Though a simple rat snake, without any of the many strains of power that could be found in our world, Torquil was often jestingly referred to as our “kitchen witch.” He possessed the magical ability to turn camp rations into something delicious, even in the latest dredges of winter or now, the earliest bloom of spring, when the nights still tended to drop below freezing and few edible plants were yet available. The stew currently simmering on the hearth smelled like heaven.
“No problems,” I answered. “We’re being blamed for supposedly betraying the Shantel to Midnight, though.”
“Damn.” The curse came from Farrell, who had founded the Obsidian guild when he was almost as young as I was now, based on a tribe described in ancient serpiente myths. “I’m sorry, Kadee.”
I shrugged. Farrell himself had been accused of everything from theft to murder to treason and rape—the last being a crime the serpiente viewed as so vile, it did not even merit a trial before execution. He knew what it was like to be vilified for something he hadn’t done, without any way to speak up to defend himself.
“We didn’t, right?” one of the others asked, sounding half serious. Farrell replied with a glare sharp enough to cut. “Sorry,” he said. “If we’re going to make the Shantel into another powerful enemy, though, I would like someday to hear the whole story.”
“No,” Farrell answered flatly, “you wouldn’t.”
The serpent held Farrell’s gaze a moment longer, considering, and then looked at me. “Sorry, Kadee. I know it was bad.” He glanced back at Farrell. “I’ll trust you. That’s all I need to know.”
He went back to whittling.
This winter, I had come very close to dying in a cold, dank cell with a bloodstained dirt floor. That cell occupied my all-too-frequent nightmares these days. I had told Farrell the whole story when I returned to the Obsidian camp by the grace of God, and had afterward heeded his advice to keep the details otherwise private, even from the rest of our guild. If the story of our complicity with the Shantel’s failed plot ever reached Midnight, we would all be executed, so the fewer people who knew, the safer we all were.
I shoved the sack of supplies at Torquil, then backed out the door. No one chased me, for which I was grateful.
Normal serpiente were never alone. Children stayed with their parents until they were old enough to join communal nurseries. Adults slept in nests with friends, piled on large pillowlike beds without proper form or boundaries, and later took lovers. When distressed, they sought others of their kind and found comfort in the press of skin against skin.
But I was half human, and sometimes I needed to be alone. The other members of the Obsidian guild were the first serpiente I had ever known who respected that decision.
On my way to my own tent, I almost tripped over Malachi, who was sitting in front of the cold, sodden ashes of the central campfire. He seemed to be gazing into a phantom flame only he could see with his pale, blue-green eyes.
Malachi was something like a prophet and holy man and something like an ill relative one takes care of out of a sense of familial responsibility. Despite the damp chill in the spring air, he was wearing nothing but buckskin pants and a dagger at his waist; his shirt, vest, and other weapons lay discarded beside him. His fair skin and white-blond hair looked like silver in the rain, as if he had been carved from precious metals instead of born to a living mother. Glowing indigo symbols writhed across his skin, writing and rewriting themselves on his flesh like slow-moving lightning. Unlike his half siblings, Misha and Shkei, who claimed ignorance of magic, Malachi had undisputed power inherited from his falcon father.
“Hello?” I asked quietly, the way one might call into a darkened room.
Malachi didn’t respond. He was focused on the visions dancing behind his eyes. Most of the time, Malachi’s trances ended on their own, when he was ready or when he was needed. Over this past winter, though, they had been more common and started to last longer. His brother and sister used to be the most successful at waking him, but Shkei had been gone for almost a year now, and Misha … Oh, Misha. She had been imprisoned in Midnight for months before we had managed to get her back, and her time there had left its mark.
Misha wasn’t in the longhouse. She was sleeping in her own tent, with the front flaps closed. That was how she slept every night now.
Twenty-two years ago, Malachi had spoken the prophecy that seemed to define so many of our days: “Someday, my sister, you will be queen,” he had said. “When you and your king rule, you will bow to no one. And this place, this Midnight, will burn to ash.” By the time I joined them, only three years ago, the guild that refused to bow to any king or priest, and knew no religion higher than day-today survival, treated Malachi’s prophecy as if it was a holy text. It was why we had done so much, and even sacrificed young Shkei, to get Misha back.
