Chapter Fifteen
Born in Chaos
Arinmalia sat bolt upright on her pallet. For a moment, she was overwhelmed by a sense of loss. One of her children had died. She probed the newly opened void. Was it one of her precious elf changelings?
No, it was one of her human offspring. Perhaps it had died of illness. The human ones were too weak. None of her elven attributes seemed to breed true in the ones with human mothers. She rarely bothered breeding them anymore. The mothers always died anyway.
She realized she had reverted to her true form. Mottled scales covered her dusky skin in patches, gleaming dully in the guttering torchlight of her cave. Her drakhal fangs had bitten into her lower lip, drawing blood. Clawed hands gripped her tangled blankets. She relaxed her fingers.
Her elven changel
