A-all right, Adon sent.

  Rosslyn’s tone and the haze of emotion around her made him so nervous that he did not want to see what he looked like in the mirror.

  Still, Adon couldn’t very well say that. He would come across as literally afraid of his own reflection, and he didn’t want to look like that. Not right now. This was a moment when he needed to project strength as much as he could.

  The moment when the butterfly imagined his botched Transformation might permanently ruin the Princess’s mental image of him.

  Rosslyn stepped over to the mirror that Adon had thought she was using to try to peep on him earlier. It was a large, standing piece in a thick, dark-wooden frame. The glass and wood looked heavy.

  But the Princess reminded Adon that despite her normal-sized, feminine form—it was impossible not to see her a little differently after having been a human-like organism in her presence, albeit briefly—she was strong.

  She lifted the mirror with one hand, almost absent-mindedly, and plunked it down directly in front of the butterfly.

  Adon stared at his own reflection, and his heart sank.

  Oh. Goddess, I look like something from out of a horror show…

  He was still half-transformed, but not in any kind of organized way. His body rested on two humanoid feet and ankles that extended up to a lower shinbone and a kneecap respectively. Above that, mercifully, the humanoid parts that had embarrassed and flustered him had vanished. Adon would need time to get ahold of himself next time he transformed into a human, lest some other random biological reaction similarly distract him.

  Instead of human thighs and an abdomen, Adon had a weird exoskeletal shell that covered those areas. It looked a little like his normal body shape had melted. That plasticky substance continued for almost a foot of distance up his torso, a length of featureless gray, punctuated only by occasional random lumps where the material was uneven.

  Sticking out of the sides of the exoskeletal middle were two limbs that looked haphazardly tacked on: a hand, which connected to a wrist and even an elbow before it melded with the exoskeleton torso, and a wing that looked as if it belonged to some giant mutated housefly rather than an elegant butterfly.

  At the top, Adon’s head was mostly a butterfly head, but he had a humanoid chin and lower lip just below his proboscis, and the head itself was abnormally large. That strange arrangement of his mouth appeared to be why he could still talk without using Telepathy, but only haltingly and with poor vocal control.

  What did I do to myself? Adon thought despairingly. I’m hideous. Deformed…

  This is my fault, he heard Rosslyn think. The emotional cloud around her was still predominantly concern, but now it featured a strong whiff of guilt too. Maybe this is not his path. I have thrust all my hopes onto him, and the pressure proved too much. I would hate for him to be stuck in this form because he wanted to please me. I have to accept reality.

  “Adon, please do not push yourself so hard,” Rosslyn said aloud. “I hope you can, um, return to your base form.”

  Of course I can, the butterfly wanted to say. But the words seemed to be stuck in his own head. He felt strangely tongue-tied, despite no longer needing a tongue to speak ever since his reincarnation.

  He sucked in a slow breath, pulling air in through his strange, unnatural, half-formed mouth and into his shriveled yet humanoid lungs. The breath calmed him, though he sensed that the cocktail of Rosslyn’s negative emotions that brewed beside him had intensified slightly thanks to his delayed response.

  Still, he found it difficult to form and send the words. Was there something more he needed to say? Something he was missing? A phrase that would make it more convincing? Should be be more ambiguous? Try speaking with a little bluster?

  Come on, man! Adon berated himself. Rosslyn is one of about three or four people you’re good at talking to in this life. Get it together! If you can’t tell her how you’re doing, that’s a quarter of your social life basically gone.

  But as he tried to formulate the words for a telepathic reply, the sensations he had experienced when he was in human form flashed through his mind.

  He had looked at Rosslyn with a new lens that he had only abstractly considered before. Her form had been somehow much more pleasing to his eye as a humanoid than it had been when he was an insect with a mostly-human soul. And he had inhaled her scent. That heady aroma had awakened something strange and powerful within him and set his blood racing through his recently created veins and arteries.

  The feelings he had experienced were something that he was both excited about and afraid of.

  More pressingly, these sensations brought him back to an archetypal experience he had suffered all too many times across countless incarnations.

  Adon was once again an awkward guy who had just fumbled an interaction with a pretty girl—a girl who he wanted to like him.

