Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“ D o it again,” Igor calls during training the next afternoon, unmoved by my heavy breathing, or the patch of sweat soaking through my tunic.
I meet his eyes and groan. He raises his graying eyebrows at me, mouth quirking.
“Again,” he repeats. “ Without telegraphing your next move this time—remember what I showed you.”
I straighten up, willing my breath to still. My thighs are screaming already, worn out from the morning’s work of endlessly lifting huge buckets of water at the laundry where I work, a job that I inherited from my mom when she stopped showing up eleven years ago.
Someone needed to go in her stead, to make sure that we could keep food on our table and the roof over our heads. I dropped out of school and never looked back.
It doesn’t matter that I’m tired. Everyone’s tired, and Igor doesn’t accept any excuses. Not in the fighting ring, and certainly not here in his yard as he trains me.
He’s right. I can’t afford to show any weakness.
Not if I want to keep winning. And we need those extra coins.
My foot slams into the practice dummy, and Igor grunts his approval, the closest to a compliment I get during these sessions. I repeat the movement again, two, three more times for good measure, before dancing back on the balls of my feet, grabbing a rag to wipe the sweat off my face.
Igor’s side yard is a mess of lopsided practice dummies, rough-hewn weights to build muscle, and a jumble of half-broken furniture that I know his wife Prina wishes he’d spend time fixing rather than sinking more time into training me.
“You okay, Alleycat?” he asks, taking the rag back from me. “Seem a little off today.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. Igor is irritatingly perceptive; but then again, he’s more of a parent to me than my actual living one.
“I can’t stop thinking about Leesa Sawyer,” I tell him, the spark of last night’s fury still burning inside of me, waiting to catch fire. I’ve been mulling over it all day, coming closer and closer to a way to take action.
Igor nods as he motions to the practice dummy, instructing me to keep going as we talk. “That’s a tough one, the Sawyer girl. Good family. Nice people. Heard her parents were up all night searching for her,” he says as I unleash a fast combination of kicks and punches. “But I’ve yet to hear of a missing kid who’s been found.”
“Does it seem like it’s happening more? The Nabbers, I mean,” I say between punches.
They have a silly, childish name, given to them by the very kids who fear them. It’s almost hard to take them seriously when you hear it, which is part of the appeal. If you can laugh at it, it doesn’t seem true—like the Nabbers are nothing more than a childhood legend.
Unfortunately, their menace is all too real.
Kids have been getting kidnapped for as long as I’ve been alive; maybe as long as this entire war has been going on. And we all know who the Nabbers actually are.
Siphons, our ancient, monstrous enemy from the neighboring country of Astreona. They steal our kids out of their beds and take them back across the border, turning them into living blood bags, feeding off of them, sucking out their powerful child life force, and eventually draining and killing them.
It makes me sick, thinking how those depraved immortal vampires are going to win this war by slaughtering our innocents.
Igor hums. “Maybe so. Get higher with that kick.”
I follow his instructions, my legs continuing to ache. “Isn’t it bad enough that our sons and daughters and fathers are being killed by the Siphons at the front? We should be safe in our own homes, shouldn’t we? What’s the king doing about all this?”
“Don’t think the king gives two shits about it, to be honest. Too focused on the war hundreds of leagues away to pay any attention to what’s happening in his own city right underneath his nose.”
Catching my breath, I glare over at Igor. “I can’t stand for that. And I’m going to do something about it.”
Igor doesn’t question this grand statement, or tell me I’m foolish to think that I can make a change. He knows as well as I do that if you want something done here in Sturmfrost, you have to do it yourself.
Instead, he calmly walks over to one of his debris-strewn tables and opens up a cloth roll. Inside lay a dozen sharply honed, glittering weapons. “You seem angry. Knives?”
A laugh escapes me. “Yes, and yes. Thought you’d never ask.”
We don’t use knives during the hand-to-hand combat we do in the pits, but Igor’s been training me to throw them, anyway. He said you never know when you might need to make someone shit their pants by tossing a dagger at their head.
“What’d you have in mind?” he asks as I head over to the table and select a small and particularly pointy-looking one.
