Chapter 1
He leaned against the chill stone wall of the cell, his eyes darting from the straw twirling between his fingers to the weeping girl across the floor from him. His eyes had been surveying her for hours, but she had yet to stop her show of debilitating emotion. Shoulders shuddered under her unruly hair tumbling over her knees, a threadbare dress had gathered up her leg in the struggle, dirt and scratches high up her thighs. Just enough to arouse more than his attention, but not enough to dissuade his disgust. The sounds emerging from her were guttural and revolting, her presence was limp, as if she had melted away from whatever made her human, into a withering mess of flesh. It maddened him. This was not what he expected of her. He had anticipated welcoming her with a fervent
The members of the tribe don’t look her in the eye when she goes about her duties. The faces of the Hunters project a harsh embarrassment whenever they glimpse her, some staring hard as if she bore a marking that would lead to their goal, like the prints of animals that they follow in the dawn. She doesn’t mind being reminded of what she was born with, but she also knows how tense it makes others near her. She claims the scarf around her head is to keep her ears warm, but everyone knows the cloth is too thin. In the pulsing light, everything is made vivid and clear. The brilliant flames gather higher and brighter as they devour the blankets and mats along the floor.
embrace, feeling her body close, hoping to see her fall under the spell of his charisma as had so many others. Instead he found her on the floor, grasping her sorrow close like a stubborn child and refusing to meet his gaze. It was insulting. She was insulting him, who could master her and show her the potential the two of them could garner together. Intolerable. Insufferable. Incorrigible. It was absurd, to think of so many times before when he had had needy hands grasping at his feet, and how simple it was to dismiss their anguish with a harsh tactic housed within his mind. But never would he have dreamt to console one. He was above such nonsense, but in order to win the creature before him he would have to suffer for it. Never would he have dreamt the very thing he wanted would be the thing he could not touch. It was deplorable. A torrent of coughing snuck up on him, distracting his thoughts for a moment.
Outside the sounds of the mine were resilient. The clanging hammers, the guard’s harsh orders, the occasional slap of a flail against some wretch’s skin, all filtered through the
Not many others pray there anymore, but faith is one of the few precious things she has control over. She knows what she believes, and clutches close the trinket Rez made for her. Its metal feels cold against her sweaty palms. “Tala, don’t be so sentimental,” Rez says, jovially pushing her shoulder back to hide her awkwardness. The gift is wonderful and she cries and hugs Rez as they lie together deep within the cave’s shelter, feeling her sister’s skin against her arm, just like the times they would lie in the tundra’s sparse grass. The touch is pure, warm and relaxing. She searches for the fleeting security they once had in such contact, but the comfort is lost as the heat gathers close, threatening to consume the barn where they are huddled together. They smother their tears, striving for that stolen refuge.
incessant murmur of flames. How easy it would be to just step beyond the heavy wooden door and join the exhilaration, but how difficult it was to leave her unfinished.
The tattered bit of straw between his fingers failed to provide a distraction for long and he crushed it. The air felt heavy and languid. He began to pace. There was nothing to fill the space between them but he could feel a pressure against his chest. His courage was stolen. The distance to her was barely four footsteps, and still he could not bring himself to make the first effort.
He left, pushing past the heavy door that screeched open and shouldering past the guards beyond to stalk deeper into the mine. The sounds bombarded him, and the throbbing of his chest shuddered up his through his throat,
Yaden has stolen the pendant from her, she knows. She hates where her sleeping mat is at the front of the dwelling, right where the sun’s rays first reach. She likes to sleep too much, and Yaden always takes the liberty to wake her for the hunt. She chases him and he teases her. She sees him laughing and running ahead. She sees his eyes dance in amusement, she sees his body motionless and his eyes glassy as the fire is beginning to lick his clothes if only he would just move, Yaden, move!
then calmed after another fit of coughing.
He sought to understand why she was different to him. Why his chest felt hollow every time he approached her, how he could bring himself closer. This time when he returned she lay on her side, matted hair covering a sleeping face. Without her tears, he defiantly drew closer. One foot on either side of her, he crouched and tried to gather a semblance of her appearance through the dirty strands
She moves hurriedly through the crowd, Jidonne’s hand guiding her into the dance of fast steps dictated by the thrumming fingers of the bards along the tight skins of their drums. The thundering of her heart in her ears as she runs is as deafening as the shelter’s collapse. She feels her licentious emotions hurting inside, her chest feels as if she’s inhaled the surrounding flames. The snow melts red into pools that glisten like the haunted ice she glides across with Rez, with Yaden, tumbling, their breath held as they hear the cracking of the ice and creaking of the building failing above them.