I looked at our prophet, with his gaze lost somewhere in the rain, and at the closed tent where our supposed future queen hid away from the world, and tried to convince myself that I still believed such a future was possible.
OUT OF THE corner of my eye, I glimpsed a flash of green just in time to turn and see Vance return to human form, shaking long, messy chestnut hair out of his face. All the other members of the Obsidian guild were serpiente, but Vance was a quetzal shapeshifter. His bird form was dramatic emerald with a ruby-red breast and two long green tail feathers that trailed behind him like streamers when he flew. In his human form, he was a year younger than I was, only fourteen.
“Hi,” I said as he stepped up beside me.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “You were … staring.”
Just like Malachi, I thought. I nodded distractedly. “The cold,” I explained vaguely, shivering. I wasn’t quite as susceptible as most serpents to the whims of temperature, but I was soaked to the skin. What was I doing philosophizing in the rain?
Vance moved closer to me and tucked one arm neatly around my waist, under the cloak. Unlike snakes, birds were naturally hot-blooded, and Vance’s body radiated heat like a small furnace. He wasn’t technically avian—that title applied to the hawks, sparrows, crows, and ravens who served the Tuuli Thea, while Vance’s heritage lay with the jaguars and quetzals of the south, called the Azteka—but his blood ran as hot as any bird’s. Hotter, perhaps, because he was by birth a bloodwitch. Though he would never be able to harness that power for his own use, it kept his body warm.
“I didn’t know serpents shivered,” Vance remarked. Innocently, I was sure he thought.
I shrugged. “I’m special.”
“Yeah,” he replied. Then he blushed. “I mean, well—I’ve noticed that you’re sometimes … different. Not in a bad way. Just different.”
Sweet and adorable Vance had no idea how that bit of “different” had defined so much of my life. I hadn’t yet found the nerve to tell him that my mother had been human, because Vance had been raised in a world where humans could be nothing but slaves. I supposed I would have to explain eventually, because shivering wasn’t the only thing real serpiente didn’t do. They also didn’t sweat. After shapeshifting, they didn’t return to human shapes choking down bile and trying not to vomit, as I did when my body returned with slow confusion to its proper form.
Not tonight, I thought.
I had been saying that to myself for months now. At first, I had wanted Vance to know me as a person before he realized what I was. Now … I kept telling myself that it was no big secret. The rest of the guild knew. It just hadn’t come up yet with Vance. The Obsidian guild had a lot of stories, which Vance hadn’t heard yet because he had spent his first four months with us simply learning how to survive in the harsh reality of the wild woods.
For now, we retreated to the diamond shelter where the two of us usually camped out. A large oilskin tarp was pinned down at three corners and propped up by a long staff at the fourth, so we were protected from the worst of the rain and wind but never lost sight of the open air. Neither of us liked to be trapped.
Vance had been with me in that cell four months ago. Before then, he had lived in Midnight for fourteen years, raised to be a lord in that despicable realm.
Now, he was Vance Obsidian, and he was one of the only people I could stand to have so close to me. He made no assumptions, and asked no questions when I needed space.
He turned his back now as I stripped off my trader’s costume and changed into the wool, fur, and buckskin garb that clothed us and marked us as children of Obsidian. Warm, practical, and protective, the clothes had been white while the ground still wore winter’s snow; now that spring was here, those same pieces had been tanned and dyed so they provided camouflage in the forest.
When I slept that night, my dreams started pleasantly enough.
The fire flickered, sending sparks up to the midsummer sky. On this, the shortest night of the year, the serpiente celebrated with music, dancing, fire, and feast.
I watched and clapped in rhythm as Misha rose on her toes to begin the Namir-da, the ancient dance that celebrates the origins of our kind. She had never received formal training, so she made up the steps with joyful abandon. Her fair skin and diamond-white hair, marks of her white-viper heritage, reflected the nearly full moon.
