The boy leaned closer. Coren risked another glance at his face, expecting to find the widened pupils, the swollen lips of desire and anticipation.
But it was worse than that.
He stared at her intently, gray-blue eyes narrowed and full lips slightly upturned in conquest.
Claim them with a kiss. The hunt’s opening speech echoed in her mind.
He pulled her closer, and she stopped moving entirely, going limp. Playing dead. He thought this was a game, like all the others did.
Then she allowed her lips turn up in a grim smile. It certainly was a game. The boy just didn’t realize that her rules were different, and he was about to lose.
Her tongue reached into the cavity of her cheek and retrieved the plump goshen berry hidden there. As his lips neared, Coren broke the berry against her teeth, bracing for the instant burn. Then, tongue searing, she shoved the pulp past his opened lips, preventing the claim.
He burst away, the shock of the acidic berry sending him stumbling backward, swiping drool from his slack jaw.
And she ran, darting around him and ignoring the pain and the blisters that were already bubbling and popping on her tongue and lips. Reaching the cliff, she hazarded a glance over her shoulder. He was tougher than expected, for he was crossing the plain too, moving quickly through the sandy grass.
“Stop!” he yelled hoarsely. Strangely, he was grinning widely, lips blackened with goshen juice and bright blood. Coren had no more ground left, but out of curiosity, she paused to watch as he approached. He walked softly now, as though she were a beast he was cornering. Perhaps he was a real hunter, after all.
Even so, the berries had stopped him, making the kiss forfeit. She could claim he hadn’t actually caught her.
“So…goshen berries?” he asked, wiping away more blood with the hem of his white shirt. “I must be the first hunter ever to receive that treatment.”
Coren’s brain nagged at her to escape, but something in his grin made her ask. “Why the first?”
“Because surely no one has ever caught you before. And I can’t imagine another girl willing to martyr her own lips just to avoid a small kiss.”
He was very close now: not quite near enough to grab her, but mere steps from it. She stepped back carefully, heels nearly hanging off the edge of the cliff.
“Nothing is small when it is against your will.” She watched his eyes widen as he processed the words, and then she bent her knees and pushed away from the earth, arcing back and out into the void, then straight as an arrow toward the water below. His shout was erased by the wind rushing past her ears, and then the water closed over her head with a crash.
Under the surface of the sun-warmed water, Coren somersaulted quickly and reversed directions. She surfaced only to locate the face of the cliff and gulp a breath, and she didn’t dare look up to see if he had spotted her. Ducking back under the waves, she stroked hard against the current, finally feeling rock. Her lungs throbbed as her head bobbed up again, but she was safely inside the hidden sanctuary.
She took in a mouthful of seawater, swishing it back over her lips as she climbed onto the rocky ledge. The salt burned, but it would heal the goshen berry wounds faster. Looking down, she saw the blue dress was now nearly transparent. Sighing, she began to wring the water from her hair. She’d need to stay here until the dress was dry.
The sanctuary’s sandy alcove was barely wide enough for two or three people, though the ceiling was high and cavernous, like an urn upturned in the sand. It was rarely used, as most of the women preferred the spacious chapel in the village center. A knee-high marble statue of the Mirror Magi waited in an alcove, delicate sandjasmine garlands enclosing the tiny conjoined necks. Several candle stubs sat nearby. Coren wondered who had been down here so recently.
She only came here once a year, to give thanks for the day the men left.
Bowing deeply now, she whispered a different prayer of thanks. She pulled a strand of prayer beads from a hook on the wall and broke a pearlescent shell in two, adding it to the small pile of offerings. Today, at least, the Mirror Magi had chosen to protect her.
She would do nearly anything to protect and provide for what was left of her family, but she had come too close to being caught today. Breaking another shell into equal halves, she sat to focus on a prayer begging the Magi to keep the boy from following through. If he decided to push the matter, his word would be stronger than hers, and she would be taken to the men’s camp, regardless of the averted claim.