obscuring his view. But he grew distracted by the streaks of her hair, the glint thrown across her crown from the dim light of the hallway, an unnatural but desirable glittering framing her tear-soaked cheeks. His hand shuddered too violently for him to brush it aside. His excitement was great and his gaze moved to her chest as it rose and fell. If only she would have woken up at that very moment, turned under him as she stretched away from sleep as her eyes opened and—
His knuckles bled as he struck the wall. The bewildered guards pretended to look away, but the gasping was too apparent to ignore. As he walked away, his mind was ablaze, thinking of the heinous and infuriating
Out of Mamam’s way! She’s cooking and the coals are hot. She fears for little San, he’s clumsy enough to stumble into the open embers. His skin turns black but he doesn’t complain. How Mamam worries! When she returns days after the Hunters, Mamam berates her for leaving the group out in the wild, asks where she goes when she wanders off so often, eyes tired of having to deal with a troublesome daughter. But in her mother’s embrace she feels safe for once until the maternal fingers draw across the scar that runs down the side of her arm. She pushes away and sighs as she leaves and screams for them to follow her. Under the well house, under the brush, Yaden will never find her here.
barrier between him and her.
Her crying was quiet, he could tell she was biting her lip to hold everything back. She was aware of him, she had to be by now, why else would she do such a thing? He was so conscious of her, of the way her body trembled, of the way the subtle light reflected off the silver in her hair. She was something special, and he would caress her and satisfy himself before he would tell her the reason why. But first, he would have to bring himself to touch her, bring her close and possess her in every way. His hand on her would be proof of his custody, and she would readily comply as all the others had.
He just had to take that
Mamam is stroking her hair and cooing over the sheen. Mamam is cross. “You shouldn’t laze about like this. Every moment you could be doing something great.” She draws away from her mother’s embrace, looks into her hazel eyes. “In time.”
first step. Just one single movement, toward her.
She hates how aware her mother is, and she’s scared because she doesn’t know where her mother is. They push her into the dirt street where debris has fallen from the well house and bodies glisten in the fire’s light.
Just a simple step. He gripped his hands into fists, set his jaw, and as he moved toward—
A green-eyed boy turns from the fire and showers her with unfounded familiarity. He moves forward—
She screamed. It was a primordial force, the last gesture available to a broken mind. She fell forward, her back arching like a cat’s with every gasp for air. Her voice was harsher during the second scream, her throat aching. She felt the grit of the dirt road against her palms, felt the hard stone beneath her fingertips. She could see the boy bathed in the light of the burning shelter, then the elderly man with a shocked expression against the stone wall, then the boy, the man and the boy as she scampered back. Her shrieks increased and echoed through the shafts of the mine, striking many ears and exciting many sympathies.
It was in that moment he knew it hopeless loss to take her as he had planned. Her mind was preoccupied with the past, and her memories refused to give her up. He sighed as he gritted his teeth, forming a fist with one hand. The door closed behind him with a solid thud. She would decide for herself when she would return to the present.
The members of the tribe don’t look her in the eye when she goes about her duties. The faces of the Hunters project a harsh embarrassment whenever they glimpse her, some staring hard as if she bore a marking that would lead to their goal, like the prints of animals that they follow in the dawn. She doesn’t mind being reminded of what she was born with, but she also knows how tense it makes others near her. She claims the scarf around her head is to keep her ears warm, but everyone knows the cloth is too thin. In the pulsing light, everything is made vivid and clear. The brilliant flames gather higher and brighter as they devour the blankets and mats along the floor.
embrace, feeling her body close, hoping to see her fall under the spell of his charisma as had so many others. Instead he found her on the floor, grasping her sorrow close like a stubborn child and refusing to meet his gaze. It was insulting. She was insulting him, who could master her and show her the potential the two of them could garner together. Intolerable. Insufferable. Incorrigible. It was absurd, to think of so many times before when he had had needy hands grasping at his feet, and how simple it was to dismiss their anguish with a harsh tactic housed within his mind. But never would he have dreamt to console one. He was above such nonsense, but in order to win the creature before him he would have to suffer for it. Never would he have dreamt the very thing he wanted would be the thing he could not touch. It was deplorable. A torrent of coughing snuck up on him, distracting his thoughts for a moment.
Outside the sounds of the mine were resilient. The clanging hammers, the guard’s harsh orders, the occasional slap of a flail against some wretch’s skin, all filtered through the
Not many others pray there anymore, but faith is one of the few precious things she has control over. She knows what she believes, and clutches close the trinket Rez made for her. Its metal feels cold against her sweaty palms. “Tala, don’t be so sentimental,” Rez says, jovially pushing her shoulder back to hide her awkwardness. The gift is wonderful and she cries and hugs Rez as they lie together deep within the cave’s shelter, feeling her sister’s skin against her arm, just like the times they would lie in the tundra’s sparse grass. The touch is pure, warm and relaxing. She searches for the fleeting security they once had in such contact, but the comfort is lost as the heat gathers close, threatening to consume the barn where they are huddled together. They smother their tears, striving for that stolen refuge.
incessant murmur of flames. How easy it would be to just step beyond the heavy wooden door and join the exhilaration, but how difficult it was to leave her unfinished.
