5. Before Fate
Before: Fate
ZORA RAVENAL, FIFTEEN YEARS OLD
EIGHT YEARS AGO
LOCATION: BARREN FOREST, OUTSIDE THE NORTHERN COMMUNE
Blake kissed me, and it was all teeth and saliva, our frosty breaths mingling in the day’s frigid air. Sighing, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to enjoy it.
Oh nice, he bit me.
It didn’t help that he was shaking, terrified to be outside the Commune’s high walls, even though we were only a few paces away beneath the old bridge. Icicles hung jaggedly off the beams. The river was partially frozen, chunks of ice floating by.
“Only harlot girls kiss boys before marriage!” a boy’s voice called out mockingly from above. The cutting foreign accent lingered in the cold.
It took a second for the insult to process.
“Excuse me?” I yelled back. “What did you just call me?” I yanked away from Blake, glad for a distraction. Does he think he’s supposed to gnaw on my mouth? Genuinely bizarre.
“Call me,” Squire squawked nervously as he flew over and landed on my shoulder.
“Thou heard me,” the stranger said sharply.
No one used thou instead of you outside of written poetry. Nice, everyone has lost their mind—or I really shouldn’t have thrown that third flip on my snowboard yesterday.
“Zora, let it go,” Blake whispered, and I shoved him away as he tried to hug me.
“Where I come from,” the stranger said with a pompous scoff, “thou would be judged dishonorable and classless. A filthy serf. Thou need an education in etiquette.”
“Oooh . . .” I sang sarcastically as I climbed up the bank from underneath the bridge. “Please, tell me more about this education process.”
Squire ruffled his feathers. “Educate me?”
“Thou art steeped in ill repute.” The stranger’s voice drifted down, icier than the frosted pines.
“Wait, what was that?” I yelled. “Say it again?”
“Trampy woman,” Squire squawked straight into my ear (unhelpful) as I jumped up high, grabbing on to the swaying bridge. My fingers throbbed inside my gloves, permanently bruised from opening steel traps all day.
I hoisted us both up over the rail.
A lone figure stood a few feet away. Bone reflected sunlight as I straightened and leveled my dagger at him.
“You’re young,” I said with a start.
“I’m aged fifteen,” he said harshly.
“Exactly. We’re the same age, so—”
“Where,” he said, cutting me off, “did thou get that magical mark?” He pointed at my silver scar, but he looked more intrigued than scared. Strange reaction.
“None of your business,” I said.
The boy sneered, somehow looking down his nose at me even though we were the same height. “Have thou never learned etiquette?”
“Why do you speak like an ancient crone from the fairy tales?” I countered, genuinely curious if he was trying to be pompous or if it just came naturally to him.
Shadows expanded as his features twisted with malice. “Thou speak of things thou do not understand,” he spat.
A warning pounded in the base of my skull. A primitive instinct urged me to kill him while another whispered, Run. A strange scent clung to him . . . a sensation carried on the wind. I inhaled deeply, identifying the unusual smell: certain death. The boy reeked of mass murder.
Freezing wind whipped my braid, but his thick white fur cloak didn’t so much as flutter.
His face was hostile in its symmetry; his skin pale as ice, so fine that a watershed of cobalt veins stretched across his sharp jaw and down his neck; his inky black hair curled at the ends, falling just above his bare ears; his aquiline nose was too big for his features; his maroon lips, a shade too aggressive.
Cruel features.
His eyes were the worst: an unsettling iridescent color with an icy blue ring, the shade of a frozen lake in sunlight.
They were rimmed in ghastly dark circles, and the purple-black smudges made his features appear sunken.
Maniacal. The dark swaths of his eyebrows contrasted unnaturally with his skin.
He was all harsh, jagged angles.
His posture was unnaturally straight, and his proportions were off. It was as if he’d just started puberty and his rib cage couldn’t keep up with the expanding width of his shoulders.
His collarbone protruded grotesquely from beneath a fitted silk shirt that was completely impractical for the weather. His legs were disproportionately long, and his hands were too wide for his skinny forearms.
As I studied him, he stiffened with badly veiled scorn.
“Where I come from,” he said slowly, his accent distorting the consonants, “extensive decorum lessons would be needed to save your tattered reputation.”
I couldn’t hide my huff of disbelief. He must be one of the strange desert folk from the Middlelands, or maybe he was a hedonist from the tropical South. Either way, he didn’t belong in my forest.
“People beg just to speak with me.” He continued his villainous monologue. “They fall to their knees, exultant, as they bask in my glorious presence.”
“Wow. What a . . . vibrant imagination.” I lazily twirled my knife. “You need to try harder to be threatening, sweetie. So far, it’s not working.” I flicked my gaze over him judgmentally. “Skinny and weak.”