Though entering the men’s camp was a small thing for a girl like Amden, for Coren it would be like the death of all she had promised her mother, and more recently, herself.
Sy stood on the cliff’s edge for many long minutes, staring down into the churning blue of the MagiSea and trying to believe what had happened. He had seen her surface only long enough to breathe, and then she’d been gone again.
Glancing back to ensure no-one had followed, he spread his fingers and tested his strength, pulling at the sources of the salty ocean far below. A few droplets came to rest in his hands, and he smeared them into his burned lips.
All these summers, Sy had been hesitant to hunt the girls - had even gone to great lengths to be absent from the hunts. But only today had he realized the true reason for his reluctance.
Nothing is small when it is against your will.
If he hunted a girl, he wanted it to be his choice. If she was caught, he wanted it to be because she had chosen to be caught. Weshen people had long ago given up on love and magic, but Sy, alone of all the men, knew that one of these had begun to return.
He flexed his fingers once more, shifting a few more drops of seawater into his palm. The salt stung his lips a little less this time, and he turned to cross the plains and head toward the beach. He would return without a girl again, and this troubled him, but not enough to force her into the men’s camp.
If his power was not just a fluke, and magic was returning to the Weshen, then perhaps love would one day return to his people as well.
The summer winds had fully dried Coren’s dress by the time she entered the women’s village. Her stomach growled; it was hours since she had eaten. Tellen was waiting, staring out the window with pinched lips and a creased brow. As she handed her cousin a plate of bread and cold meat, her eyes connected with Coren’s, wide and fearful.
“I wasn’t caught,” Coren said, then pushed past Tellen into the sleeping room, setting the plate on her bed. The twins weren’t home, which was a relief. Coren grimaced at her reflection in the small glass: dress wrinkled and stiff with salt, hair wildly tangled, mouth raw with blisters.
He’d come too close, but she had escaped the claim, and that was all that mattered.
She quickly swallowed a few bites of food, gathered what she needed for the bathing pool, and pushed back out of the house, ignoring Tellen’s glares. No ordinary Weshen hunter could have gotten as close as he did. Only the General’s sons had such training and skill, and so her information has grown.
Two questions remained, however: which son had she slighted, and how would he retaliate?
Coren rinsed the last of the soap from her skin, then stepped out of the pool, wrapping the towel tightly around her naked body. A plan was forming, and she would need to act swiftly, before the boy had time to decide.
She walked the path to her home with quick steps and chose a clean, loose dress and sturdy sandals. She would have preferred pants in case she had to run, but at least this one slit high above her knee for movement. She wove her whip around her thigh, braided her hair, and smiled softly at Tellen, who had fallen asleep again in the heat of the afternoon.
Coren knew this morning’s game was far from over. But this time, she would be the hunter, and the boy would give her what she wanted.
Chapter 4
Sy bent closer to the map spread on a back table in the General’s sprawling tent. His fingers brushed against the raised ink of the painted cliffs that rose above Weshen Isle�
�s beaches. Where had he lost her? Tracing the path from the beach where the hunts began, into the maze of rocks, he thought finally he knew the cliff where she had jumped.
He still couldn’t believe she had jumped. A girl had jumped off a cliff to avoid kissing him. A girl had burned her lips with goshen berries to avoid kissing him. He should be ashamed. But instead, his fingers touched the blisters on his lips reverently. They were still a little bloody, hours later. He shook his head as a laugh bubbled up in his chest.
Corentine thought she had escaped him.
But all she had done was help him find his hunger. He would never force her into his bed, but by the Magi, he wanted to speak with her again. Perhaps he could find a solution that would please both of them.
And her words: Nothing is small when it is against your will. The phrase had run a loop of truth through his mind all afternoon. He’d heard it before, somewhere.
Sy tried to focus again on the map and the sound of his father’s pen scratching in his journal. He remembered nothing of his childhood here; everything from before the General had taken him to the city was a shadowy blank. Even his mother’s face.
