Three Kings, One prey

Freya

It was so dark outside, but I had to run beneath it in spite of this. Gasher Crane and his son Boris, with his fat neck were in hot pursuit, their cries slurred by cruelty and cheap whiskey.

"Come back here and have your beating like a good girl, you ungrateful wretch! Feyra!"

The cold mud of the fields was under my bare feet as I put distance between us. An hour of running had left my lungs on fire; sweat and the autumn chill had made my cotton dress cling to me. The hem was in tatters and I was without the cracked shoes they had made me put up with for three winters. Wild bramble had put blood on my shins but I hardly noticed. There was a terror in my gut, primal and raw, and an urge to put as much ground as I could between myself and the farms.

They meant to sell me.

I tripped over a root and let out a bitter little laugh at the thought of it. Sell me as one would a heifer or a bag of grain. All because the Baron Eder, that old ruin of a man with his greasy wrinkles who couldn't be bothered to turn into so much as a mouse, had set his eyes on me in the market a month past and wanted a bride of a certain age. And Gasher, the greedy swine, saw an opportunity to put some coin in his pocket.

A thousand of them.

Mertle had told me as much this afternoon when she put the iron skillet to my face. "Wash up real nice and put a smile on, you stupid girl," she'd bellowed, "the Baron and his lot will be here at first light to make the collection." The papers were signed. Gasher had already put away a fifty coin deposit and a bottle of brandy.

So I put my back to it and ran. And if they caught me I knew there would be no quarter shown. They would put chains on me like a hound and haul me back to the house where I have been in service since I was six.

Cresting a hill I took in a great breath of air, the wind raking through my hair, long and dark and lousey from Mertle's refusal to let me have clean water. Off in the distance was the smudge of the Whispering Woods against the horizon. Forbidden, everyone would tell you. Old and deep, with bandits and outlaws and things not entirely human making their home in there.

What was there to lose?

To the left was the main road and the chance of running into the Baron's men. To the right the farmlands of the next town over, where all of Gasher's "ward" was known to them and they would do their honourable duty and see me returned. The woods were the only option. The Cranes were too superstitious to venture in after dark and risk their souls.

As for monsters with fangs and claws I didn't give them the time of day. I had my whole life to know the likes of Gasher and Mertle and Boris. Those were the ones to be afraid of.

"I see her! Making for the damn woods! You fool, it is a dead end!"

Another shout from behind, nearer now. I did not deign to see who it was, just drove on, my body in revolt. I was wiry with endurance from years of hard work and not enough to eat, no muscle to speak of, but my spirit was not to be broken. I would not be sold. There has to be more to a girl than what they made of me.

I went straight into the treeline, letting the branches flay at my arms and face. The oaks and pines were thick enough to put an end to any light from the full moon that had served me in the open. I came down hard on my knees, stones biting my hands as I pushed on.

At the edge of the wood the Cranes were putting on the brakes. "Let her go and be eaten by the shades, you idiot, maybe that will teach her. I won't be going in that cursed place." Boris, the coward.

"Ten coins and you will see her crawling back before the sun is up," said Gasher, true to form.

They would wait then, for me to come back in tears and cold. They would think they had value for their money by lunch. They didn't know me at all.

I rose and went on. For hours on end I would walk, run, stumble and finally crawl. I was jumpy at every noise: a branch breaking in the distance, an owl hooting or some small creature skittering by. Still I put one foot in front of the other. In my head I could see I was likely making circles, only to end up in deeper dark, but it was preferable to return to that place of hell. Preferable to being put on sale.

When my body could no longer be made to go on I let it. Legs like jelly and a spinning head, I fell to my knees at the mossy foot of a great tree, gasping for air. Thirst and hunger were upon me as well as a weariness I could not put into words. The back of me throbbed from Mertle's skillet and there was blood on a score of nicks and scrapes. I drew my knees up and put in a prayer to whatever might be listening for some measure of help.

The ground then opened up under me.

