat. “I see you’re feeling a little perkier.”

Lace tried to speak but found her voice strangled, throat dry as a desert. Good Doctor offered her water, and she drank several glasses until her thirst was quenched.

“Thank you,” she said with a contented sigh.

Suddenly, she remembered what had transpired the night before.

“Is everyone alright?” Lace asked. “Hyena and Snapjaw… were they captured?”

“Slow down, daughter mine,” Good Doctor said. She approached the bed and placed a soft hand on Lace’s shoulder. “Don’t ask me how you did it, because, by the Creator, I do not know, but all three Villains were subdued and taken in.”

“What about my friends?”

“They’re just fine. A little banged up, but nothing my Power couldn’t fix. Kiren was the worst of them, but you know how he is. He’ll bounce back from anything.”

Lace relaxed. “Oh, thank the Creator. Where is Kiren? Could I speak to him?”

Good Doctor glanced away. “I’m… not certain. He left his room some time ago. He was rather upset.”

“Upset?” Lace frowned. “Why is that? If we caught the Villains, then…”

Good Doctor pursed her lips. “As I mentioned, he sustained severe damage during the fight. I did my best to remove the affected tissue, but…” She paused, making a vague gesture with her hands. “It keeps regrowing. I can’t provoke any clean tissue regeneration.”

Lace wasn’t entirely sure what she meant.

“I need to see him,” she said. “Can you help me get out of bed?”

“Oh no, dear,” Good Doctor said. Her grip on Lace’s shoulder tightened. “You must stay here until you’ve recovered. I won’t let you pull a Kiren on me. Or a Jorge, for that matter.”

Lace sighed and chose not to struggle. She was too weak to get out of bed on her own, anyway.

She could only wait.

Wait and worry.

*****

“So? Tell me you can do something about this, doc.”

Kiren looked pleadingly up at the plump woman.

Kit, now wearing a badge of the Heroes’ Guild on her breast, slowly shook her head. She prodded his numb, brown-ish skin, thumbed the dark scales.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” she said. “I’m not sure what to say.”

“Just say you can fix me,” Kiren growled.

Good Doctor had removed all of the mutated flesh from his body. She’d pulled out his sharpened teeth, and the new ones had grown in normal. But some of his skin and muscle seemed reluctant to return to its normal shape and function. No matter how many times Good Doctor cut it away, it grew back rough, hardened, and ugly.

Like a Beast.

Like Father.

Kiren refused to entertain the idea that this might be permanent, or that it could get worse the more he used his Powers. These thoughts dwelled in the back of his mind, however, and they scared him.

“I… don’t think I can reverse this,” Kit said. “I’m terribly sorry. This isn’t some foreign infection or disease. It’s your tissue. It’s not damaged or unhealthy, as far as I can tell, it simply looks and feels different. As such, my Power will have no effect.”

“Damn it!” Kiren slammed his fist down on the small table next to him. It toppled over and sent instruments flying.

Kit took a step back from him and gaped at the scattered doctor’s tools.

“I… I’m sorry,” Kiren said. He forced himself to unclench his fist.

How could Lace ever feel anything but disgust for me now?

“If you wouldn’t mind,” he said, looking Kit in the eye, “do you think you could try? Just in case?”

“Sure, Kiren,” she said, with a bad attempt at a reassuring smile.

She righted the table and gathered up her instruments, then pulled a second chair close. She brought a large, potted plant into her lap, placing one hand on its stem and the other on Kiren’s mutated shoulder.

The plant began to wither.

Kiren’s shoulder remained unaffected.

Kit continued until the plant was completely brown, having slumped over the side of the pot. She sighed and put the pot aside, then rubbed his shoulder gently.

There was no difference.

“Like I said,” Kit said, “there’s technically nothing to heal. If operating hasn’t been successful, I’m sorry to say, this is your body now.”

Kiren stood up. “I understand. Thanks for your time, I guess.”

He made to walk out.

“Wait! Before you go…”

Kiren looked back. “Yeah?”

“I’d like to report something. To your Guild, that is.”

“What’s that?”