The elders maintained it was better that way, and the Sulit memory charm was the only form of magic which the Magi had allowed the Weshen to practice after the Sacrifice.
Sy’s roving fingertips found a rounded cove marked to the right of the plunging cliff - a place where Corentine could have easily stayed hidden. The cove opened back onto the rocky path, and eventually lead to the edges of the women’s village. This was how she had escaped; he was sure of it now.
“Sir?” The flaps of the tent opened, and Tag’s bulky form ducked into the semi-darkness. The General glanced up, impatient at his guard’s interruption. “There is a girl, sir.”
Sy stopped fingering the map to listen.
“Tell me your business, Tagsha,” his father said.
“Well, she claims she was collecting berries when she came upon a creature. It…it sounds like a Vespa, sir.”
“Impossible.” Sy’s father waved his hand, shooing Tag away. “They don’t come to the island.”
“That’s what I thought. But her description…”
The General sighed. “Bring her.”
Sy moved farther into the tent’s shadows, interested but not wanting to become part of this new wrinkle. Perhaps his father had forgotten that he’d been there studying the maps all afternoon.
Tag returned with the girl, and Sy’s gut twisted. Before this summer, all the girls had one face, one body, and he cared for none of them. But he remembered every freckle on Corentine’s nose, every spark in her tan and gold eyes, as though he had known them forever.
Why was she here now, in his father’s tent?
Her hair was damp but neatly braided, and she was wearing a clean, dry dress. She held her head proudly, meeting the General’s eyes before being addressed.
“What did you see?” he asked, watching her with interest.
Sy drank in the clipped lilt of her voice as she described the bulging body and iridescent feathers of what could only be a Vespa. Yet, like his father, Sy could barely believe her. Since the Separation and Sacrifice, the MagiCreatures had never traveled to the island. Simply put, there was no magic there to attract them.
“Syashin.”
“Sir?” Sy stepped forward, head bowed in deference, but his pulse quickened. Suddenly he didn’t want Corentine to see him here. But he felt his face emerging from the shadows, and his stomach shrank into itself as her small feet backed up quickly, nearly to the tent’s entrance.
“Allow this girl to show you the location where she believes she saw the creature. You are armed?”
Sy picked up his bow sword from the nearby bench. “Yes, Sir.”
“Do not be afraid,” his father said to Corentine in a rare moment of kindness. “Syashin is one of Weshen City’s best Paladins, even though he is young.”
Her eyes cast downward upon hearing this praise, but she did not speak. Instead, she lowered her head in thanks and slipped out of the tent. Sy turned to the General, assuming he would give him more instruction, but he was already back at work. Most likely, he didn’t believe the girl, and he was just pawning her off to his conveniently-located son.
“Try not to lose her, Sy,” Tag laughed as Sy pushed through the tent flap, and his father made an unpleasant noise that cut him in two.
There was no way they could have known this was the same girl who had sent him trudging back to camp in a bloodied shame today, but anger spiked in his chest at Tag’s daring.
General Ashemon turned a harsh glare on his oldest friend. “Do not tease him more. It isn’t effective.”
“Sorry,” Tagsha grinned, looking anything but. Ashemon continued to stare at him flatly, and finally he sobered. “Of course. I will stop.”
“Syashin doesn’t respond to shame. We’ve learned that much in the last few years. He believes he’s being noble by refusing the hunts. Both of my sons wish to see Weshen take its rightful place in the world again, but their ideas on how to do so are like night and day. Be certain, Tagsha. Reshra is not the one we want to lead us.”
Tagsha nodded solemnly. The two men had discussed as much before.
“Find out who that girl is. Who her parents are. She reminds me of someone…”
Tagsha nodded and ducked out of the tent.
The General rubbed his fingers along his jaw, clean-shaven for the summer months. He was fairly certain he knew what Tagsha would find, and if the girl could be convinced to partner with Syashin, perhaps the magic that had once surged in both their bloodlines could be coaxed awake.