In the midst of her dance, she reached out to snag Torquil’s arm, pulling him up to spin with her in front of the fire. When Torquil’s mate, Aika, reclaimed him with a playful scowl, Misha reached for Farrell, the man who had brought us all together.
With Farrell, we had all found a home—we outcasts, traitors, and thieves. We were hunted by the serpiente, by Diente Julian Cobriana’s guards, but that was the price of being free. Now, on the longest day of the year, we rejoiced in that freedom.
“Come dance, Kadee,” Misha crooned, when Farrell left her to bring another of our clan into the dance.
“You know I’ll just make a fool out of myself,” I told her.
“Why should that stop you?” She pulled on my hands, lifting me to my feet. “You are a child of Obsidian, and you carry in your veins the blood of the goddess Anhamirak, she who gave us freedom, and passion, and beauty. There is no creature in the world with the right to call you a fool.”
She grinned, and spun me around so fast I would have fallen if she hadn’t caught me.
“See?” she said. “There is no danger here. Trust me.”
Trust me. They said that white vipers like Misha had magic, though she always laughed off the suggestion whenever it came up. I believed it, though. No one else could have convinced me to whirl in front of that fire, trying to recall steps I had only ever half learned as a child in the dancer’s nest before they cast me out and I was taken in as a ward of the royal family.
Well, maybe one other.
Shkei returned from the market with two heavily laden bags of goodies he had “liberated” from this or that merchant’s stall. If Misha’s magic was persuasive, able to convince even a shy girl like me that she could be beautiful—even for a few minutes—Shkei’s magic made him invisible, trustworthy, so he could walk through the market where he was wanted for treason and remain utterly unnoticed.
Shkei grinned when he saw me dancing. I blushed, then stumbled. Misha caught my arm and my gaze, and I raised my chin defiantly, daring anyone to judge me.
Shkei knew better. Without so much as a snicker, he passed his bundles to Torquil, dropped his cloak to the ground, and held out a hand to me. His moss-green eyes sparkled in the firelight as I reached for him.
That was when the soldiers appeared.
The dream shifted, darkened. Instead of the joy and hope of Namir-da, my unconscious traveled dark paths my waking mind had never actually experienced.
The dark, stone cell. Marble floor, slick with blood—my blood. The collar around my neck was suffocating, too tight to breathe past.
I looked up at the vampire, the black-eyed trainer who had purchased me and whose task was to strip away my individuality, hope, and free will.
He hit me, and suddenly it wasn’t the trainer standing there but Paulin, one of the guards who used to serve the princess Hara but was reassigned to be my “honor guard” when the royal house took me in. He blamed me for interfering with his courtship of the princess, and took every private moment to let me know it.
I tried to run, to hide, and tripped over a boy sitting on the floor.
Shkei! Run! I thought. He’ll kill you if he catches you!
It wasn’t Shkei, though. Instead of Shkei’s long white-blond hair and moss-green eyes, this boy had dark hair, skin like copper pennies, and eyes the deep green of pine needles. He sat calmly, with a harp in his lap, and played a tune that was mournful and chilling.
“Run,” I tried to whisper, but my throat was too tight.
The man behind me–part vampire, part Paulin, some evil blend of the two—stepped past me and dragged the boy to his feet. The harp fell to the ground and shattered like glass, sending shards into the air that cut my skin.
I woke gagging. Shaking. My insides cramped, my muscles writhed, and I couldn’t seem to get my breath.
Seizure, I thought. I hadn’t had one in years. I struggled to draw air into my lungs, but I couldn’t. I could almost taste the blood from my nightmare.
Calm yourself! I tried to get my body under control, the way the Shantel fleshwitch had taught me when I was seven, but felt myself losing the fight. Vaguely, I was aware of Vance calling to me worriedly, but my eyes had already gone dark.
Firm, rhythmic pressure on my shoulders suggested a slower pace for my breath. As I focused on that, I became aware eventually of a cool, gentle voice.
