Bound By the Alien King

Chapter 1

Achill wave of the Salten Sea reached out and slapped Aster across the face, knocking the breath from her lungs.

A second wave stole the oar from her hands.

A desperate laugh burst out of her as hot tears mingled with the spray on her cheeks.

She let them flow. What was a little more damp? She was already wet to the ribbons.

She hadn’t expected her escape from the island colony, ringed by high defensive walls and guarded by skilled archers, to be easy.

But she’d hoped to at least make it out of the Bite.

Its rocky arms stretched two-thirds of the way around the island and, now that she had no way to steer or propel her tiny boat, threatened to pull her into its maw.

She might’ve made it to open ocean if it weren’t for the tides.

Manna and Corek, so close to conjunction, tugged the waters to higher heights than she could’ve imagined when she stole the coracle from the docks and set out.

The twin moons stared at her from the dark belly of the Night Mother, unsympathetic as the sea tossed and toyed with her pitiful vessel. To think she’d prayed for their mercy.

Her stomach lurched as another swell came, and she gripped the bentwood rim to avoid being thrown out into the water. She stayed inside as she’d intended, but it was for nothing because the same swell swamped the boat, filling the hide-covered frame and sucking it into the depths.

She was suddenly swimming, something she hadn’t done once in the decade since her ribbon-tying ceremony.

Many of the easy pursuits of childhood had been suddenly forbidden to her after that day.

Thankfully, the skill came back to her despite its disuse, though her arms and legs tangled in her heavy garments.

She kicked off her shoes, but the fur-lined cloak and thick wool-velvet skirts, designed to be her protection against the elements, were now her enemies, dragging her down.

She unclasped the cloak and let it slip away into the dark water.

The skirts were another story, so rigged to her bodice that they were impossible to shed.

She fought against them, relying on her arms to pull her toward the nearest bit of land that wasn’t a murderous cliff.

Each time the sea raised her up, she marked her target and checked her progress, and each time it dashed her down again, she battled forward blindly.

The swim was arduous, but the tides were in her favor, pushing her toward land instead of pulling her out.

Just keeping her head above water quickly exhausted her thrashing limbs, though.

It was as her father had always said: She was weak.

Too weak-minded to conceive a viable escape plan and too weak-bodied to execute one.

He was wrong about many things, but he was right about that.

The sea was bitter on her tongue, and her heart was bitter in her chest as the starcursed waves pulled her under and shoved her up into the night again, proving what she already knew.

That she was helpless. That any measure of freedom was only an illusion.

That forces beyond her control could drown her at any time.

Let it be the sea, then. Better its swift cruelty than a lifetime of tedious torture at the hands of men. And maybe, just maybe, her early death would be a failure that pierced her father’s heart. He would always know that his net, so tightly woven, had not contained her.

Her knuckles scraped against something, shredding the skin.

A glistening rock rose from the water in front of her, one of a disconnected string in the shallows of the Bite.

She scrabbled at it, ripping her fingernails in her attempt to pull herself up onto it.

The Salten Sea seemed angry to lose its prize, wrenching her skirts back until she thought her spine would snap and then, when she didn’t lose her grip, slamming her spitefully into the side of the rock again.

Something cracked. A rib, maybe. Aster managed to get her head and shoulders out and up onto the safety of the rough rock, but she was so fatigued by the swim that she couldn’t pull her legs, weighted by her sodden skirts, out of the water.

She was freezing, trembling violently, ill from the pain in her side. She was still far from shore. But she was alive.

From the shadow of the treeline, Damir squinted across the Bite and counted the lanterns that marked the guardposts on the wall. Still six. The humans had not increased their reinforcements in anticipation of the Revel.

That didn’t mean he trusted they would honor the final provisions of the two-hundred-year-old treaty between their species.

But it at least made it less likely that they were preparing for an all-out war.

The Nightborn had no plans to fight, but you never knew with humans.

The human high council claimed they’d embrace a new era of voluntary peace when the treaty expired.

But they were devious by nature and could easily use the ceremony as an excuse to assassinate their highest-ranking enemy. Him.

He needed a closer look at the ceremony site.

Perhaps if he flew high enough into the dark, he could see over the wall and still avoid detection by the guards.

Humans had very poor vision at night, even in moons-light.

He stretched his wings, pushing off the sands, and with powerful strokes, propelled himself upward.

They wouldn’t expect a spy from the seaward side of the island, so he began a wide circuit, following the edge of the Bite out to the end of the spit. The conjunction-swollen tide had devoured many of the rocks that were normally exposed, making navigation more difficult.

