11. Ysu
Ysu
M y serpent sat at the heart of my grove, her small hands holding the meal I had brought her.
I found myself just watching her more and more.
Admiring the beautiful curve of her spine, the way her full lips were stained red by fresh blood.
She was the most beautiful thing I had seen in all my long years.
She was like the moonflowers that grew around my spring.
Pale and fragile in appearance, but beneath it all, deadly to those who disrespected her power.
But right now she wasn’t eating, just fidgeting with the meat I had brought her. That wouldn’t do at all.
“You need to learn to hunt properly,” I said. “This human habit of scavenging from my kills won’t sustain you much longer.”
She looked up from where she sat cross-legged on the grove floor, the flecks of gold in her eyes catching the moon’s light. “I eat what you provide. Isn’t that enough?”
“No.” I moved closer, pushing her hair out of her bloodied face. “Your body is changing. It requires fresh blood, fresh meat. The hunt itself feeds your transformation as much as the consumption.”
She set aside the half-eaten flesh, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I’ve killed. Marcus. Gaius. Isn’t that hunting?”
“That was revenge. Beautiful, but personal. Hunting is…” I paused, searching for words to explain what had become instinct centuries ago. “Hunting is accepting what you are. Predator. Part of the natural order, not above or outside it.”
She hid her face from me, something she rarely did now. “I was human a week ago.”
“Were you?” I settled onto the ground across from her, close enough to see the faint scaling beginning along her arms. “Or were you always this, waiting for permission to emerge?”
She was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice carried a tremor I hadn’t heard since our first nights together. “If I hunt—truly hunt—what’s left of me? The girl who sang songs in her head during the worst of it, the songs of my ancestors—my people?”
“She remains. But she becomes more.” I wanted to reach for her then, realizing it was to comfort, not to consume.
Instead, I held still. “You think predators cannot appreciate beauty? Cannot create? I’ve walked this forest for three centuries, neidr. I know every tree, every stone, every small life that moves through my territory.
The hunt doesn’t diminish appreciation—it sharpens it. ”
She lifted her head, studying me with those warm eyes. “Show me, then. But if I ask to stop?—”
“We stop.” The promise came easily. After what we’d shared, after the trust she’d shown letting me bind her in silk, I would not break faith over this.
When had I become so soft-hearted?
The forest breathed differently at night when one moved as a hunter. I watched my serpent follow me through the underbrush, noting how her movements had already begun to adapt. Not the flowing grace she would eventually achieve, but better than the clumsy creature who’d first stumbled my grove.
“There,” I whispered, pointing to tracks in the soft earth. “Deer. Young buck, from the depth of the print. Perhaps an hour ahead.”
She crouched beside the marks, and I caught myself admiring the curve of her spine, the way moonlight caught in her hair.
Dangerous thoughts—not of possession this time, but of something softer.
More and more frequently, I found myself craving not just her body but her presence.
The way she challenged me. The way she trusted me despite everything that I was.
“How do you know it’s male?” she asked, pulling me from my reverie.
“The drag marks here. Young bucks testing their antlers against bark.” I moved behind her, close enough to feel her warmth. “Close your eyes. What else can you sense?”
She obeyed, and I watched her nostrils flare slightly, her tongue flicking out. “I smell... musk? And something fresh.”
“He’s been feeding on the young shoots near the stream. Follow that scent.”
We tracked in silence for nearly an hour.
I stayed behind her, letting her find the trail, only correcting when she veered too far off course.
Part of me wanted to simply show her, to demonstrate my centuries of skill.
But watching her learn, watching her mind work through each puzzle had become its own pleasure.
When we finally spotted the buck drinking at a moonlit pool, she froze.
“I can’t,” she breathed. “It’s… beautiful.”
The deer was beautiful. Young and strong, its coat catching silver light as it lifted its head to scan for danger.
I understood her hesitation. But I also understood what she needed to become to survive in a world filled with humans who wanted nothing more than to crush anything they did not understand.
“Beauty and death aren’t opposites,” I said softly. “Watch.”
I moved swiftly, circling wide to approach from downwind. The buck never sensed me until my hand was already at its neck. One quick motion and it dropped without suffering, life to death in a heartbeat.
My serpent approached slowly, her face unreadable. “You didn’t make it suffer. I thought you fed on fear?”
I chuckled. “I do, but human fear. Humans have tried to remove themselves from the natural order. When they are faced with the realization that they are not as powerful as they have deluded themselves into believing, nothing is sweeter. But the creatures of this forest? They understand the order of things. Their suffering serves no purpose.”
She knelt beside the deer, running her hand along its flank. “Tiberius made everything suffer. Said it made the meat sweeter.”
“Tiberius was a fool.” The words came out harsher then intended. Even trapped in my web, his shadow lingered over too many of our conversations.
I often regretted letting him live. Seeing her now, how anything could have wanted to harm her set anger simmering in my core unlike anything I had felt before.
The marks on her skin I had once been indifferent to now filled me with visions of his blood and organs smeared across tiled floors after I’d made him scream for hours.
But it was not my place. I knew when the time was right, my serpent would find the strength she needed, and it would be glorious. Still, I wished I could free her from the mental cage of his making. “Cruelty is not strength. You survived him because you were stronger, not crueler.”
“Was I?” She looked up at me, and in the moonlight, I could see tears threatening. “Sometimes I think I survived because I was too cowardly to die.”
The hollow sensation in my chest intensified. Without thinking, I pulled her against me, her back to my chest, arms wrapped around her. I found myself wishing I could pull all her worry and pain into myself, so that I could bear that burden for her. A dangerous feeling indeed.
“You survived because you had fire within you he could never extinguish,” I said against her hair. “Every time he tried to diminish you, you endured. That’s not cowardice. That’s the kind of strength that remakes worlds.”
She relaxed into my hold, and we stayed like that. I found myself not wanting to move, not wanting to return to the grove where old patterns drove me to coldness. Here, holding her, I could admit what I’d been denying since she had awoken in my web.
I was falling into something I had no name for. She filled my every waking thought. Her warmth, her challenges, her trust had become part of my daily existence, shifting from possibility to necessity. I had trapped her in my web, but now I was the one whose heart was ensnared.
“Tomorrow,” she said finally, “I’ll try. To hunt. Properly.”
“Tomorrow,” I agreed, still not releasing her.
But inside, the hunter who’d walked alone for centuries wondered what he would do when she no longer needed these lessons.
When she became the predator she was meant to be, would she still choose to remain?
I would allow nothing else. No matter the cost, I would keep her with me until the very earth cracked away beneath our feet.