A sharp cry left me as I tumbled into a hole where none should have been, the earth caving in with my weight. Some manner of trap, an old hunting pit perhaps. I came down hard, what seemed a full story's drop, on a floor of slick dirt and all the wind was driven from me. Landed wrong on my ankle and it was agony; there was the taste of blood in my mouth.

I lay still for a time, staring up at the pinprick of moon far above and waiting for the ability to draw breath. When I did, the odour of it reached me. A musky thing, serpentine, part smoked amber and old moss and something else, something you would call ancient and dangerous.

Then I heard the sound of scales on the dirt. There was no mistaking it.

Heart thudding against my ribs as if to break free, I wrenched myself into a sitting position to have a look around. I would have done better not to.

It was an underground chamber of sorts, some twenty feet in diameter and roughly round. The packed earth walls were smooth and shone with moisture, and from them ran off several tunnels. The floor was more than dirt. It was alive with snakes, a writhing mass of them. Dozens, if not hundreds. Tiny brown gardeners and pythons of a dark hue and length to match my own. I made out the diamond of a viper's head and the cold intelligence in its eyes, the hourglass of a copperhead, a black mamba coiled and deadly by the wall.

They were all over and they had me in their sights.

My blood went cold. I put a hand to my throat and tried to put some distance between us but the tunnel was too slick and my ankle would not allow it. I went down on my hands and a searing pain lanced through my left forearm.

There was a snake there, a young viper of an angry disposition, fangs sunk in deep. For a moment it stayed put to put its venom in my system and then it let go and was gone.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, loud enough to ring in my ears.

Freya

There was that kind of pain that makes you weep set in right away. Like fire in the veins, up the arm to the chest. I made an attempt to get to my feet but my legs gave way and I was on the ground once more, vision going fuzzy at the edges. This was the end of me. Not a bride, not sold, just dead in a viper's pit in the Whispering Woods. Better than Gasher's attic.

Yet I could do nothing. My heart was in an irregular staccato, my breathing shallow, the venom was having its effect. And the snakes were slithering in, drawn by the vibration of me, the fear.

Until there was a change in the air, so fine I nearly didn't notice it. They halted, forked tongues in the air, heads up. The hissing and rustling of the chamber was at an end.

And he was there.

I put it down to the venom playing tricks on me, making my head swim and my sight unsteady. A tall figure in black was coming out of a tunnel, moving with a liquid grace one would not expect of a man. He made no haste, simply glided over to me without a sound.

He was taller than any I had come across. Dressed in black silk and trousers and boots of fine leather, the colour of him seemed to absorb the light. His face was all angles, a lean jaw and high cheekbones, winged brows of dark hair over hooded eyes the colour of molten gold with pupils to match a serpent's. Jet black hair fell like oil past his shoulders.

He looked like every dark fairy tale I'd ever heard when I was a little girl. He looked like death and sin and something far more dangerous. The way he gazed at me as if I were the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

My vision was so blurry, I was dizzy. I tried to speak, to beg for help, but all that came out was a weak, wet cough.

With a fluidity to his every motion he crouched before me. An intensity in his way of looking at me set my fevered skin on edge as he cocked his head. When he put out a hand I drew back, braced for some pain; what I got was the tenderest of touches from his long, elegant fingers as they swept a tangle of hair off my face. I had never known such tenderness.

"You have come to rest in my pit," he intoned. There was a hypnotic quality to his voice, deep and rich, like honey on gravel. "One of my brood has seen fit to bite you. I make my apologies. They are territorial."

My tongue was too heavy and my lips too numb to put in a word. The venom was on the move and with it my wits.

He flared his nostrils and his countenance underwent a subtle change, a hint of surprise giving way to something of a possessive nature. "You have an interesting scent, little one. You smell... impossible." He drew in a breath and there was a low growl from his chest, dangerous and quiet. "The very scent of fate."

A thump went through my heart, lurching and hard. I was aware of a terrible pressure in my chest as the venom made its way to my core and my body convulsed. I was dying of it.