“You’re here with us, Kadee. You’re safe with your kin.” Farrell. He had only seen me this way once, the day Paulin really had almost caught Shkei. I had surprised the guard with a knife in the back, taken Shkei’s hand, and run to the Obsidian camp with him as if all the demons of Hell were following me. Harming a royal guard was treason, and I had done more than harm. Somehow, my desperate blow had killed the man whom Hara Cobriana—heir to the serpiente throne—now claimed had almost been her mate. By the time I had reached this place, I had been in a full panic.
“Stay with me,” Farrell said, as if he knew my mind had turned down another dark, dangerous path. “Listen to the birds and other animals waking in the dawn. Smell the campfire. You are safe here. Think about your breathing, and let it match mine.”
I struggled to listen. Around us, I could hear the morning calls of birds. The squeezing of Farrell’s hands on my shoulders matched the rhythm he set as he drew each breath in, then let it out with a low whistling sound. I followed that pace with my own breathing, and gradually the black clouds that had descended on my vision parted.
Farrell’s gray eyes met mine, calm and controlled, from where he was kneeling in front of me. I held his gaze and we continued to breathe in sync until the cramping in my muscles had subsided and I knew the danger of a seizure had passed.
“Are you all right?”
I nodded, dazed. I looked around, blushing with embarrassment, and discovered that the others were diligently going about their tasks and paying no attention to me except for occasional curious glances, which were quickly averted. I suspected Farrell had told them to give me some privacy. They were doing the best serpents knew how to do with such a command.
The only person who had defied the order was, of course, Vance. His skin, normally a rusty tan, looked gray, and his worried brown eyes were fixed on me.
“Are you all right?” he asked, as if Farrell’s question wasn’t enough.
“I’m all right,” I said hoarsely. “Is there—”
Before I had finished asking, Farrell produced a waterskin. I drank deeply of the stream-cold water, then splashed a little on my face.
“What happened?” Vance asked, kneeling beside me.
Before I could try to form an answer, an angry shout from across the camp caused us all to look up. Farrell sighed and said, “That’s Misha and Aika again. I should break it up before they kill each
other.”
His tone was tired, and perhaps resigned, which gave me the chills. Misha had come back from Midnight with night terrors and a biting fury that unleashed itself upon anyone foolish enough to cross her. Aika was a strong, opinionated woman known for taking down grizzly bears using the blade-tipped stave that was the Obsidian guild’s signature weapon. Both were always armed.
“If you’re all right, I should probably referee,” Farrell said as he looked with concern at the women across the camp.
“I’m fine,” I answered, trying to look less exhausted and shaky than I felt. “Go, before something permanent happens.”
Serpiente were passionate. Even the best of friends fought sometimes, occasionally coming to blows. However, if Aika and Misha’s ever-escalating fight got any worse, I agreed with Farrell: it would be bloody, and one of them might not survive it.
Farrell took me at my word and went to the two women. I faced Vance, who was still waiting for an explanation with anxiety clear on his face.
I had been told as a child that these fits, legacy of my human heritage, could kill me if I didn’t learn to control them. I had discovered for myself that they had damaged my mind somehow, stripping vividness from memories and stealing words. What could I have lost, if Farrell hadn’t helped me avoid this one? Would I have opened my eyes to find I didn’t recognize a member of our group, or I suddenly didn’t know how to find the stream where we got our water? Would I have looked at the boy with a quetzal’s feathers in his hair, aware that I knew him but unable to bring his name to mind?
Across the camp, Farrell was physically pulling Aika and Misha apart. Torquil was tensely organizing supplies, and occasionally stealing glances to Aika, his mate, as if ready to jump in to help if Misha drew a weapon. Malachi was gazing at his furious sister, the one who was supposed to be our savior, with a look of guilty horror.
Maybe it would be good to forget. Forget the way Misha used to laugh, and grin, and challenge the world. Forget Shkei, and how we hadn’t been able to save him. Forget the years when the Obsidian guild had been a true family, and not this fractured, angry group, which seemed held together more by our shared fears and desperation than by kinship.