Chapter One
SEVEN YEARS LATER
The smell of birth is not all that different from a fresh kill.
That same metallic tang of blood and the deep musk of an animal’s hide stains the air.
The thought draws more tension to my muscles as I brace Kalixta against me.
She rests her cheek on my chest, her breath skittering across my sweat-damp skin, panting, eyes wide like dying saiga I’ve claimed as mine.
I stroke my fingers along her ribs and back, slow and soothing.
Her forehead rolls from side to side. Slowly at first, then thrashing.
With her teeth bared, she’s as wild as the rogue dragons that haunt our night skies.
She bears down to push, then stills, in much the same way a creature does in the moments leading up to their final breath.
My lips press together tight at how thin that line is between life and death.
The rough-hewn birthing cavern is warm and damp and crowded.
The three nursemaids, my mother, Ninon, and myself take up most of the space in the small room.
The discordant sounds of Kalixta grunting and breathing through her birth mingle with the quiet reverberations of the nursemaid’s melodic voices.
I lock eyes with Ninon and mouth, “Blood?” not wanting to add to the cacophony as much as I don’t want to alarm my sister.
Ninon’s gaze darts down to where Kalixta’s knees are pressed wide on the birthing mats. Her eyes narrow a fraction, discerning in the dim lamplight, and my chest tightens with her hesitation. “Fine,” she murmurs back.
Fine isn’t good enough. Too many mothers have lost this battle before.
Not that Dyēus cares once we’ve bred their offspring.
The three nursemaids in attendance mutter prayers to Ervosvis, seeking comfort in the deity who presides over life and death.
They murmur their request to have the god’s two-sided face be set as life in this moment.
I have not spoken to the gods in years, but today I add my silent prayers.
Today, I hope they can do more than receive our departed souls from the talons of the dragons of Dyēus.
Kalixta’s hands clasp my elbows, her grip firm, but slippery with sweat. “Kaisa,” she mumbles my name, twisting her face into my chest as her body coils, readying for another push.
“I’m here.” I brace myself for her again.
Her forehead slides down until the crown of her head presses under my breasts, where we’ve been given our marks of protection: a crescent moon upturned like a bowl, rays like the sun streaking out from the curved bottom with one long, vertical line slicing clean through the center of our chest bone.
A promise that we are safe from rogues as long as we are underground or within the narrow boundaries of Nevoba. Though often, I’m not.
Kalixta cries out with one final push, and the nursemaids move in tandem, murmurs of encouragement and reverence passing their lips. I hold my breath, waiting, same as I do before the slice of my arrow pierces a rogue dragon’s eye.
My mother presses a hand to her mouth. “A boy,” she says from behind her fingers, her eyes darting briefly, unconsciously, towards mine before flickering away.
Having two daughters is a bad omen, and for me, being the second, it was like having a black mark on my existence.
For years, she hardly spoke a word to me after my selection ceremony.
At least—until I was chosen after all, without want or warning.
Then it was as if the four years she ignored me never happened.
The child is quiet as he enters the world, and my gaze locks on the woman crouched at Kalixta’s opening.
After a moment, we hear him, the tiny sputters and coughs marking him alive.
“He’s well,” one of the nursemaids says.
Kalixta nods, a smile wavering onto her mouth, but this is not the end of her birthing journey.
She remains in position on all four of her limbs, leaning heavily against me.
“Remember, your body was made for this,” another nursemaid says as I run my hand down the back of Kalixta’s head. I bite my tongue against what I want to say, which is to remind her is that this isn’t the only thing her body was made for.
“The next will come more easily,” the third nursemaid says as she passes the baby, still wet and attached to the cord, to my mother who crouches by Kalixta’s knees.
“Can I see him?” my sister asks. I steady her so she can comfortably turn to look upon her son.
Her smile puts the light of the sun to shame and I turn from her to look at Ninon.
A reassuring nod is all I need to know that things are progressing as they should.
I stare down at my new nephew and pray again to the dormant gods that the next is a girl.
I pray on silent breaths to their deaf ears that the boy stays quiet and mild before the eyes of the Sar Dyēus, that he won’t be a dragon shifter like his father and my sister will get to keep him, at least for a time before he’s sent to the fields.