No, not difficult. Simply different. Damir had flown this route hundred times and didn’t need those faint freckles to plot his course.

He could do it with his eyes closed, naming every rock along the way.

The shiny one with the dip in the center, the square one with the corner eaten off by the waves, the smooth one that made a triangle with the other two.

Except it didn’t. Something marred its perfect geometry.

Something human-shaped where nothing human-shaped should be.

The treaty, still in effect for three more nights, only granted them their puny island and the waters around it.

It said nothing of rocks. Would they be so rash to violate the agreement so close to its expiration?

Or, more likely, had they deployed a spy of their own? He folded his wings and dove, swooping close to get a glimpse of the figure before rocketing upward again.

Human, he confirmed. Female, by the hint of scent he caught during the pass. Drowned, by the look of her.

This was…not good. A dead woman on Nightborn land spelled trouble. If the humans hadn’t planned a war already, they would now. Damir wheeled high above the body, deciding what he should do.

He could leave her, hoping the sea swallowed her and never spit her out. He could fly her corpse farther inland and bury or burn it. Or he could move her from the rocks near the shore to the rocks on the perimeter of the island, so it seemed she had died there.

The latter was the least dishonorable of the choices, he decided. Perhaps she even had died on the island, fallen into the water, and simply washed ashore.

He dove toward the sea again, aiming to land on the tiny target of the rock.

Its surface area was already shrinking and would soon be swallowed by the swiftly rising tide.

The rock barreled up at him. At just the right moment, he extended his wings fully, slowing his rapid descent.

His three-toed feet struck out, and his claws found purchase on the small space still exposed next to the human’s prone form.

A perfect landing, silent and precise. He brushed off the surge of pride; he could gloat about his flight prowess once this unpleasant chore was done.

He eyed the dead female. She was slight, with a long, dark braid that snaked into the water.

Voluminous clothing covered most of her body, but the exposed bits had a golden softness that recalled a fruit fallen from a tree and split open.

He didn’t understand the appeal, though he’d heard plenty of his brothers discussing what they’d like to do to a ripe human if they had a chance.

Perhaps it was revenge they hungered for rather than strange flesh, though.

The sea stung his toes, reminding him of the incoming tide, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, pushing off from the rocks and dragging her upward.

She weighed little, but the seawater that soaked the fabric of her garments burned his skin everywhere it touched, and the hems of her layered skirts flapped in the wind and splashed the salt onto the thin, sensitive skin of his wings.

He hissed against the pain, driving higher into the air and forcing himself to tighten his grip so he wouldn’t drop the body into the water prematurely.

He continued along his planned route toward the other side of the island, where the tide would take her back where she belonged.

Then it would only be a few minutes’ flight to locate a drowsy djum herd before he could feed enough to heal. Not long.

To get himself through the excruciating meantime, he focused on the mental picture of the spicy, rich blood coating his incisors and flowing over his tongue.

Nourishing and strengthening him from the inside out and washing the salt away.

He pushed out all the discomfort of his straining muscles and salt-burned skin and allowed only healing and hope into his mind, a skill drummed into him since childhood by the elder Nightborn warriors.

Mind-strength is the greatest strength. Important for a warrior. Even more important for a king. Though he’d love to drop his waterlogged burden now and race to repair the salt damage, he could never forget that his duty to his people outweighed his own petty cravings.

Damir tightened the belt of control around his thoughts, forcing them into submission the way the moons forced the sea to their whims. He was so lost in his mind that he almost didn’t notice the tiny sound.

It came again, barely audible over the distant crash of the waves below, a soft moan from the dead human in his arms.

Dead human? No. Now more like thrashing, wailing, writhing, slippery, alive human.

She’d only been asleep or unconscious. Awake, she was like a fish fighting to return to the waves after being thrown onto the beach, every thrust of her form moving her away, away, away.

She would die a second time if she managed to free herself from his arms.

“Quit, female! We are too high up,” he grit out in common tongue as he ignored the deep scratches she gouged down his shoulders and the backs of his arms. The djum blood would heal them, too, Corek’s favor in every drop.

“If you want to swim so badly, I will fly closer to the surface where you won’t break your bones when you land. ”

Thankfully, the human listened and stilled, though she still gasped like a fish out of water. “Flying?” she asked, and went limp again.

Salaan smite him, now what? He’d thought a dead human in his territory would be trouble for his kind, but a live one? That was far worse.