"No," he said, all business now. "Not when I have you. You are not going to die here." His powerful hands closed over my wounded forearm with an authority that was startling.

He brought my arm up to his mouth. My mind was too addled to make much of the odd intimacy of the act with a snake bite behind it. I felt his lips on the wound and then he began to suck at it. It was a burn and a balm in one. With every pull of his mouth the poison left me and the fire in my veins was put out.

Sagging into him with a weak moan, I was taken in by his free arm and drawn to the broad expanse of his chest. For all the chill of the chamber he was warm, his muscles corded under the silk of his coat. I could smell him, that old, powerful musk.

He let go of my arm to spit a black wad of venom on the ground and looked at me again. In his golden eyes, hooded and intense, was something I could not put a name to.

"Let me see your eyes," he made me.

I fluttered my lashes in compliance and for a second my vision cleared of the gray. I saw him as he was, his face inches from mine, so beautiful it was hard to believe.

"Now," he drawled, his voice husky. "We will have the antidote, shall we?"

And he put his mouth to mine.

It was no human kiss, nothing a stranger would give. He came down on me as if to take a blessing and a jolt of electric fire ran from head to toe at the contact. His grip on my arm softened while his other hand went to the back of my skull to tilt my head and make of it what he would. His lips were soft and yet they commanded. I was being marked, sealed. Some old magic seemed to be at work, binding us.

King Salazar Kaan knew well enough how to counter the venom of his kin with a serpent shifter's saliva. But the magic that flared at our first touch was unanticipated. He was rocked back on his heels, a guttural noise in his chest that was not of the predator but of one who has come to understand his destiny.

In a beat or two he was done. I was left with my heart hammering at my ribs, my breath in short gasps, my skin hot. The danger and the venom were things of the past. All that remained was the sizzling memory of his kiss and the man himself, this impossibly fine snake hunter.

His pupils were wide, the vertical slits in the molten gold of his eyes nearly gone. And I saw a tremor in his hands. This man was as much under the spell of it as I was.

"Who are you?" I croaked.

The smile he gave me was slow and devastating. A thumb caressed my jaw, softly and with possession.

"I am Salazar Kaan," he purred. "King of the Serpent Nation and the Nightfang Dominion. And you..." he leaned close to murmur in my ear, "you are my fated mate, you beautiful little creature who has fallen in my den. I have waited centuries for you."

Then the world went dark.

Freya

It was at the age of six that I came to understand love is nothing but a transaction.

The winter Mama passed, she was coughing her lungs out on a bloody rag with a fever eating her alive. Papa was gone a month after, a victim of a beam in the barn that caved in while he was toiling for the coin needed to put food on the table for the farm. In some ways I was an orphan, in others not; there were second cousins and other distant relations, I suppose. But the village priest made one assessment of my scrawny, weeping face and put me in with Gasher and Mertle Crane. The Lord and Lady, as they were called. "They are God-fearing," the priest told me. "Respectable people with a roof and room at their table for one such as you."

Room at their table was what he meant. In practice it was a cold, dusty nook in the attic beside an old trunk full of moth-eaten blankets.

I was never a child in their eyes. From day one I was a set of hands and knees to be put to work, a voice to be barked at to go to the well. My recollection of that house is of thankless, grinding labour, of a stomach so empty it kept me from sleeping, and of bruises on my arms like dark flowers.

Mertle was a tall, gaunt woman with severe gray eyes and a long face. Her hands were bony and strong, like claws. She would put her hand across my face for raising my voice or throw hot soup if it didn't please her. And Gasher, her husband, a fat man with a red nose and a mean streak, would have none of my slowness. He'd take hold of my ear when I was late with his boots and put me on my knees to curse the parents who had left him with a burden.

Then there was their son, Boris. Three years my senior and a pudgy little bully with all of his father's cruelty and his mother's guile but neither of their wits. He would waylay me in the pantry and make off with my bread, or corner me in the barn to pull my hair and say things to make me sick. I was wise enough to keep my distance from him.

