by Imogen Sera
Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Imogen's Notes
More Books
One
Some nights, Elsie knew exactly why she couldn’t sleep: she would have seen an expression during the day that was familiar in that old, soul sickening way, or perhaps someone unknowingly used a phrase from her life before the palace. Sometimes, it was nothing more than inhaling the scent of her dinner, her plate piled high with roasted chicken and vegetables and potatoes and everything of which she’d spent half her life dreaming. Sometimes, the servants would have combined the spices and herbs in the exact right way to take her right back there. On those nights, when she’d been reminded, she knew exactly why she couldn’t sleep.
On this particular night, she knew why sleep wouldn’t find her, and it wasn’t from some reminder of the life she’d led before. It was the look that the queen had given her as she had insisted on an elaborate crown of braids for the queen’s long, dark hair. The look that had said, you’re tiresome. The look that had told her that the queen had other duties, and that Elsie’s love of pretty things was vain and vapid.
She hated that look, and she hated how often she got it. It wasn’t just the queen who directed it at her these days. Vivian seemed to be fond of it too, although hers was frequently accompanied by a barbed remark. There hadn’t been any vitriol from Vivian that day, which made Elsie feel surprisingly grateful. She didn’t know how many more times she could have slipped up to her room to cry privately.
It wasn’t the look, necessarily, which weighed on her. When she thought rationally, even she knew that she received far fewer exasperated looks than kind ones. It was the uncertainty she held about her position; it was the way that a dismissal from the palace would be the end of everything she’d built for herself, the end of the life she’d carefully arranged there. It was the fragility of her place in life.
She rose from her bed and crossed the room to her vanity when she realized she’d been staring at the ceiling for the last hour. The vanity was a pretty piece of furniture: old but solid, with vines carved into the legs. There was a border of roses around the mirror that Elsie had painted herself.
She plaited her hair around her head, her practiced fingers able to complete the work without her needing to concentrate at all. She liked it best that way, up in a golden circle around her crown, although she tried to make sure that she did something new with it every day. It wasn’t comfortable for sleeping, she admitted to herself, so she pulled the pins from her hair and shook it loose, where it hung to her elbows.
It was almost strange for her to see herself with her hair hanging freely. She gathered it again and braided it quickly, down her back, and let it hang over her shoulder. The short hairs in the front made a halo around her face, infuriating her as they always did. They seemed to be unable to be tamed.
She pushed her nightgown up onto her shoulder; the scalloped top had fallen around her arm. She needed to mend it, but the task had continually been pushed off. She ran her hands over the lace and arranged it so it lay nicely. Satisfied at last, she returned to her bed and fell into a restless sleep.
Two
It was strange, she thought, the sounds that became familiar so quickly. At one time in her life, it had been the sounds of the forest: the owls and night creatures, and in the summer, the symphony of crickets that rose up at dusk and lulled her to sleep. At another time, it had been muffled arguments and the sniffing of stray dogs as they looked for scraps to eat. After that, it had been the sounds of pleasure that had soothed her to sleep, although she hadn’t known what they were at the time.
It was easy to ignore, then, the odd little shuffling noise from the corner of her room. She lay in that odd, half-awake state as she listened to it, and she didn’t even realize that it should have alarmed her until it was too late.
Elsie hadn’t even been able to gasp—that was how quick he was. A big, warm hand covered her mouth; a big, warm body pressed over hers; and a big, warm man bared his teeth at her.
He was nothing like the shifters that lived at the palace. The ones she knew were...well, human, for lack of a better word. Civilized, if their thinking was a little backward sometimes—polite, hierarchical, witty and conversational—and it just so happened that when the need arose, they could transform into fire breathing monsters.
This man looked nothing like them. He had the height—true—and the big form that showed he was indeed like them. Aside from that, though, it was like comparing a hound to a wolf. His hair hung to his waist, his beard was halfway down his chest; both were matted and filthy and reeking. His eyes were wild, his teeth were bared, and he was stark naked.
She had a sudden, horrible thought, a thought that had kept her up at night on many, many occasions. She kicked her legs and bucked her hips and shrieked against his hand, and managed to maneuver her mouth to bite at his hand ferociously. He looked surprised, and then vaguely amused, but when she ground her teeth down on his finger and tasted blood, his amusement faded into anger.
“No,” he said. The sound of his voice was enough to surprise her for a second. It was low and gravelly, and the words that came out only came out with a great amount of effort. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, but it was...unused. He moved his free hand around her throat; didn’t press, just left it there as a reminder.
She stilled after a moment, her eyes locked onto his. The taste of his blood was still in her mouth and she wanted, desperately, to spit it out, but she didn’t want to...couldn’t move. His hand remained at her throat, a warning, and it was all she could feel. A big, warm hand on her slim, cold throat. She swallowed once and then began to tremble.