It would be a delicate balance, however. Even if the Mirror Magi had begun to listen to his prayers, the return of magic would mean the return of war with the Restless King, and very few of the Weshen people were ready for such a burden.
He would not send his people to war against Riata until he was completely certain of their success.
By the time Sy’s eyes had adjusted to the bright sunlight beyond the tent, he found that Corentine was already halfway to the beach path, not waiting to see if he would follow. He jogged to keep up, and she whirled to face him as he neared.
“You will not touch me,” she hissed, her body lowering into a runner’s crouch.
Sy held his hands palm up, a smile already crossing his face because she had recognized him. Then again, his lips were still blistered and raw. “I’m here to find a Vespa. No more.”
“You work for the General?” She strode along the rocky path, not watching where her feet fell, yet still avoiding each hazard.
“He’s my father.” Sy didn’t want to keep secrets from her. She may never trust him, but he felt a strange need to try.
“And yet you work for him?” she repeated, as though she had already known this.
“Of course.”
“Your brother. The destructive one. The First Son doesn’t work as much, does he?”
Another smile broke onto Sy’s lips at her keen assessment of Resh. She was mostly right. “I’m the First Son,” he corrected as she glanced back at him. She nodded, one corner of her lips pulling up.
“My name’s Syashin,” he added.
“Corentine,” she mumbled, and he nodded too, as though he hadn’t already known.
“How did you know what a Vespa looks like?” he asked, trying not to focus too much on the sway of her hips on the path before him.
“I didn’t. Your Guard told me the name.”
Sy tried to remember if that was the correct sequence. “There aren’t any berry bushes here,” he said instead, and she raised an eyebrow.
“Does it matter to you what I was gathering?”
“No.”
One corner of her mouth lifted again, making her seem satisfied with that answer, and a small rush of pleasure opened in his chest.
The path curved and tightened so much that he had to turn sideways to avoid scraping his shoulders on the rocks. Just a
s he was beginning to wonder where exactly she was going, she stopped walking abruptly, and he bumped into her back.
She jumped away and focused determinedly on the sky. They had come out of the rocks onto another wide plain: one he’d only seen on his father’s map. Like the women’s village, their hunting plains were also forbidden to the men.
Sy scanned the area, wishing again that he could remember what it had been like to grow up on the island, running these very plains. Perhaps he had even grown up with this fierce, independent girl.
All he knew from the elders was that he had no sisters, and therefore no restrictions on who to hunt.
“There,” Corentine said, interrupting his thoughts. She pointed at a speck in the distance. “That might be it. This is where I saw it, anyway, here on the upper plain.”
The bird was too far away to be sure, but even from a distance, it did seem larger than any common creature. Sy moved in front of her, readying his bow sword. He expected Corentine to retreat close to the rocky path, under cover of the cliffs, but she followed him out into the tall grasses and bright meadow flowers.
He turned in a partial circle, scanning the now-empty sky. As his gaze finally rested back on her, his breathing quickened. She was bent over, her braid sliding across one shoulder. Her dress was gathered to her hip on one side, revealing a tanned, muscled thigh and that incredibly intimate tattoo - the snakka that wound from the curve of her calf to a place still beneath the fabric.
Suddenly her face snapped up and her eyes locked onto his, as searing as a goshen berry.
“Um, your tattoo,” Sy managed, guilt flushing his skin.
She straightened, and he almost thought she might run. Then another satisfied smile quirked her lips. She reached down and pressed her palm to her thigh.
The tattoo slipped, slid, coiling down her leg. And Sy’s jaw went slack.
She twisted the whip into a handful of loose circles and cocked her head at him. “Not a tattoo,” she answered.
He felt like he was being measured, and he had the hollow fear that he might come up lacking.
Shift of Shadow and Soul (SoulShifter Book 1) Page 4
