Chapter 4 4

Freya

Mertle’s smile broadened as she put a hand to my cheek, patting it with a sort of feigned tenderness after having just slapped the very same spot.

“See? You can be reasonable if you put your mind to it. That is a good girl. Now be a dear and fetch the water. I want you to look your prettiest, so scrub yourself till you are pink.”

I left the kitchen without another word. My heart was hammering in my chest, making it hard to think, and my hands would not stop their trembling. At the well I got some cold water and took it to the washroom at the back of the house where the pipes were always running. The room was small and leaking. I made short work of my old dress – had been wearing it for two years now – and set about washing with the lye soap. It was rough on the skin. I did my hair and nails and then stood before the cracked mirror Mertle has in there.

What I saw was hardly me. A stranger looked back, thin to the point of being gaunt. The collarbones were like blades under her pale flesh, the cheekbones pronounced. Her eyes were enormous and dark with fear, and her lips were chapped. Even with the wet hair combed back she was little more than a girl. Seventeen years old and my life was being taken from me.

Something lit up inside me then. A refusal to be cowed that had seen me through the neglect and the abuse all these years. I made a vow to the woman in the glass: they are not going to have me. I will not be put up for sale like an animal to some old man who wants to use me. I would rather die free.

I put my clothes back on and was quick about it. From the back of the cupboard in the washroom I took the heavy wool cloak, one Mertle never thought to check. I made a small bundle with a knife I’d come by in the yard some time ago, a bit of hard bread and a gold piece I had put aside from the odd penny or two I picked up over the years. Not a fortune, but it was all I had.

Boris does not bother to lock the back window, so I slipped out and put some distance between us. I made for the fields and the dark of the night, not the road or town where they would be hunting for me. Bare feet and all, I ran until my lungs were on fire and the frozen earth was bleeding my soles.

Which brings me to this moment. To a bed of luxury and a ceiling of black obsidian that catches the light from a hundred candles in the chandeliers above. My head is addled but the body feels fine, warm and at rest. The ankle pain has vanished. And yet here I am in a den of vipers, the venom coursing through me.

But I am not dead. Any pain in my shoulders was gone. The snake bite on my forearm had all but mended, leaving nothing but a pale pink blemish more befitting a scar of some weeks’ standing than one inflicted minutes ago.

I made to sit up and let my eyes accustom themselves to the low, sensual light of the room. It was a bedroom of such proportions it put the whole of the Cranes’ farmhouse to shame. Tapestries of midnight blue and emerald, worked with silver serpents, hung on the walls; underfoot was polished black marble broken up by thick rugs of dark fur. The bed I had been in was a vast expanse of downy pillows, velvet and silk that seemed to engulf me. Around me the heavy, dark furniture was carved with the coiled forms of snakes, their scales catching the candle glow.

A king’s palace. A serpent king’s.

Then the recollection hit me: the cold fall, the beautiful man and his kiss, his assertion that we were fated mates. My pulse picked up.

Where was he? If this was his chamber, would he come in to make a husband’s claim of me? The idea stirred an odd mix of emotions, fear foremost among them, yet there was another feeling too, a kind of hunger awakened when his lips met mine that left my skin tingling and my face hot.

The door opened and I looked up.

It was not the Snake King who entered, but a servant. She was an elegant woman of olive skin and dark hair, her simple amethyst silk gown no disguise for the slit pupils of a shifter.

“You are awake, my lady,” she said, her countenance carefully neutral. “I am Seraphine. Lord Kaan has sent me to you. Do you want something to eat or drink?”

“I... where is he?” I tried to say, but it was little more than a croak.

Seraphine moved into the room with a tray of bread, fruit and cheese, setting it on the table by the bed. She filled a glass from a pitcher and offered it to me. I accepted it with unsteady hands and put it to my lips, the cool water a relief to my throat.

“The King is with his council at present,” she told me. “He has given orders for your comfort and that you remain in these chambers until he is back.”

I put the glass down. He was detaining me. No matter how fine the cage, it was still one, as much as the Cranes had made of me.

“I am no prisoner,” I said, if only to hear myself say it.

“A guest then. An honored one,” Seraphine replied without so much as a flicker of expression. “The King is rather possessive of what belongs to him.”

“I don’t belong to him.” The protest was out of me before I could think better of it.