I shook myself free of him, and didn’t say a thing as I portaled away.

  3

  Lisane

  Jelena spent that first night with me on the cot—she offered to sleep on the floor, but I knew from the dungeon how much that hurt. Plus, I didn’t plan on sleeping much besides.

  No, I stayed up most of the night, her on one side, and Finx on the other, listening to her snores and feeling him stir restlessly, as I tried to come up with plans that would somehow change things and lead me back to Rhaim.

  There was no guarantee of how long my family would keep me here. My father was a forward-thinking man—I doubted he would have brought me back, if he didn’t already know who he would give me to next, and I knew Vethys had brothers, and there were definitely other eligible Kers.

  I was unwilling to admit how hopeless the situation was, because the further and longer I was away from Rhaim, the harder it was to imagine a life without him. I would’ve given anything to get the past day back and change everything in it somehow.

  And by dawn, I had a semblance of a plan.

  The second Jelena went out to get us food and water the next morning, Finx waved me closer with a pedipalp. “Can I talk now?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I quietly whispered. “And thank you for not talking earlier. ”

  “I remember what you said about spiders here. And I met a few under your cot when I was waiting to talk to you yesterday. You’re right, they’re very underwhelming. ” He sounded disappointed, while I glanced back at my cot in horror, then I shook my head.

  “Never mind that now, Finx—can you do me a favor, before she gets back?”

  “Certainly!” he said with a bob.

  “I need a piece of webbing, this size,” I said, drawing out a square on the ground half as big as my cot. “Make it thin enough to fold a hundred times? But also, if you can, make it so I can use it like paper. ”

  He bobbed again, then scratched his back with several legs in thought, before embarking on creating it for me. He was finishing it when Jelena came back, carrying a basket and a water bag.

  “What’s—” she began to ask, as I quickly put my finger to my mouth to shush her. I was certain the guards outside could hear almost everything. “The reason you’re up already, princess? I would have thought you’d like to sleep in. ” She covered for herself, setting the food down on the small table I’d been given, and coming over to see.

  “Oh, thank you for bringing me food. I’m so hungry,” I lied, while gesturing her over to the ground, then whispering. “How big is this place?”

  Her eyes widened. “Very. ”

  “How far away did you walk? How many guards or mages were there?” I used my hands to illustrate possible perimeters on the sheet of webbing.

  “Why?” I closed my eyes rather than answer her, and when I opened them again I found her giving me a serious look. “Because you mean to escape,” she answered her own question, barely daring to mouth the words.

  I swallowed, then admitted it. “Yes. ”

  “To go back to your beast?”

  I shook my head quickly. “That would condemn him. ” All I knew for sure was that I couldn’t stay here—and I needed to leave before I was given to someone else.

  She nodded and went over to the cot, poking the cushions industriously, until she’d evacuated a downy feather from one. I watched her snap it halfway down the spine, then thread the feathers through the broken piece, till she’d made a tiny quill, and then pick up what apparently was a lidded mug of coffee out of the basket. She dipped the quill into it and painted a little brown square on Finx’s web.

  “Here we are,” she cheerfully said aloud, tapping her quill on the map, before re-dipping her quill, sketching several more tents, and then taking a sip of coffee, before offering the mug to me.

  Jelena was on a mission after that—I sent her roving far and wide—and she’d come back and count out how many tents down she’d made it, and what their positions were over the next few days. She hadn’t been joking; the camp was almost a city now, on a wide plain, at an intersection of several roads and with a river nearby, all of which were used for transporting men and supplies.

  In the interim, my father sent me bribes—probably as often as he could track Jelena down to deliver them. I’d been given gifts of fancy dresses to wear—though I only wore them when Jelena had taken my “boys” clothes to wash—delicately carved animals like I’d used to play with in my youth, and necklaces strung with fine stones.

  The most galling of these presents was an empty journal and a writing stick.

  Even if they had not conjured up memories of the life I’d lived with Rhaim—what did he think I had to write about here, with nothing to look at except for these four walls?

  It made me wish that I could catch them on fire. . . and someday I intended to.

  I just needed to talk Finx into continuing my experiments in secret.

  “This seems like a bad idea,” he said when I’d explained to him what I needed, on the sixth day after Jelena had gone out.

  “It very well could be,” I confessed, rolling up the sleeve of my shirt to show my skin to him. “But it’s the only way I can gain magic. ”

  He spun back and forth between me and the tent’s door, then began rubbing his back furiously with his hindmost set of legs, making himself shed fine black hairs. “But what if someone catches us?”

  He’d seen what’d happened to Rhaim for biting me, after all. “I will defend you with my life, Finx. I swear. ”

  He made a dancing move then, zipping quickly from side to side. “But I don’t want to. ”

  I sighed. This was what I’d been afraid of. “I understand. ” Maybe I could talk Jelena into stabbing me with a paring knife.