He grunted and there was something like regret on his face, but as he reached down on the bed, all she could focus on was his hand, and where it was. If he touched her, she would scream, the threat of a broken neck be damned.
He didn’t touch her, though. He just fumbled around for a minute. He hauled her up against him and held her like a child. He crossed her room to the window, glanced at the ground four stories below, and then glanced at her. She didn’t like the look he gave her. She didn’t like the way he moved.
She liked him even less a second later, when he shoved her through the window.
She was falling.
•••••
Her fall lasted half a second before a massive black talon wrapped around her waist. She fought against it at first, nearly useless without her arms that were tucked tightly against her.
Elsie had never been in the air like this, despite living almost exclusively with dragon shifting men for over a year. It was a surprising experience altogether, but what surprised her most was how very cold she was. The cold and the wind beat at every inch of her that was exposed. Her face might have been the coldest, but after a minute of consideration she conceded that it was her neck.
Her
fingers were stiff before long, and she couldn’t flex them no matter how hard she tried. Her feet, too, couldn’t move, and she wondered if the lack of control over her limbs was due to the frigid air all around them, or the fact that she was shivering so violently that surely all of her energy was consumed by that.
The other thing that surprised her was the beauty of the night sky, here without any lights to disturb the twinkling stars. A galaxy lay before her, if she avoided looking at the ground, which she was trying very hard to do.
She stared straight ahead, not down, not at the ground that was dizzyingly far away, and not up at the man—the monster—who was holding her.
The night sky was thick with black...not the black of her favorite silk gown, washed out and really more of a dark gray these days, but the rich, decadent black of crushed velvet. She thought that maybe she could feel it, maybe she could feel the softness running over her arms and feet and between her fingers. The sensation was pleasant, a little warm, altogether strange.
It took a moment for her sleep-addled brain to realize that she was feeling nothing but her limbs becoming numb.
As she pondered that, the velvety sky, the millions of twinkling lights, the soft warmth enveloping her, she thought that if she had to die, this might be one of the better ways. She didn’t want to, but she wasn’t sure that she had much choice, especially as her mind was becoming foggier and her limbs heavier. She was still being carried, of course, by the massive talons wrapped securely around her middle, but the more time went on, the more she felt as if she were trudging through mud. It was hard and exhausting and she had the distinct idea that she had no idea why she was doing it, no idea what the benefit was.
She chanced a glance upward at the great beast who was carrying her. Her chin tilted up long after she wished it to, and the man she’d seen, the man she’d felt, the man she’d smelled—they all seemed so at odds with the magnificent creature above her. She could only see his belly and wings, but they were magnificent.
She couldn’t discern the color, it was far too dark for that, but he reflected starlight.
A memory came to her then, from a place that she thought had been locked away forever. She had been young—after she lost her sister but before she lost her father—with a lovely golden braid, roaming through the forest. She came upon a hole in the ground...not a hole, she’d realized, but a well. Her sister had told her, once, about faerie holes, about how they were disguised as wells, but they were truly portals into different lands.
She knew the way to test it, so she’d found a large rock, the largest one she could hold in her small hands, and dropped it in. She counted the seconds to discover its depth, and she’d managed to count to fifty before she realized that she’d be counting all day. She’d peered into the well...the hole, she’d corrected herself, and she saw nothing but the familiar inky, velvety darkness. She’d turned from it, shivering, but then she’d heard something. It wasn’t the splash of her rock, it wasn’t its thud against hard ground, but it was the tempting laughter of a child. She'd leaned farther over and inhaled deeply.
The smell hadn't been anything like she expected. It should have been an earthy smell, something of worms and mud and decay, but what she got was more like something being baked, and...her mother’s perfume. She leaned more and more, and the more she leaned, the more she’d been beckoned by it. The darkness was soft...surely it would be a comfortable place to land. She’d almost done it, almost decided that she needed whatever lay on the other side of that hole, when a vague sense of wrongness overwhelmed her. She’d staggered back from it, and stared at the wicked thing until the desire had left her.
The same inky blackness was calling to her again, and she knew that she needed to fight it, needed to hold her eyes open. Maybe she’d been wrong, all those years ago, to not seize the opportunity. Maybe her mother had been on the other side.
That was her last thought as her head slumped and her eyes closed.
Three
Elsie awoke to a gray ground and a gray sky and a gray mountaintop.
It stretched as far as she could see, and aside from some white snow on distant peaks, she couldn’t see a single other color anywhere in the landscape surrounding her.
She was on the ground, but her cheek was pressed against something soft. It was gray, too, and soft. It held a tiny scrap of warmth so she pressed herself into it as well as she could.
