A strange hunger pulled me from my Garden into the waking world. It took every effort to keep my twitching muscles from bolting away to sate it. If my divine cultivation was a tree that drew from me, the garden drew from more. And I was starving.

  Whenever I tried to think, the hunger batted my thoughts aside. All except for one:

  I need to get out of here.

  Ragged breathing gave way to a mad sort of chuckle. Move. Now! When I tried to stand, a spike of agony lanced through my skull. The spider limbs on my back twitched and pulled my limp body off the floor like a stage puppet.

  I jerked away, collapsing in a heap when I tried to move those limbs myself. In my Garden it was simple but this… I’m so hungry. I landed next to a leg. Long, black as charcoal, and tipped with fine hairs and gripping claws, it was so much more real in the darkness of the mountain prison.

  My head felt like it was going to split and I forced all my eyes shut, stumbling around on my spider legs up toward the exit.The moment I got myself moving, I… I’m so hungry!

  I dug my hands in, scratching pale lines into the stone, even as my eight new limbs jerked and pulled me up the tunnel, skittering between floor and walls. A pained hiss escaped my throat, one that definitely wasn’t human.

  My mind pulled back, but not into my garden.

  When I was a child, I’d struggled in ways my naturally gifted brother hadn’t, that no one in my family ever had. Aches and soreness and fatigue from the simplest of tasks. I used to sleep on one side, arm under the pillow to support my head. Sometimes, I’d wake up and I wouldn’t feel the limb. Couldn’t move it. The first time I’d thought it was permanent; the nannies thought the crying child was just throwing a fit and telling lies.

  Instincts like I never felt had shoved my thoughts into a dusty corner, my body the numb arms of memory. I could only watch as I, a hissing, mad demon, launched myself up the tunnel toward the exit, where my memories knew there to be food.

  I tried to focus on my Garden, to fall back into it and take back control, but the hunger overrode everything, tinting my vision red. The only thing grounding me was the chained demon’s howls of rage, growing more and more distant.

  My garden was starving; I needed to tend it.

  Soon, I saw the light of the entrance, bright like day against the darkness. The chill night air welcomed me out of the tunnel, a trickle of vitae flowing into my parched Garden. For a moment, I was lucid; then…

  Vitae! So much that the aura was like a glowing beacon.

  Somethings in my mouth moved, my jaws split and opened, and I lunged.

  My legs didn’t touch the ground—they propelled me forward through the water. The vitae darted to one side. Twitchy prey!

  Something hit me, and I hissed again before reaching for my vitae. With a casting motion from my back, I called forth lines of silken web. The prey dodged one, but not the other. Two glints of light flew my way and I rolled. Leg tripped leg, and I hit the dirt.

  Two more: small, weak. They hit and pain blossomed. Venom, not mine; easy to heal. But… vitae too low. Night darker, prey approaching. Limbs… can’t move.

  ***

  I opened my eyes to a familiar blood-red sky. Charcoal-colored limbs, eight of them, reached up toward the massing clouds, twitching. Spider legs? Right. That was no dream.

  The first raindrop fell, and it was the sweetest thing. Then another, and another, and soon rain fell in earnest, splashing into the dirt and vines around me. Vitae being pulled steadily inward, through instinct I only half understood. Flowers bloomed and roots dug as I took a deep breath.

  The legs twitched again, then relaxed. I could feel them when they moved, feel them as they hit the ground to my sides, as vines grew over them. Raising a hand, I saw the same pale skin as in the cave, a slender wrist, and delicate-looking fingers tipped with wicked-looking black nails. Their color matched my legs.

  My legs.

  I grabbed at my chest, my hand squeezing painfully over my breast. A sigh of relief escaped me as I eased up and let my hand drop back into the dirt with a wet splash. I could feel the mud seeping into my hair and the first joint of my new legs. Each breath full of vitae entered stronger and stronger lungs.

  I can’t let myself get hungry like that again.

  But what am I even thinking? I was a monster now! And… and I had a girl’s body!

  Even assuming I had a way to look human as most demons I’d read about did, would I be able to go back to myself? It hurt to even think about.

  No matter what I tried, my thoughts slipped away. I ended up staring at the sky and the rain trying to remember what had happened since I’d left the cave and thinking about my childhood. One black-nailed finger even played with a lock of hair, a habit I’d long since gotten over.

  When a particularly big droplet landed in my eye, clear and bright and not at all blood, I blinked two sets of eyelids and remembered: I’d fought Azalea and lost.