“You taught me to defend myself,” I say, turning toward the target he’s set up on the far side of the yard. “No Nabbers would’ve gotten me, not without a fight, once you got me started. Maybe we can teach the kids, too. I could train them to protect themselves.”
I throw the knife and it sails through the air, hitting the outer edge of the target. Not good enough.
Igor scoffs, sitting down in his creaky chair and staring up at the cloud cover that threatens snow. “You had the fight in you already. Not too many kids are gonna throw themselves at danger the way you did.”
“The way I still do, you mean,” I joke, bravado covering up the painful rush of memory.
When my dad was killed, I was left alone at twelve years old with a pregnant, mentally ill mother. Overnight, everything changed. Saela was born, and she was so perfect and tiny and good. And I was the child put in charge of her.
I was furious at the world, spoiling for a fight.
I used to go out into the alleys and goad older boys twice my size into an altercation just so I could have someone to hit. Just so I could feel something other than the unending, cavernous pain inside of my chest.
Eventually, Igor got tired of watching the little neighbor girl get her ass handed to her. He stomped out into the alley behind our houses, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, and dragged me hissing and spitting into his kitchen.
He threw me down into a rickety chair and said, “Are you trying to get yourself killed, girl?”
When I didn’t deny it, he let out a long-suffering sigh. “Well, if you’re going to prowl around acting like an alleycat, then you need to learn to fight like one. Come with me.”
Igor led me to this yard and started to train me—that day, and every one that followed. He helped me hone my anger from something feral into something vicious, polished.
Dangerous.
And when the boys in the neighborhood began to look at me in fear, Igor helped me find a healthy new outlet for my rage. I’m still goading men twice my size into fighting me. But now I get paid.
Grabbing my knife from the target, I turn back toward him. “You’re right. I’m different. But not everyone needs to be a professional. If these kids just knew a few simple tricks, enough to give them time to make some noise, get some help…”
“Don’t think this will get you out of your own training time,” Igor warns, and I know he’s sold on the idea.
“No, I’d never deny you the pleasure of ordering me around,” I tease, and he tosses a knife at me that I dodge easily, laughing.
After I leave Igor’s in the late afternoon, I head west to the Central Quarter to pick up Saela from school, weaving through the crowded streets. The sinking sun breaks through the clouds now and again, sending reddish reflections glimmering in the windows as I pass homes and shops—more of the windows in Central are smooth and shiny, unlike our neighborhood where a broken pane gets boarded up more often than not.
Saela used to attend primary school in our neighborhood in Eastern, but she was always top of her class, and last year her teacher recommended her for a more advanced secondary school in Central, which is a wealthier neighborhood.
It’s not convenient, and it costs money—not much, but anything is too much for us these days. The sacrifice is worth it for my sister, though. She will not end up like me, dropping out and working herself to the bone just to stay alive.
In a world full of dead ends, I’m going to make sure she has options .
Saela’s different from me. Bookish, hard working. An optimist. An innocent. She’s got a smart mouth on her, which I take credit for, but the rest of it? Must’ve been from Father, because she just came out that way.
She’s standing alone outside the school building when I arrive, dark hair plaited down her back and eyes narrowed in annoyance.
“Late again,” Saela says, looking pointedly at me.
“Sorry, kiddo,” I say, swinging my arm around her shoulders. “Guess you’re just going to have to accept that your big sister is bad with time. How was school today?”
“It was fine,” she says in a clipped tone, clearly mulling over something.
“Fine?” I tease. “Well, if we’re paying all this money for fine, we can probably switch you back to school in Eastern and?—”
“ Meryn ,” she whines in annoyance.
I raise my hands. “Sorry! But really, what’s going on?”
Saela sighs as we make our way down the cobblestones, heading toward the busier streets that lead into the Central Market. “We were talking about the war with Astreona in history class today.”
“Ah,” I say. “Siphon stuff?”
She nods, lips pressed together in a tight line. Saela went through a period when she was little where she was having awful nightmares about Siphons. Even though she never met our father, the knowledge of his death has loomed over her childhood, shaped every part of her existence.