She assessed herself mentally—she was freezing, which seemed to be the most pressing issue. She was still dressed in just her nightgown, and while she was pleased that it hadn’t been removed, it did very little to protect her from the frigid air.
Her breath curled in the air in front of her, and her jaw chattered as she tried and failed to keep it still. She felt along her limbs—there was no pain aside from the bone-deep cold, so she shifted her stiff joints and rose to her knees.
She looked around and saw nothing but miles and miles of slate gray rock in every direction. It seemed to stretch on endlessly; it all led to a great peak in the distance ahead of her. The peak shot up into the sky, far taller than the surrounding hills, and something like smoke came from the top of it. In front of her was a rocky cliff side, too tall for her to easily climb up.
The air was foul, stinking of ash and sulfur and decay. It reminded her of something primal, something ancient, something evil. Every instinct screamed at her to flee, to leave this place and get to safety, but as she looked around, she wondered how that would be possible.
She was on a shelf of rock, stretching out long to the side, but the cliff was directly in front of her, and behind her was a steep drop of at least twenty feet. She assessed the cliff again. She couldn’t climb it, although it wasn’t too tall, because her hands were aching and brittle from cold. She could hardly close them, let alone grip rocks to support her weight.
There was no going forward or back, and the drop curved around to her left. She looked to her right; the shelf narrowed as it continued on around a corner. She said a silent prayer that she could find a way off of the stupid mountain that way, and then she rose to her feet. What she’d been laying on looked like a small rug...it wasn’t, she realized. It was some sort of animal fur, gray like everything else, but warm enough that she wrapped it around her shoulders before she followed along the ledge.
She kept her eyes peeled as she walked, looking for a way up or a way down, looking for any sign of life. The cliff to her left grew higher, though, and the drop to her left grew more steep. There was just gray, above and below and all around her, so when the rock curved slightly and she saw a flash of yellow, she noticed it right away.
She wanted to run toward it, but her joints were stiff and her breathing was labored, so she kept up her slow pace. As she grew closer she realized it was a woman—the angered shouting gave it away.
“Juliette?” she called as loudly as she could, and the woman turned wildly to find her.
Juliette rushed toward her, seeming to be in better condition than Elsie. When Juliette threw her arms around her, she collapsed into her and pressed against her, greedy and eager for her warmth.
They weren’t friends, really, despite having lived at the palace together for half a year. Elsie was a lady-in-waiting, and Juliette was...well, Elsie had no idea. A friend of the prince’s mate? A familiar face out here, though—where she’d already resigned herself to freezing to death alone—certainly raised her spirits.
“Do you know where the hell we are?” Juliette asked, her teeth chattering. Neither woman made any move to release the other; the body heat between them was too precious to let go.
Elsie shook her head. “I was sleeping, and a man—a shifter—grabbed me, and...I don’t know. I don’t know what else.”
“Me too,” said Juliette. “Me too. Filthy fucking creature.”
Elsie couldn’t help her giggle. “Yes,” she said. “Was it the same man?”
Juliette shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll murder him if I ever see him again.
” She pulled her hands away from Elsie, finally, and brought them in front of her mouth and rubbed them together. She gestured behind her. “I’ve been back that way, it ends in a drop.”
Elsie’s eyes widened. “No way up or down? The other way’s the same.”
“Well,” said Juliette, “shit.”
“The rock’s not quite so high back where I was,” said Elsie. “I couldn’t climb it, but maybe with the two of us?”
Juliette smiled a feral smile. “I suppose it’s that or throwing ourselves off this fucking mountain.”
As they walked side by side, a heavy silence settled over them. The relief Elsie had felt at finding someone else had faded into worry; worry that another person here with her would only mean two frozen corpses instead of one.
As they approached the spot where Elsie had awoken, Juliette eyed the rock wall critically. “I think I can climb it,” she said, “as long as my fingers cooperate.” She flexed them a few times and breathed on them.
Elsie stood next to her to help her up, and a minute full of swearing and grunting later, Juliette was at the top. She stood to look around and then lowered herself to her belly and reached her hand over for Elsie.
“There’s nothing up here that I see, but there’s more space. We’ll be able to look around.”
Elsie couldn’t quite reach Juliette’s hand, but she managed to heft herself up enough to be helped, and then she, too, was at the top. Her fingers were torn open and bleeding, and because she couldn’t feel them she didn’t even notice until she noticed the bright red stain covering her white nightgown where she’d been gripping it.
“Do you smell that?” asked Juliette. “Smoke.”
Elsie nodded and pointed at the great smoking peak. “I think it’s from there.”
Juliette shook her head. “No,” she said, “that’s that ashy, sulfur smell. I smell a campfire.”
Elsie hadn’t smelled that. She perked up at the thought of warmth and fire, and tried and failed to push aside her troubling thoughts.