  All the social anxiety that Adon had thought he had defeated, at least when it came to Rosslyn, Goldie, and Samson, came flooding back.

  He felt suddenly paralyzed, as he had been paralyzed a thousand times before, in a thousand different lives.

  No, why…?

  After an awkward ten seconds or so of silence, Rosslyn rubbed her temple with a couple of fingers. Adon could feel that she was beginning to have a slight headache from their shared emotional tension.

  “Would you, um, like some privacy?” Rosslyn asked. She sounded slightly nervous. Adon read sadness in her voice. “I have no way of helping you change your form again, unless there is something you know of that can assist in the shift…”

  She trailed off.

  Adon found his voice again.

  No, I will manage to transform again, he sent. Maybe some privacy would be good, thank you.

  A part of him wanted to make a joke about her spying on him again while he was changing, but he felt a little sick at the thought of sticking his foot in his mouth at a moment like this, so he held that back.

  Rosslyn simply nodded, as if she did not trust herself to speak either. Then she stepped around the mirror, opened the door, moved into the hallway, and closed the door behind her.

  Adon was left alone with his thoughts.

  He tried not to think too much. At this moment, it could only sadden him.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Let’s just fix this Transformation, he thought tiredly.

  That much, he knew he could do.

  Ten minutes later, Adon used one of his long legs, transformed into a tendril, to grip and turn the doorknob. Transformation was back to being easy for him, as long as there wasn’t a girl watching him.

  Embarrassing, he thought as the door opened. In some sense, I am a thousands of years old entity, with rich experiences to draw upon. I can’t believe I was paralyzed by—

  Adon’s thoughts froze inside his head for a moment as Rosslyn’s face came into view.

  She was smiling gently. Warmly. It struck Adon that despite Rosslyn now being dressed in armor, ready for her duel, and wearing an eyepatch that she had not needed when they first met, she had never looked prettier or more feminine to him. When he had first met her, she had seemed muscular to him. Tough and fit more than soft and girlish. And now he saw her differently.

  Adon’s insect form felt slightly warmer as feelings that were not natural to an insect welled up inside him.

  Get out of your head, you dumb butterfly, he told himself irritably. You’re still thinking with those damned hormones from when you turned into a human. They should be out of your system by now…

  But it seemed that the momentary shift, from a simple to a more complex organism, had brought about changes that would be more lasting than the Transformation had been. Adon could not make himself un-see the vision of Rosslyn that he had experienced when he was in human form. Even now, he felt drawn to her, pulled by instincts that on one level he did not understand and at another, he understood all too well—and feared.

  “Back to normal,” the Princess said gently. She began moving a hand toward him as if she wanted to make physical contact—perhaps to caress the edges of his wings or to offer to let him perch on her wrist—but stopped herself before she had extended her arm very far. She pulled her hand back, closed her fingers, exhaled, and shook her head slightly.

  She was wrestling with something inside her, too. Adon could see it. He was not certain of what. Rosslyn was clearly trying to contain her thoughts, and now that he was under better control of himself, the butterfly was actively making an effort not to pry into her private feelings.

  This was a strange, delicate moment. It would be all too easy for either of them to ruin the connection that existed between them.

  I am, Adon sent quickly. Back to normal. Everything’s the way it was before.

  Oh, how he wished that were true.

  But bells could not be unrung. Sights could not be unseen. And the events of the last twenty minutes would not be forgotten, by either Adon or the Princess.

  As he tried to convince both her and himself that things could go “back to normal,” she launched into a short speech that she had clearly been preparing while she waited in the hall for him.

  “As I said, um, please do not push yourself so much,” Rosslyn said. “I do not know if I led you to believe that it was important that you unlock a human form soon—or ever, for that matter—but please, please do not harm yourself in the process of trying to obtain this, um, new power.” She licked her lips in what Adon read as nervous body language. “I—the Kingdom cares about you. Even if something terrible should happen to the Kingdom, there is no reason that you should not outlive the Royal Family. Just like the mystic beast that you and your friends—” She winced slightly but made herself finish the sentence—“killed in the forest. Mystic bears were the national symbol of Ursabia once.” Her voice turned wistful, and her eyes looked into the distance. “That last member of the species might have been lonely, without a country to call home. And then its life ended violently. It turned into food for other mystic beasts. But at least it had a life. It reached maturity and lived for a time.” She turned back to Adon and half-smiled. “Do not shorten your life by doing anything radical with your body, all right?”