Time wore on and I faded into the background. A scullery girl. A maid. I had no school, no friends, no dolls. Just work from before dawn to after dusk. I would be on my hands and knees scrubbing until my knuckles were raw, or washing their clothes in water so cold my fingers went numb. Mertle was fond of reminding me of my debt to them, for feeding me their leavings and tolerating my poor blood in a good Christian home.

At sixteen I had the look of twenty-five; by seventeen I was forty. I wasn't permitted the mirrors in the house, but a window pane or the brass of a door handle would show me what I was: a pale, thin thing with haunted eyes and hair that lye soap couldn't seem to clean. I saw the exhaustion. I saw a person devoid of joy.

"Be grateful," was the instruction.

"You're lucky we didn't put you in an orphanage or turn you out on the street," Mertle would tell me, putting a finger to my chest. "You are worthless, Feyra. We are the only reason you are still breathing."

Perhaps. Dying has its appeal. It is a kind of freedom. What kept me from it was a spiteful little spark that wouldn't be put out, a whisper in my head telling me there was more to life than this and that I would not let them have the last word.

Then came the day I ran. It began like any other. As is my habit, I was on my feet before the sun to put a fire in the kitchen stove and see to the porridge for breakfast. The work of the day had left my wrists chafed from all the scrubbing, and there was a dull throb in my shoulder where Boris put me up against the wall last week. I was ravenous too; I had stowed a heel of hard bread in my apron for later.

I was in the process of setting the table when Mertle made her way in. She was in her Sunday best, a dark blue wool dress with lace at the collar, and wore an expression of cold amusement that put me more on edge than any shouting would have.

"Feyra," she purred, savoring the name. "Come here, girl. Let me have a good look at you."

I did as I was told, hands folded before me and my gaze fixed on the floor.

She took her time walking around me, her eyes appraising. "Hmm. You are thin, but no matter. A man these days wants a slim bride. Your skin is pale enough to be considered refined. And your hair is a shambles, but we can pin it up. We will put some decency on you for the Baron."

The name coiled in my chest like a snake. "The Baron?" I heard myself say, not liking the tremor in my voice.

Mertle's smile broadened. "You have won a prize of sorts. Baron Eder has been in the market for a young woman to warm his bed and give him an heir. He was pleased with what he saw of you at the market last month and is prepared to put down a handsome sum for you."

A coldness spread through me. "You are selling me?"

"Selling is an ugly word," Gasher rumbled from the door. He was already well into his bottle, his shirt tight across his belly. "We are making an arrangement. A marriage. Not a bad thing for a girl with no family, no money and no future to speak of."

"He is old," I whispered. "Barely able to put one foot in front of the other. He can't even shift. He is not a shifter."

In this village, to be human without the beast in your blood is to be cursed, incomplete. There were stories about the Baron's line having lost their ability long ago, of his health and seed being weak.

"Rich, though," Gasher said with a swig of his drink. "He is handing over a thousand coins for your hand. One thousand, Feyra. With that I can settle the farm, get a new plow, or drink myself under the table for twelve months. It does not matter if he cannot shift, so long as he can lift his purse."

"You can't do this," I blurted out. "I am not some cow to be put on the block."

The back of Mertle's hand caught me before I could register the movement, turning my head and leaving a coppery taste in my mouth. "Ungrateful wretch!" she spat. "After all we have put out for you? You owe us, Feyra! Every bit of it. You will pay your debt and ensure we have our comfortable old age."

"The Baron arrives at dawn tomorrow," Gasher said, wiping his mouth. "You will be presentable. Try to make a run for it and I will chain you to a post until he is here. Then I will still sell you, only you will be wed with a black eye. Make of it what you will."

It was then that something in me gave way. Not with a sound, but in a quiet, irrevocable fashion. I looked at them: the leering Boris in the doorway, Mertle's smug face, Gasher's greed. For the first time I saw them for what they were. Not kin. My jailers. I was nothing more than their property.

I gave a slow nod. "Very well, ma'am. I will go and clean up."