  And as if to prove Finx’s worries right, my brother finally came in. He paused for a moment, clearing the webs that sealed the door closed with disgust, which gave Finx a chance to run beneath the cot, then he looked at me, sitting on the sturdy fabric floor of the tent, in the same pants and shirt I’d been stolen in, and sighed. “I thought you had a maid?”

  “I do. ” I stood, dusting my hands off, beginning to tense. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  My long hair was in its braid behind my shoulders, which gave Helkin the opportunity to see my ears and the hoops I’d pierced through them. “You need to take those out. ”

  “Why?”

  “Because they mar your perfection. ”

  I rolled my eyes so hard they may have seen my own brain. “I do not want to. ”

  “Do not make things harder on yourself. ” He clucked.

  “Harder on you, more like. Let us not pretend that I am the one keeping myself here,” I said, falling into the one chair my tent possessed.

  “You don’t have any other choice,” he said, like that was true. “It is the consequence of your station. ”

  “A station I never wanted nor required. ” I felt myself filling with an empty rage then, no less potent for not having magic to attach itself to inside me.

  Helkin gave me a profoundly lost look. “You wouldn’t talk like that if Mother were alive. ”

  I sat up suddenly. “Because Mother would’ve never let Father give me away to the beast, and you know it! Yet somehow you, her son, stood idly by. ” The thought of it made me want to spit at the ground at his feet. “How crucial was he? How many Deathless did he kill?” I pinned Helkin with my eyes. “Just how much was I worth, brother?”

  He grit his teeth before answering, then I watched himself forcibly calm. “I know your captivity was hard on you. Father told me about your letter. ”

  My letter. In which I’d illuminated everything I’d suffered at Rhaim’s hand.

  I stood up very slowly. “It was better there than here. ”

  “You can’t possibly mean that,” Helkin said, curling a lip in disgust.

  “I can. At least the All-Beast owned his cruelty towards me, and never tried to wrap it in a glove. ” I picked up one of the dresses I’d been given off the floor, wanting to wind it around his neck. “Don’t you dare for one moment think that what you are doing is kinder. ”

  “Lisane—” he protested.

  I threw the dress at him, rather than listen to more of his ignorant lies. “Why did you even come here?” I shouted.

  “Because!” he shouted back.

  I was not cowed, I only wished that I’d managed to talk Finx into biting me. I stared straight at him, demanding that he take full responsibility for whatever he’d say next.

  “Because,” he repeated, at a lower volume. “Father’s announced it. Your courtship begins tomorrow, and seven days from now, you will be officially unveiled. ” My jaw dropped in horror as he continued. “Three of the Seven are in talks with him—who would have thought?” he said, beaming with patriotic pride. “So many horrible things have happened to get us here, but Drelleth’s sun is rising, at long last. ”

  I rocked slightly where I stood, feeling my blood pounding in my ears at being given away again.

  No, that was the wrong word for it.

  I was to be sold.

  “It’s just like you always wanted, Lissy,” Helkin said softly, trying to encourage similar kindness from me.

  What would I be worth this time? Soldiers? Cows to feed the camp? The addition of more mages to his cause?

  My brother was right, there was a time when I’d been sad I wouldn’t be unveiled. When I’d been promised to Vethys, there’d been no point, because I was already betrothed—so not having an unveiling was something I’d felt the lack of, before, in my pre-Rhaim life, knowing I had so few things to look forward to, or back upon.

  But now. . . the Kers would want to see me.

  And they would decide if I was pleasing, to them.

  The thought of being paraded in front of them made me want to retch. . . but I also realized I would never have a better opportunity to ruin my prospects in front of a crowd.

  Everyone knew mages were barren.

  So if I couldn’t get Jelena to stab me, I’d race outside and make my own guards take me down.

  I would get magic in me one way or another, between now and the night of my unveiling.

  “Right?” Helkin asked again with hope.

  “Yes,” I said slowly. “It. . . is. ” I exhaled roughly through pursed lips—I would have to pretend to be on board with this plan for the next week, because if I didn’t behave, my father might summarily hand me off again, and if he did, who knew if I’d ever escape? I couldn’t very well talk some Ker’s mother or sister into pricking me with sewing needles once in chambers, nor would I get very much magic in me if they did. “Can you get me my favorite perfume?” I asked. “The one that smelled like honey?”

  “Of course. ” Helkin’s expression slid to relief immediately, happy to have “me” back again, not realizing that it was only the slimmest version of myself standing before him because he could no longer comprehend my entirety. “That was Mother’s favorite too. ”

  I hugged myself. “I remember. ” After she’d died, I’d spent the next month sleeping in her bed, trying to breathe the last of her out of her sheets.

  And Helkin. . . had abandoned me.

  We’d been so close, up until Father had taken him up into the castle—and then after our mother’s death, he’d left me entirely alone, no matter how many messages I gave to maids and mages to give to him. At first I thought they weren’t getting passed along, but then I realized he was possessed of his own two feet.

  I’d been so mad at him for so long because of it. And Father would only come by seemingly to torture himself—he would stand in the center of the main chamber without talking, and stare at the ground where the Deathless had come through, as though he could wind back time with his eyes.