  Despite the cute half-smile the Princess wore as she finished her little speech, Adon found it slightly frustrating that Rosslyn still seemed to consider him as a delicate creature who needed her protection. But he did not argue the point. He had the self-awareness to recognize that he had sometimes treated Goldie in the same way.

  That was how you behaved toward someone weaker than yourself, when you cared about them.

  Doesn’t it solve some problems for you—or rather, for the Kingdom—if I master Transformation sooner rather than later? Adon sent.

  “I will figure those matters out,” Rosslyn said firmly.

  She neither spoke nor thought the words, Without you, but Adon keenly felt them as if they had been part of her intent. The air between himself and Rosslyn seemed to run a little cooler for a few seconds.

  “We should probably go,” Rosslyn said finally, in a subdued tone. “The brothers will be waiting for us. And the spiders, too.” She turned to walk down the hall.

  Rosslyn, wait, Adon sent impulsively, not allowing himself to hesitate. This duel, it has something to do with William courting you, doesn’t it?

  Rosslyn pivoted to face Adon and gave him a searching look. But he was a butterfly just then. She had no way of reading his body language, as far as Adon was aware. Not unless that was in one of the old books that she and her father had read as they studied up on mystic beasts.

  Then she gave him the smallest of nods, keeping her face carefully expressionless and her mind nearly fully blank.

  If he wins, he’ll think he’s entitled to marry you? Adon asked.

  “No,” Rosslyn said quickly, though her expression looked troubled to the butterfly. “Besting me in a duel is only a requirement to be eligible. It does not mean I have to marry the person who does it.” She chuckled nervously and shook her head. “It was silly of me to make such a requirement anyway. It is hard to believe I was already an adult when I came up with it. I feel as if—as if I have grown up a great deal since then.”

  Did he ask for this duel? Adon sent. Or was it your idea?

  “His,” she replied flatly.

  Adon thought of telling Rosslyn about the way William truly thought of her—as a broodmare, an obedient little woman to birth him heirs and follow his commands. By all means, the young lord was genuinely attracted to her in some sense, but the butterfly thought that he understood Rosslyn well enough by now to know that she would want to be valued for more than her ability to push out children and give a man a path to a throne.

  But Adon understood that his own emotions were wrapped up in this now. He was far from a neutral observer, if he had ever been that.

  She sees through him anyway, Adon told himself. Otherwise, she would seem excited about the prospect of being engaged to him. You don’t need to poison the well…

  You wouldn’t actually marry him, Adon sent. The words were almost, but not quite a question. He had found himself unable to resist.

  Rosslyn turned slightly pink and looked away from the butterfly.

  “I—I do not think you have the right to ask me that, Adon,” she said. “It is unfair.”

  You’ve spent a lot of time telling me to do what I want, be happy, be free, and such advice, Adon sent. I don’t see how this is different.

  The Princess turned away from him as she gave her response, and Adon sensed an emotional coldness from her, wafting off of her body like a cloud of steam.

  “It is different, because I am responsible for the lives of others. I did not choose that, but neither did the people of this country choose me. It was a matter of birth, on both ends. Part of that responsibility is a duty to select a husband who can help me to protect the Kingdom. This has only become more urgent as the Kingdom comes under what could be the final assault by the Demon Empire. You know all of this already. You have known it almost since you met me…” There was a mix of defiance and pleading in her tone, and Adon felt a twinge of empathy for the Princess.

  He could tell that she wanted a reply, some validation from him that she was correct, but he could not say anything. He wanted to show some empathy, but any reply that affirmed the possibility of her choosing William felt disgusting to him. And it wasn’t as if Adon could offer himself as a replacement, considering what had just happened.

  After standing in place for a minute, Rosslyn began to walk forward. Adon fluttered after her, and the two moved down the hall in an uncomfortable silence, neither speaking or looking at the other.

  It was in that frosty environment that Adon heard a stray thought from Rosslyn, one that he instantly knew she would have kept well below the surface of her mind if she had not been in a somewhat emotional state.

  I may have no other choice…