The tattered bit of straw between his fingers failed to provide a distraction for long and he crushed it. The air felt heavy and languid. He began to pace. There was nothing to fill the space between them but he could feel a pressure against his chest. His courage was stolen. The distance to her was barely four footsteps, and still he could not bring himself to make the first effort.
He left, pushing past the heavy door that screeched open and shouldering past the guards beyond to stalk deeper into the mine. The sounds bombarded him, and the throbbing of his chest shuddered up his through his throat,
Yaden has stolen the pendant from her, she knows. She hates where her sleeping mat is at the front of the dwelling, right where the sun’s rays first reach. She likes to sleep too much, and Yaden always takes the liberty to wake her for the hunt. She chases him and he teases her. She sees him laughing and running ahead. She sees his eyes dance in amusement, she sees his body motionless and his eyes glassy as the fire is beginning to lick his clothes if only he would just move, Yaden, move!
then calmed after another fit of coughing.
He sought to understand why she was different to him. Why his chest felt hollow every time he approached her, how he could bring himself closer. This time when he returned she lay on her side, matted hair covering a sleeping face. Without her tears, he defiantly drew closer. One foot on either side of her, he crouched and tried to gather a semblance of her appearance through the dirty strands
She moves hurriedly through the crowd, Jidonne’s hand guiding her into the dance of fast steps dictated by the thrumming fingers of the bards along the tight skins of their drums. The thundering of her heart in her ears as she runs is as deafening as the shelter’s collapse. She feels her licentious emotions hurting inside, her chest feels as if she’s inhaled the surrounding flames. The snow melts red into pools that glisten like the haunted ice she glides across with Rez, with Yaden, tumbling, their breath held as they hear the cracking of the ice and creaking of the building failing above them.
obscuring his view. But he grew distracted by the streaks of her hair, the glint thrown across her crown from the dim light of the hallway, an unnatural but desirable glittering framing her tear-soaked cheeks. His hand shuddered too violently for him to brush it aside. His excitement was great and his gaze moved to her chest as it rose and fell. If only she would have woken up at that very moment, turned under him as she stretched away from sleep as her eyes opened and—
His knuckles bled as he struck the wall. The bewildered guards pretended to look away, but the gasping was too apparent to ignore. As he walked away, his mind was ablaze, thinking of the heinous and infuriating
Out of Mamam’s way! She’s cooking and the coals are hot. She fears for little San, he’s clumsy enough to stumble into the open embers. His skin turns black but he doesn’t complain. How Mamam worries! When she returns days after the Hunters, Mamam berates her for leaving the group out in the wild, asks where she goes when she wanders off so often, eyes tired of having to deal with a troublesome daughter. But in her mother’s embrace she feels safe for once until the maternal fingers draw across the scar that runs down the side of her arm. She pushes away and sighs as she leaves and screams for them to follow her. Under the well house, under the brush, Yaden will never find her here.
barrier between him and her.
Her crying was quiet, he could tell she was biting her lip to hold everything back. She was aware of him, she had to be by now, why else would she do such a thing? He was so conscious of her, of the way her body trembled, of the way the subtle light reflected off the silver in her hair. She was something special, and he would caress her and satisfy himself before he would tell her the reason why. But first, he would have to bring himself to touch her, bring her close and possess her in every way. His hand on her would be proof of his custody, and she would readily comply as all the others had.
He just had to take that
Mamam is stroking her hair and cooing over the sheen. Mamam is cross. “You shouldn’t laze about like this. Every moment you could be doing something great.” She draws away from her mother’s embrace, looks into her hazel eyes. “In time.”
first step. Just one single movement, toward her.
She hates how aware her mother is, and she’s scared because she doesn’t know where her mother is. They push her into the dirt street where debris has fallen from the well house and bodies glisten in the fire’s light.
Just a simple step. He gripped his hands into fists, set his jaw, and as he moved toward—
A green-eyed boy turns from the fire and showers her with unfounded familiarity. He moves forward—
She screamed. It was a primordial force, the last gesture available to a broken mind. She fell forward, her back arching like a cat’s with every gasp for air. Her voice was harsher during the second scream, her throat aching. She felt the grit of the dirt road against her palms, felt the hard stone beneath her fingertips. She could see the boy bathed in the light of the burning shelter, then the elderly man with a shocked expression against the stone wall, then the boy, the man and the boy as she scampered back. Her shrieks increased and echoed through the shafts of the mine, striking many ears and exciting many sympathies.
It was in that moment he knew it hopeless loss to take her as he had planned. Her mind was preoccupied with the past, and her memories refused to give her up. He sighed as he gritted his teeth, forming a fist with one hand. The door closed behind him with a solid thud. She would decide for herself when she would return to the present.