  “You know, you look like her, Lisane,” Helkin said, breaking our thoughtful silence. “Like the portraits of her in the palace, from when she was younger. ”

  I remembered those, too. Oddly, in all of them, the painters had taken the liberty of placing her outside. “Thank you. ”

  Helkin looked pained, then said, “I think that’s why he doesn’t come to visit you. ”

  I knew he meant our father. “Why?”

  “Seeing you hurts him. ”

  “Hurts. . . him?” I asked archly.

  Helkin heaved a sigh, to be facing down the angry version of me again. “You don’t know what he’s done for you. For all of Drelleth—”

  I stared at him like he had grown a second head. “And when exactly did he give you to a beast?”

  My brother gave me a wounded look that he had no right to have. “We have all made sacrifices. ” Then he turned curt, in imitation of our father. “I’ll see that you get your perfume, and anything else you need to prepare. ” He looked around the chaos of my room, which echoed my despondence. “Did you need more maids?”

  “No—just the one is fine,” I defended Jelena. “She’s excellent with hair. ”

  “If you say so. ” It was clear he didn’t believe that, but he wasn’t willing to risk further discussion. “Stop wearing pants, and take out your earrings—please. ”

  I grimaced, but nodded. “All right. ”

  He nodded back, then left.

  I waited until the fabric door had fallen back into place to sink back down to the floor, and Finx emerged not long after. All eight of his eyes followed the path my brother had taken, and then he whirled back to face me.

  “Show me your arm,” he hissed.

  I did so without questioning and bit my lips.

  He ran forward and crunched his fangs into me—the same ones that crushed bugs and killed birds. I felt them pierce the skin and then slide in, tearing flesh, and I swallowed a startled yelp, as blood began to trickle down. Finx disengaged his jaw from me carefully, and began panicking right after.

  “Did I hurt you?” he whispered in his most quiet voice.

  I didn’t answer, I just nodded, tears welling from my eyes. He’d been a hundred times more direct than Rhaim ever was, up until his beast’s bite.

  Finx quickly patted himself all over his body with his hindlegs, setting off a wave of fur. “Did it work?”

  We both watched as the wounds slowly, slowly closed.

  And inside of me, I felt the beginning of my powers stir.

  There was hope for me, yet.

  I rolled up my other sleeve to offer my other arm. “Do it again. Please. ”

  4

  Rhaim

  I walked into my castle and found it empty.

  I had known that it would be, but I wasn’t prepared for how much finding it that way would hurt.

  How could I have been?

  I had never been in love before.

  I had cared for people, I had experienced friendship in all of its many forms, and I had had more than my fair share of sex when I had desired it.

  But I had never had my vision of the world narrow down to just one person. I could so easily hear the echoes of Lisane’s throaty laugh in the halls in my mind, and close my eyes and remember the way her eyes could go from innocent to hungry. I scented both her and the smoke we’d shared in my library, and I’d never manage to use my healing bath again without remembering being face down in her sweet, pulsing cunt.

  I had known my death was entirely dependent on her.

  But I hadn’t realized how dependent I had come to rely on her for living.

  Because what was here for me, without her, now?

  I wandered through the rooms Lisane had been allowed to be in, her bedroom, her bathroom, the library, and the stable, knowing I should have broken open all the other doors. I shouldn’t have hidden anything from her, ever—from the miscellaneous closets that held rarely used items, all the way down to the darkest depths of my heart.

  And then I reached my bedroom, where our sheets were still tangled, and I could still scent her in the air.

  My beast, which I had assumed I’d exhausted, stepped forward inside of me again, raging anew.

  But there was nothing either of us could do now.

  Nothing but think.

  And possibly. . . plan.

  I roughly shoved my beast back inside myself and he let me, knowing that solving the problem of returning Lisane to our arms would require more than brute force, and I started to pace with intent.

  5

  Lisane

  Courtship gifts began arriving the very next day.

  The guards outside the tent wouldn’t bring them in—they couldn’t breach the door; it was against protocol—so it was up to Jelena to do so, and she was overburdened by them every morning: armfuls of carved wooden boxes, silk pouches, and dyed leather satchels embossed with artful stamps.

  Inside of each of these were assorted displays of wealth. Some were obvious, faceted jewels set in rings and brooches—many of these were in teardrop shapes that mirrored the stone my father wore. I was also given soft fur stoles, and shoes of fine silks made for someone with much smaller feet than mine. Other gifts were more obscure—one silver tin held a gift of what looked like cheese, but both Jelena and I were afraid to eat it. Another box was entirely full of blue butterfly wings, and I didn’t know what to make of that. I suspected they wanted to show me their country’s natural bounty, but what did it matter, when even if my father did choose to sell me to them I would hardly ever be outside?

  I opened that box for Finx when Jelena was gone, in case he knew more about them then I did, and he reached in to stir the wings with a disconsolate forepaw. “They cut out all the good parts,” he complained. I turned a little green, but petted him nonetheless.

  At least I hadn’t been given moths.