His features flickered between calm and catastrophic rage. Shivers of premonition crawled down my spine. There’s something wrong with him.
“Look away, dearest,” I whispered to Squire as I placed him on the railing. He obeyed as he always did during a hunt, swiveling his head around to stare pensively off into the distance.
The strange boy scoffed. “That abysmal creature needs to be put down. I shall do it for thee.”
“Me pitiful,” Squire sang in agreement, still not looking.
How dare he.
“Not if I kill you first.” I took a step toward him, dagger high.
A long moment of silence stretched as he processed my threat, and then his pupils dilated, nostrils flaring, the same way a dire fox’s did right before it attacked. The strange scent radiating off him intensified, and it smelled like . . . murderous intentions?
Rule of survival: Either you’re the hunter or you’re dead.
There was no third option.
One second we stared at each other. The next he lunged for my neck, but I was quicker and used to handling wild things. Dodging his grip, I grabbed his short inky hair with one hand and yanked his head forward while ramming mine up.
Bone cracked, cartilage popped, blood exploded as our faces slammed together. I stabbed down at the back of his neck, aiming for the space between his spine and skull.
He whirled and shoved me away like he was expecting me to go for the kill. We stumbled apart. Crimson gushed down his chin, and his nose hung at a gruesome angle.
Wetness dripped into my eyes where I’d split my forehead.
He brought long fingers up to his chin and looked down at the freezing blood in shock. “Thou . . . broke my nose?”
“I’ll break your spine next.”
“Beg for my forgiveness,” he snarled, his words gravelly due to his smashed nose. “Uneducated peasant—kissing boys like a trollop.”
“I bet you’ve never kissed anyone!” I saw red, loathing how he kept talking like I was dirty and beneath him.
He reared back with prudish outrage. “We are aged fifteen. That is disgusting.”
Apparently kissing offended him, but his eyes said murder was acceptable. Sociopath.
A twig snapped, and we both whirled. Blake stood on the icy riverbank with his mouth hanging open, eyes wide with horror as he pointed between our bloody faces.
“Zora Ravenal . . . I’m t-telling the elders!
” he shouted, panting with the wasting sickness.
For some reason, most people in the North tended to suffer from a severe form of asthma, but I was lucky, because it hadn’t affected me yet.
The newcomer arched an inky eyebrow, his hard gaze penetrating. “Zora Ravenal?” His accent blended the letters of my last name into something foreign. “Is that your sire’s surname?”
“No,” I said proudly. “It’s my mom’s.”
His shoulders relaxed as if he was relieved by something, and he sauntered slowly toward me.
The bridge creaked, and I raised my knife. “Take another step closer and I’ll slice your trachea.”
He rolled his eyes. “Thou do not scare me with your girlish posturing.”
Excuse me? I flipped my knife back and forth. I’ll show him girlie.
A gasp sounded. “You’re both insane.” Blake sprinted away.
“Me look now, Zora?” Squire sang.
“Not yet,” I said. “I’m almost done teaching him a lesson—”
His leg shot out, sweeping mine, and air exploded from my lungs as he threw his full weight down atop me. Sharp teeth pressed against my jugular. I brought my knife to the back of his neck and pressed.
“Release me,” I whispered with horror, hyperaware of how his teeth dug deeper into the sensitive skin of my throat. Mauling me.
Groaning wantonly, he bit down harder.
I screamed.
Icy water splashed over the edge of the bridge, spraying us in a fine mist.
A wet pop sounded as he withdrew, and his tongue slowly dragged over the throbbing wound. Shuddering, he whispered a strange word against my sensitive flesh. Pain pulsed behind my eyes. Claustrophobic, I shoved him away, kicking and punching, scrambling back as my neck stung.
Using the icy rail, I hauled myself up to my feet, one hand rising to my bleeding throat.
He was still on all fours, his head tipped down, eyes raised up with his hateful gaze locked on me. The white bottoms of his eyes were visible, glowing against his sunken dark circles. Evil, wretched boy. Lazily he wiped the back of his hand across his bloody lips, tongue sweeping out.
“Oh . . . Zora Ravenal,” he practically purred as the bridge swayed gently beneath us. His heavy fur cloak lay askew, and his teeth were coated in scarlet. “How exuberant . . . What a fateful development. Thou art so much more than I could have ever anticipated.”
He licked his lips again, face transforming with awe as he deliberately crawled toward me. Black consumed his irises, his pupils blown disturbingly wide.
I dropped my fingers from the ruined front of my throat: flat tooth ridges were covered in frozen saliva. His teeth were imprinted on my skin. I shuddered, queasy and deeply unsettled.