“Some kids were talking about how the Siphons feed on regular humans, like suck our blood to stay alive, and it seemed like they thought it was, I don’t know, cool or something.” Her face flushes with anger. “I don’t think it’s cool,” she adds quietly.
I tighten my arm around her shoulders. “You know, I’m sure you’re not the only person in your class who has lost a parent or loved one in the war. There were probably other kids who felt the same way.”
She nods. “Half of us have. But the teacher made it seem like…” Saela stops in her tracks and looks up at me, dark brown eyes wide with worry. “Are we losing?”
“I don’t really know,” I tell her honestly.
The war has been going on for five hundred years, but between our country’s Bonded and their direwolves and Astreona’s Siphon strength, it’s rare for either side to take much ground. And we all know what would happen if Astreona won—the Siphons would hunt down every last human and drain us.
“But here in Sturmfrost, we’re as far away from the front as you can get in the entire kingdom of Nocturna. If you’re safe anywhere, it’s here.”
The words are like dust in my mouth. She and I both know it’s a lie; one of her friends was kidnapped last night .
“Come on,” I say, slipping my arm off her shoulders and grabbing her hand to tug her toward the market. “I know just the thing to cheer you up.”
While every quarter has their own market square, Central’s is the biggest shopping area in the entire city, filled with everything from fishmongers and bakeries to specialty perfume stores. There even used to be a jewelry store here, but that was decades ago, before everyone was encouraged to give extra funds to the war effort in the name of patriotism.
Saela and I like to window shop on our way home, our daily ritual. We daydream about what sweets we would buy if we could.
We head straight to our favorite window display at Diersing’s Bakery. Saela sighs, staring into the bakery display and pointing to a glistening pastry topped with deep purple fruit.
“I think I’d take one of those plum cakes.”
“Noted,” I tell her, thinking again about her approaching nameday. This would be a pleasant surprise, and I have the extra money that Lee gave me after the fight last night. My skin flushes at the thought of him, and how our night got cut short. Thankfully, he’s due back from the castle in a couple of days, and I can see him again.
Before I can offer my own fantasy bakery order, there’s a commotion behind us. Saela and I turn. A crowd has amassed around the square.
“What’s going on?” I ask a man nearby.
“Bonded,” he says. “Riding through.”
What? Why would the Bonded be coming through here ?
The Bonded are the king’s most elite forces, soldiers who have mental bonds with massive, fearsome direwolves. They ride the wolves into battle and, rumor has it, the riders can even tap into the magic that the direwolves wield.
It’s rare that they ever set foot in the commoner side of Sturmfrost, other than coming and going from the front—but even then, they usually skirt around the edges. Their part of the city is on the other side of the castle, bordering the mountain range from which their fearsome direwolves hail.
Saela looks up at me, eyes sparking with excitement. “Can we go watch?”
She’s obsessed with the idea of the Bonded. I can’t totally blame her—super hot warriors riding mystical beasts and wielding mysterious magic? It’s intriguing, if you can set aside the extreme and punishing classism.
I sigh and then grab her hand. I would do literally anything to see this kid smile. “Fine, but stay by my side.” Then I tug her behind me through the crowd, elbowing my way to a spot at the front of the square.
The crowd hushes as the Bonded emerge from one of the streets leading into the square. The streets are narrow here, not quite big enough for the direwolves they ride, which only serves to make them look larger.
People idolize the Bonded as much as they revile them. Technically, anyone can become Bonded, and during Bonding Trials, when the direwolves have enough young to bond en masse, all of Nocturna’s army recruits have the chance.
But everyone knows that the direwolves almost exclusively choose people who come from Bonded families. Privilege begets more privilege, a never-ending cycle.
There’s nothing magical about the riders themselves, but because of generations of natural selection, they just look different from the rest of us.
Tall. Beautiful. Honed fighting machines.
Today, there are four of them, all wearing black riding leathers. A stern-faced woman with dark skin on a silver direwolf leads the way, followed by a pale man with a shock of blond hair on a tawny wolf, an older woman with olive skin on a gray wolf.