“A couple weeks ago, before all this, some men came around the clinic. They were sort of plain-looking, but they spoke proper and everything, like noble folk. Didn’t need treatment, but they asked a lot of questions about my business. About… my Power.”

“Could’ve been the Thieves’ Guild,” Kiren said. “You’ve been associated with them before, through your brother, right?”

Kit shook her head. “It wasn’t them. The way they spoke, it was… different.”

“Well, what did they want?”

“I’m not sure. Once they’d asked their questions, they just left. They didn’t threaten me, but the way they carried themselves made me feel unsafe.”

“Well, if they didn’t hurt you, and you don’t know who they were, I don’t think there’s much I can do about it.”

Kiren was in no mood to be hunting down some dead-end job.

“Y-Yes, of course,” Kit said, looking down. “How silly of me. I’ll let you get on with it, then.”

Kiren nodded.

He walked out of the clinic, his mind even darker than when he had entered.

*****

Lace walked into her room.

Her stomach still felt tight, but another day of Good Doctor’s aid had all but completely smoothed out the knife wound.

Kiren sat on the edge of his bed, whittling a wooden figurine. He let the wood chips fall into a bucket between his legs.

The left side of his face was covered in coarse, thick skin, like faded scarring. On top were sets of mismatched scales, running down his cheek and over his throat. His left eye was bloodshot, the corner of his eye dragged abnormally long.

He was bare-chested, with only a bandage tightened over one side of his chest. His torso was similarly adorned with lumpy, leathery scar tissue, the scales growing larger into chitinous plates.

Kiren turned away his face when he saw her and placed the unfinished figurine in his trunk.

“Hey,” he said. “Doing better?”

“Yeah,” Lace said. She touched her stomach and got a brief jolt of pain that made her wince. “Relatively speaking.”

He ran a hand through his matte black hair, looking firmly at the floor. “They’re holding a public sentencing for Hyena and Snapjaw tomorrow. A lot of people are bound to show, considering what people think of them in the Slog.”

“You didn’t come when I woke up.” She took a step closer to the bed, then another.

Kiren shrugged. “Yeah, well… I got bored. I’ve got better things to do than watch you sleep.”

“That’s not what Good Doctor told me.”

Kiren twitched. “She’s just some old bitch. What does she know?”

Lace sat down on the bed next to him and wrapped an arm around his wide shoulders. His rough skin was warm against hers.

“She told me you stayed up all night. Kept me company.”

He didn’t answer.

She could feel the repressed power that rested within him.

Whatever had happened to his body, he was just as strong as ever.

Maybe stronger.

“You know I don’t care about this, right?” Lace said, letting her fingers trace a patch of scaly skin around his right trapezius.

Kiren scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

“I mean it.”

Kiren looked up at her, his dark eyes large and pleading. The left side of his face was pulled into a predatory snarl. The lip ran all the way to the corner of his cheek and twitched every few seconds.

“How could you mean that?” he asked. “Sage was right. I’m becoming a monster. Good Doctor can’t remove it anymore. It’ll continue to spread, and soon…”He sighed, shoulders drooping. “I won’t be able to recognize myself.”

“Hey,” Lace said. She pulled him a bit closer, squeezing herself against his arm. “You’re you, and that’s not going to change. Whatever’s happening right now, it’s only skin deep.”

She leaned in and kissed his hardened left cheek. His lip twitched, but he didn’t pull away.

“You’ve always been a little crazy. A little rough. That’s what I like about you. At least it shows on the outside, now.”

Kiren cracked a smile. Just a small one, but it was there.

“Do you think I’ll scare children looking like this?” he asked.

Lace smiled back. “They’ll run away screaming.”

He chuckled. “Awesome.”

Lace released her grip of Kiren and stood up. She faced him, holding her hands on her hips. “Hey, we just finished our first real job on our own. I figure that deserves some celebration. We could take Haden and Tommyn and go for a drink. I know a good place not too far from here.”

Kiren jumped to his feet, grinning, and brushed some bits of wood off his hose.

“That’s a plan I can get behind.”