  I sagged down, letting the vines wrap over my feet as I curled my spider legs over myself like a shield. What a relief. If she hadn’t been there…

  No, I shouldn’t rely on her.

  I needed vitae. For any chance at returning home, for any chance at survival. I could feel my garden around me growing thicker, healthier. Not enough to reach my goals, but enough to survive and stay lucid. And so I closed my eyes and let the vines take me under, envisioning a symbiotic paradise guided by a wise hand.

  Never mind that I was no longer human. Never mind I had become a monster. Never mind that I had a month to figure out how to cover up or explain all of this so I wouldn’t be hunted down and killed.

  What I had now was power, potential. And if I was so deft with so little, how much could I be with more? Even if my body was no longer my own, that too could be made temporary. Nothing felt impossible anymore.

  If I could find a way to hide what I was—demons of legend always could—having access to this form even had… advantages. Anyone would see it that way, certainly.

  By the time I’d finished, my garden was in bloom. I thanked the little experience I had, but I knew it could be so much more. Different techniques woven together in synergy, more efficient flows of vitae, and a dozen other things I could hardly wait to try. Would that I had access to my family’s library on this mountain.

  But I was here for another month for my isolation training. I had to hope that would be enough time to figure out a way to maintain a human form of some sort. Or… my old body.

  The thought didn’t excite me. So weak I’d been.

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  But I needed it for this power to matter. Right?

  I had four weeks to develop techniques, and to convince Azalea to keep all this a secret. Somehow, I didn’t think that last part would be particularly hard.

  ***

  When I roused myself, I found I’d been placed on top of my bedroll. The burning hunger had settled to embers, but my mind was still foggy. Next to the tarn, Azalea was sitting cross-legged, a stick trailing a string into the water stuck in the dirt beside her.

  “There’s no fish in there.” My voice came out entirely different, higher and smoother.

  Azalea jumped up with a shriek. “You’re awake!”

  I sat up, immediately feeling the weight on my back. I’ll need to get used to that. More than that, I felt my fangs—two, four six?—with a long, inhuman tongue, remembering the way my jaw had split. What my mouth had become was a bridge too far, even for someone as stoic and pragmatic as I.

  Before I could use that tongue to form a response, Azalea pulled me into a hug.

  “Hey! Off!” I shoved and Azalea grunted as her arms flew off me. She tumbled backward, head over heels before landing in a heap. Immediately, I felt a pang of worry, but I bit back an apology.

  Did I?

  She bounded upright in a mess of tangled robes. “Wow! You got a lot stronger, Slate!”

  “I… how do you know it’s me?”

  Azalea laughed. “You’re wearing what’s left of his robes. Plus, you act just like him and I don’t see any other demons up here. At least you didn’t get possessed, right?”

  “Possessed? How did you—”

  “How’re you feeling about the magic sex change?”

  “The… the what? Aren’t you the least bit concerned by the fact that I’m a demon?”

  She cocked her head to one side. “A little? You don’t seem crazy.”

  “I tried to eat you!”

  “Fair.”

  “Why didn’t you at least restrain me?”

  “With what?”

  “So you just let me wake up and hoped I wouldn’t kill you?”

  “Yep!”

  I stared at her.

  “So… what do you want me to say?” She shifted her hips and fixed me with an unusually serious look.

  I opened my mouth; I closed my mouth.

  “Hungry?” she asked.

  I laughed despite myself, the sound a hiss and a click. “You ask that of all things?”

  “Well, are you?”

  “Did you even bring any food?”

  She shrugged. “Figured we could forage. Don’t know if there are even fish in this lake—”

  “—I just told you there weren’t—”

  “—but we’ve got rations.”

  “We’ve? There is no ‘we,’ Azalea.”

  “Do you want me to just leave you up here and not try to help you train your cool demon powers?”

  I was stunned into silence. For a long while, we stared at each other in the silent forest, listening to the drip drip of water from the glacier into the lake.

  Then Azalea got up and stretched. “Sounds like a ‘no’ to me.”

  “How would you know the first thing about training demonic cultivation?”

  “Do you?”

  “That’s not the point! If neither of us know anything—”

  “Then two people working at the problem will go better than one.”

  I swallowed a bitter retort. Even if she was right, and I sincerely doubted she was, she hadn’t been completely dead weight at the sect. Plus, if I didn’t figure out how to look a lot more human and a lot more like a man, a very specific man in fact, I would be killed.

