I saw blood, and a bit of it was mine; vaermina

[Caius]

when is a monster not a monster? oh, when you love it He is no stranger to blood. Indeed, when he had wings (large and black and foreboding, like his fathers, though his were feathered rather than taut skin), they had always hurt – growing them had hurt, their unfurling had hurt as they’d burst from him, unnatural, a malformation of the anatomy. He had assumed they’d heal, did not realize he was an anomaly until he notices the soldiers around him get their wings, how they sprung fully made into being, a kinder magic. (They disappeared the same way: there, then not. He is the only one with whom the wings were ripped from their joints, who was left bleeding.) He doesn’t know why it happened to him differently. He wonders if it was because Beqanna sensed he was not meant to be a solider (he is too cowardly, much too cowardly), and treated him appropriately. He wonders if it is because he is marked, somehow, that he is a creature who should be bled, whether by mother or magic. She repeats his name and touches the blood there. He lets her, though he is wary. She is macabre, there is a graveyard promise about her, something he senses but cannot fully articulate. “Who?” he asks, softly, “who will find me?” He has no real enemies (no friends, either, and a lover whose location he doesn’t know). Even his dubious mark of prince is gone, stripped with the changing of the guard and Vanquish’s death, he has nothing to offer anymore. You’re broken, she says, and her voice quavers and Caius doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to comprehend her. “Yes,” he says, because it’s not a lie – he is a broken boy, always had been – but then, “the wings hurt when they were there, too. It’s not really different.” c a i u s vanquish x chantale