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His hiss bounces off the narrow corridor, multiplying like little whips of sound, commanding me to stop. I push forward, fighting against the magic weaving through the air. It’s not as powerful as in the general’s office, or maybe I’m not as weak anymore. Maybe the scent of freedom instilled new strength in me.
Little greens cushion the rough edges of the stone where they grow from cracks in the walls, the feel oddly comforting for someone who has spent the past six years either on a ship or in a dungeon where not even a blade of grass sprouted in front of her window.
My hip and leg ache, but the pain is bearable with the rush of adrenaline in my veins. So close. The walls are at a slight angle, allowing me to walk straight instead of sideways, and there is a turn and a cluster of bushes ahead. If I duck into those, I might be able to shake my pursuer.
I make it all of fifteen steps before a shadow blocks out the light at the end of the corridor a few feet ahead, and my heart stops as the Crow lifts his feathered arm and hauls me out of my little escape route by my throat.
“I might try to run, too, if I were you,” he hisses, all-black eyes shuttering as he pins me in the spot, claws tightening. “But I will say this only once, and you better listen: There is no escape for you. I don’t need a cage to take you to your destination, no chains, not even magic.”
And I believe him. The way his claws dig into my windpipe in a controlled squeeze—not hard enough to stop my breathing but enough to only let wheezing gasps through—is all the proof I need.
“Do you understand?”
I can’t speak, so I hold that all-black gaze and nod as best as I can with a set of claws locked around my throat.
“Good.” His grasp loosens, and I slide down the wall, only now noticing the piercing pain where my back was pressed into the sharp rocks behind me. “Now, get up. We don’t have all day, and the king won’t be amused if he learns you tried to bolt.”
No matter how hard I try to hold them in, tears spring to my eyes as he drags me back to the cart the long way. Tears of fury, of desperation. For a few fearful breaths, I was close to freedom.
My hands curl into fists, and a stinging pain reminds me of the nail in my fist. My tears dry up, and I measure the distance to the next alley before I glance at the feathered neck that would be the best aim for the finger-long piece of iron. I don’t hesitate as I ram it into the fairy’s flesh right as he tries to push me back into the cage.
The Crow roars, drawing the attention of the guards at the pier, but his grasp slips, and I twist out of his hold, backing out of the cage and running for the dark alley that could be my path to freedom. I don’t look back—and I don’t need to. The Crow’s claws dig into my arms as he catches me right at the corner, his iron hold not budging as I thrash against it.
“One more stunt like that,” he hisses as he throws me over his shoulder the way he had at the prison, completely ignoring my fists drumming on his lower back in an attempt at getting him to let me go, “and I will tell the king that, unfortunately, his bride died on the transfer from Fort Perenis.” He locks his claws around my knees, preventing me from kicking out with my legs. “Maybe I’ll throw you overboard once we’re too far out on the waters for you to swim back. I’m sure Tavras will find him another woman before Ret Relah.”
Wait. My entire body slackens as his words register. “What?”
He doesn’t bother carrying me back to the cart but walks straight to the pier, the guards giving him a wide berth as he steps onto the wooden planks. I don’t see much but their fear-filled faces as they stare after the winged menace and the pity in their eyes when their gazes slide to me.
“Help!” I scream, pitting my remaining strength against the fairy’s grasp. Yet, there isn’t much left with my body exhausted from lack of sleep, lack of nourishment, and lack of a peaceful moment in the past nine months.
The guard closest to us grabs his sword, half-tugging it from its sheath but stopping as if he thinks better of it, and shakes his head.
It dawns on me then that none of them will help me. Not one single armed man will stand up for me as the Crow carries me to the single boat at the end of the pier. This is sanctioned by the King of Tavras. I’m a convicted criminal and was handed over by the king’s general. There is no help for me. No freedom. No future.
“Maybe I’ll throw you overboard,” the Crow repeats as he ungently dumps me in the back of the boat before he steps in behind me. I scramble into a crouch, not daring to stand with my head spinning from being upside down for so long.
He hauls in the rope and pushes the boat away from the pier with one strong motion of his feathered arm.
I’m so nauseous I might puke over the railing for the first time in years.
“Not that.” I gesture at the water, wondering if drowning would be a mercy compared to being chosen as the Crow King’s—“Bride. You said you’d tell the king that hisbridedied on the transfer from Fort Perenis.”
The Crow ducks under the beam of the mainsail, reaching for the halyard.
“That—” His hissed voice still sends shudders of terror through me, but I’m too busy fighting to keep my empty stomach stable to shrink back into the railing. “Last year was Askarea’s. Next year is Cezux’s turn.”
The turn for what? Askarea… The fairylands. And Cezux, the human realm west of my homelands. What did those two realms do?
When I don’t react with anything other than a confused blink, he pulls on the halyard, making the sail shoot up, and secures it before bracing his claw on the railing beside him a good five feet away from me. I take my first good look at him, recognizing that his shape is mostly human. Only those winged arms ending in claws, and of course, the beaked face and feathered head and torso. I swallow the bile in my throat.
“The king needs a new bride.” He shrugs, and the feathers covering his scalp turn into brown hair and the face more human, except for those all-black eyes and the beak. Those remain. But his voice is less of a hiss when he tells me, “This year, it’s Tavras’s turn, and Tavras chose you.”
Instead of letting me process the meaning of his words, he bends over and picks up a bag I hadn’t noticed beside the mast. The boat is already moving, it’s swaying both soothing and upsetting as memories and fears mingle.
Bride. I am to be his king’sbride. Not that I understand what that means; only it adds up. The tales and the whispers of women disappearing in the night, taken by feathered fairies. Only women—brides.
“You mean the King of Askarea?” I clarify because I need to know where we are going and what level of horror to expect.