  And if anyone tested my potential, or was of a high enough Ring to see my aura, I would also be killed. And for that last point… “I’ll let you stay on one condition.”

  “What?”

  “Help me steal a high-level technique manual from our sect’s restricted library.”

  “Sure!”

  At that, I smirked. The gesture made my jaws move in a weird way and I froze, before slowly settling my face back to a normal, human shape. Except for the eyes. Just how different did I look? “It’s a technique that can disguise auras. You might remember that our sect leader used it in the past to—”

  “Sneak into the Demonic Sect, yeah I know.”

  I hissed. “Do not interrupt me.”

  She stuck her tongue out.

  “What if I decide you look tasty?” Her aura was muted now, but it still did look enticing.

  “You’re not gonna eat me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re a good person, Slate. Oh, should I still call you that?”

  “...What?”

  “I figure you might want another name… or maybe not. If this is really uncomfortable for you and you’re just good at hiding it I don’t want to make any presumptions but—”

  “No—the first thing you said.”

  “You’re… a good person?”

  “How? How can you say that?” I tried and failed to leap to my feet, stumbling over unfamiliar limbs. “Especially right now!”

  She blinked, then leaned forward and wrapped me in a hug. When had she gotten so close?

  “I mean it, okay? I think you are, and my opinion is always right, remember?”

  I snorted. “I remember you being wrong about where the secret flag was during the last group training.”

  “Mud’s good for the complexion at least!”

  “Not toxic mud!”

  “Bah, details. Feel better?”

  “Of course not!”

  She hummed. “Right. Sooo, stealing a book from a fancy restricted library, huh? I’d bet we gotta do it before someone from the sect checks your aura, right?”

  I nodded. “My parents cannot, thankfully. But they’ll doubtless want to get me tested. I can spoof the results the way I did the first time—”

  “Wait, you spoofed your results? Why not make them better then?”

  I winced. “Because the reality was a lot worse, I could feel it.”

  She hugged me again. “And you got to what, Seedling? Sapling? That’s better than half of the sect’s trainees, and they’re the cream of the crop! Uh, potential-wise, that is.”

  “You don’t have to coddle my ego.”

  “I’ve had to in the past.”

  “I…” Words left me with a clicking hiss, and I struggled for a few moments, feeling my face heat up with each second I had to look at Azalea’s smug face. “S-shut it. Now that you’re in, we’ll figure out a plan... First order of business is finding a place to shelter for the next month. Then food. After that, both of us need to train. If I can’t make myself look like… myself, then none of this will be possible.

  “When I get back to my family’s estate, I should be able to request access to the vault and sneak the key back into its place while I’m in there. There are a few artifacts we have that might help.”

  Azalea nodded, red eyes sparkling. Each head bob made her hair drills bounce. “This sounds fun!”

  “You’re not coming to my estate.”

  She pouted.

  “Absolutely not. You are a commoner and a woman both. Should my parents think we are romantically interested, it will cause me no small amount of headaches and could doom the plan.”

  Worse, Mother would approve. But I didn’t dare say that part out loud. Azalea whined, but relented.

  “Fine, fine. It’d be hard to explain how I found this place anyway. I’ll stay in Grayriver and we can take the same train back to the sect.”

  “What makes you think I won’t use my family’s carriage?” She was right, of course, but I didn’t need to give her that victory.

  “Because you pushed for the rail line to be built when you were twelve? Because half of the stuck up nobles in our sect made fun of you for it when we first got there. But you and I both know it’s gonna be the future.” She flicked one hand out in a dismissive wave. “They can just be left behind on their bumpy, slow carriages.”

  For one brilliant moment, I held unironic respect for Azalea.

  “Anyway, let’s get hunting because we’re almost out of food and I’ve only got one more vitae-boosting elixir.”

  And then it came crashing down. “You ate a week’s worth of rations in a night!?”

  “You were in there for a week.”

  I swallowed. “I… oh.” The next words were difficult, but I had to say them, even if I would never bow to a commoner. “Thank you for waiting. If you hadn’t… I do not dare think what I would have done in my starved state. A-and this means we only have three weeks.” I tried not to think about that, I failed.

  She waved a hand, but her eyes brightened all the same. “Don’t sweat it! That’s what friends are for, yeah?”

  “...Yeah.”

  At that, she beamed, dragged me over to the water’s edge, and practically dunked my face in. “First, though! I wanna see you see yourself."