“He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Kalixta says, breath wispy and disbelieving.
I hum, agreeing, a smile curling in the corner of my cheek.
His complexion favors his sire, slightly darker than the pale tawny brown Kalixta and I share.
Our mother looks to the nursemaids and they nod.
I help Kalixta support herself back on her heels so she can hold her child for the first time.
I turn away from their tender moment and close my eyes as a fire threatens to choke me from the inside with its fierce smoke, recognizing the feeling for what it is.
Destruction. The desire to tear apart those who will likely take that baby boy straight from my sister’s arms. To tear apart the men who have turned their gaze from the howling and hollow mothers they take from.
I hear a breath sucked in through clenched teeth and my attention whips back to my sister. Her face is pinching and she hands the baby back to our mother.
“It’s time,” one of the nursemaids declares, and I take my sister back into my arms. It’s not long before the sharp cry of a new child fills the chamber, the sound echoing, loud, and furious.
“A girl,” Ninon announces, sighing with relief. I feel like I can breathe again. Even if the boy is a shifter, at least she will get to keep one. At least she will have something.
Kalixta leans her forehead against mine, a few strands of our straight, near black hair twining together.
This close, I study her face. It’s not an exact copy of mine, but close enough.
Heavy hooded lids close to cover the same dark honey brown eyes as mine, my jaw and face a touch wider than hers, her cheeks softer in the hollows where mine dip in, my full upper and lower lip making me look perpetually sullen while hers hold a softer, sensual curve.
Our noses are the same, though, except mine is adorned with a gold hoop pierced at my septum.
A gift to myself after my eighteenth year selection ceremony.
“You did it,” I whisper.
Kalixta smiles, and she opens her eyes to meet my matching ones. I back away to let the nursemaids do their work and once my sister is arranged and settled on a set of clean mats and collection of lush pillows, the babies are placed in her arms.
I stand back with Ninon, fanning my loose cropped shirt against my sticky skin.
The two of us came straight from our patrol, called in as soon as my sister went into labor, only an hour after we left for the evening.
I’m still in my riding trousers, loose pants cinched tight at the ankles.
My riding wrap I discarded somewhere long ago.
My sister smiles down at her two babies, face glowing and serene.
My mother sidles up next to me and places her hand on my shoulder, which I loosen, trying not to bristle at her touch. “I’m so glad she’s happy,” my mother says.
“She certainly looks so,” I say, but I wonder how she truly feels. I could ask her, but I don’t want to risk her shutting me out. Not again. Not anymore.
“You will be there next,” she says, nodding to where Kalixta lies, holding her children. “I’m sure of it.”
I bite my tongue. “Alixor seems content to take his time,” I reply, passing a sidelong glance to Ninon that says, which is fine with me.
If there were a god of luck, it would be against me.
Four years after my presentation at eighteen, Alixor came to select a carremai.
He saw me in the crowd, my face aglow post hunting victory and he wanted me.
It didn’t matter that the Sar Dyēus had marked me as undesirable.
Alixor was an elite, and elites get what they want.
Even if it goes against the king’s decree, it would seem.
The Sar Dyēus had only said; “If you wish to fail in your task to breed, then by all means, choose her.”
I can still recall the way those words wound around my spine, sealing my fate.
I could have refused, but banishment outside our protected lands, left to the mercy of the rogues, is a terrible way to die.
By the time Alixor chose me, I’d been a huntress for years, bringing game meat home to my people and shooting rogue dragons that slipped past Dyēus’s defenses.
While I don’t enjoy killing, the freedom and seeing the open night sky fills some of the emptiness inside of me.
I was content, despite the deep, unending yearning for something…
more. So I refused to give up my role as huntress after being chosen, much to my mother’s great annoyance.
I slip out from under her hand. “She’ll need rest, so we’ll be going.” I spy my riding wrap on the ground nearby and lean over to grab it up by the tips of my fingers.
“Kaisa,” my mother hisses. “You can’t really mean to go out. When will all that end? You’re chosen now. A cohort of the gods.”