My eyes barely register the fourth direwolf and its rider—I’m too busy gawking at what they’re dragging behind it.
Or… who .
Gasps go up in the crowd as people visibly take a step back in horror.
It’s a commoner man, hogtied and bumping against on the cobblestones. Blood and bruises cover his face, yet he doesn’t fight his shackles. He looks resigned. He’s given up.
Rage ignites in my blood. How dare they?
The direwolves and their riders edge toward the middle of the square just as the breath leaves my body.
I know that man. He was the dumbass who threatened me at the fight last night.
My gaze skirts back to the direwolf dragging him around. Massive is an understatement—the direwolf is easily taller than the most battle-ready horses the commoners ride in the army. His fur is midnight black, and he has a feral, bloodthirsty look in his gaze. He bares his teeth, each sharper than a dagger.
The direwolf’s rider matches him in ferocity. He’s in his late twenties, I’d wager, with light brown skin and dark, messy hair that has a blood-red streak in it. Like every Bonded I’ve ever seen, he’s undeniably beautiful , with deep brown eyes and scruff framing his chiseled jawline. But…
My pulse speeds up as I clock the tattoos completely covering his neck, his hands. Not much makes me afraid, but this? Run , a self-preserving, animalistic part of me cries. Danger .
Even us commoners know what those are. Kill tattoos.
For someone to be so thoroughly cloaked in them…
He’s killed hundreds, easily. Maybe more.
Monster . This guy’s a fucking psycho killing machine.
My gaze slides up to his face and my stomach flips as I make eye contact with him. The Bonded man practically glowers at me from a distance. His lip rises in a sneer. Maybe my fear of him is written all over my face. I avert my eyes.
Power radiates off of him in waves. Whoever he is, he’s someone important in the king’s forces. It would be impressive for someone as young as him… if he weren’t absolutely terrifying.
The Bonded man hops off of his vicious direwolf with practiced grace. For the man’s gigantic size, he moves like water. In two fast steps, he’s reached the commoner tied to the back of his wolf.
He grabs the man off the ground with one hand, displaying an inhuman level of strength. Using his direwolf’s magic, maybe.
“This man,” the rider calls out, his rumbling deep voice echoing over the silenced crowd, “is a deserter from the front. The king takes deep offense to anyone who would dare abandon their comrades in arms. Do you deny the charge?” he asks the man.
“No,” the man mumbles between his split lips.
The rider continues, “We have brought him here today to make sure all the citizens of Sturmfrost are aware of what happens to cowards.”
He lifts the man higher and I suddenly know what’s about to happen. I have no love lost for deserters, and especially not this piece of shit. But my sister cannot bear witness to this.
“Cover your ears,” I whisper quickly to Saela, who complies. My hands slide over her eyes, holding her warm, small body tight to mine.
The rider grabs a dagger with his free hand and guts the man from navel to neck. His anguished screams echo, bouncing off the buildings around the square. Then, as the crowd watches in horror, the Bonded man sticks his hand into the deserter’s belly and yanks out his entrails. Somehow the man is not dead yet, gurgling in pain, blood bubbling out of his mouth and dripping down his chin.
The Bonded man tosses the deserter forward to his wolf, who snaps him out of mid-air with his powerful jaws. His direwolf spits the deserter onto the ground and then snaps at him again by his neck, shaking him once, twice. The man—the body—has stopped moving.
The direwolf feasts on him, blood coating his muzzle.
I make myself watch for as long as I can, determined to sear the image into my brain, to remember this for the rest of my life.
To remember how absolutely fucking cold-blooded the Bonded are and how unfairly the cards are stacked against the rest of us.
Eventually the sight turns my stomach and I look away, only to make eye contact with the brutal, maniacal Bonded again. He’s looking at me assessingly. I wonder if he gets off on making people cower in fear and pain. If this is fun for him.
I lift my chin higher. I’m not afraid of you, asshole , I tell him in my mind even as my hands tremor, even as his bold-faced unblinking violence shakes me to my core.
There’s no emotion in his dark eyes, none at all.
The Siphons might be our enemy, but I’m certain that this man is the true face of evil.