Asta tensed when he sat beside her, but she didn't move away. she shook her head slowly after he spoke--not a denial, not exactly. More...lost.
"I was abandoned," she said dully. "My mother was a shapeshifter who left me to die in the woods. That's what the dryad told me. I--I don't know who Abigail Blythe is. I don't know who you are."
She looked away, arms wrapped tight around her knees. "If--If she wasn't a shapeshifter," she whispered, "if she didn't leave me because I'm bad luck, if she was just some, some woman, just a person with a family and a life, why did she--why was I...?"
She realized she was crying, but she couldn't stop it.