Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
HAZEL
I slept deeply and for a long time, dreaming of softly glowing amber eyes.
A melody kept me company in the darkness—one that soothed my battered heart like a lullaby and spoke of love and an eternity shared together among the stars.
Sometimes I heard words, and at other times it was little more than a quiet hum, but the song was always there.
It was an anchor, a promise, a reminder that I wasn’t alone.
Pain came and went like gentle tides lapping at the shore, but through it all I was perfectly warm and more content than I could ever remember being.
Someone murmured a litany of promises into my ear: I would always be safe, always be sheltered, always be treasured and cared for, and I would never go hungry or be alone again.
Some part of me knew it all was lies and empty promises, of course.
This world was never safe for women, especially not women with magic and no powerful family or friends for protection.
But for now, while I was warm and the pretty words and gentle song flowed over me like water, I could pretend it was true.
Finally, I surfaced slowly, following the sound of quiet humming like a rope leading me through the deep, dark unknown and into the light.
I opened my eyes and found myself staring at a wall made of damp, mossy stone.
At first, I could only move my eyes enough to see I was in a cave dimly lit by a few lanterns placed in nooks along the walls. I lay on my side, curled up on something dark in color and pleasantly warm.
Someone was humming. The tune was so familiar now I could almost have sung along, except the lyrics were in another language—or at least most of them were. Still, I somehow recognized words like shelshi and athava, though I wasn’t sure how I knew them and I didn’t know their meanings.
My fingers curled just enough to feel that whatever was beneath me was warm, dry, smooth, and firm, like flesh over solid muscle. Though that would hardly be possible, since I was lying on top of it, and no one would be large enough—
The humming stopped. “Shelshi?” a familiar voice asked softly. I sensed movement behind me, as if someone had sat up or leaned forward. “Are you awake, my light?”
The voice brought back a few fractured memories: the guards. Lord Vedast. The ravine. So much pain.
And then, above me, amber eyes. A strange face. And in my peripheral vision, an even stranger body, all red and black, with long, thick coils that had surrounded me.
Fear slammed into me like a runaway horse, stealing my breath and turning my insides to ice.
Don’t move, I told myself, while my lungs seized and my heart tried to hammer its way out of my ribcage. Be still. Be quiet. Don’t act like prey. A whimper tried to escape. I bit my tongue hard to hold it in, drawing blood.
A quiet hiss filled the cavern.
Enormous hands closed firmly but gently around my waist. I was picked up as if I weighed nothing at all and drawn into an embrace against a hard, muscular chest—a bare, muscular, man’s chest, covered in scales so smooth they reminded me of the finest polished saddle leather. And his scent…
He smelled of warm stone, clove, and something that reminded me of sweet wine. Despite the fear still gripping my heart like talons, my fingers curled instinctively against his chest. Before I could think better of it, I pressed my nose into those scales to inhale deeply.
What am I doing?
Carefully—oh so carefully, because despite my hazy condition I well remembered how small I was in comparison to this male—I flattened my hands and pressed against his chest until he let me move back enough to see his face.
Frightened and dazed in equal measures, I blinked at the male who was holding me and gazing into my eyes as if I were the only being in all of the Goddess’s great creation.
His amber eyes had vertical slit pupils that looked like black diamonds in the low light.
His hair was black and thick, with silver at his temples, and it had streaks of red that matched his black and crimson scales.
Above his eyes where brows would be if he were human was a double-arched row of small rounded points, like tiny horns.
I’d been sleeping, and now was sitting, in the coils of a male with the head and torso of a man, and below where his waist should be, the body of a powerful serpent a great many feet in length.
“Goddess.” The word escaped my lips before I could rein it in. It might have been a prayer, or a curse, or some combination of the two.
I’d never met a serpentae, but I’d seen them depicted in art and heard stories since childhood. Their kingdom, Izaelon, was many leagues from here, on the other side of the farthest mountains and on the coast of the warm seas. They seldom ventured far from the comfort of their native climate.
In almost every artwork I’d seen or story I’d heard, the serpentae were depicted as ugly, ravening beasts, twisted and misshapen and forever tempting human women so they might debauch them and then either force them to bear monstrous offspring or devour them whole.
But this male was not ugly, nor misshapen, nor a ravening beast. And surely if he meant to devour me, I would already be in his belly rather than cradled in his coils wearing the white cotton shift I’d packed in my satchel.
Was he not typical of his people, then? Or had the stories all been lies?
His long, forked tongue emerged from his human lips and flicked the air between us. He let out a soft hiss that should have made me even more afraid, but somehow it didn’t. Perhaps I was too much in shock.
“You’re bleeding, my shelshi,” he said, pain in his voice as if he were hurt too. “Where is your injury?”
I touched my lips and flinched at the stinging pain in my tongue. “I bit myself,” I said, my voice rough from sleep. “It was an accident.”
“Show me.” The serpent-man cupped my chin and the side of my head gently with a hand more than twice the size of my own. “Please.”
Reluctantly, and feeling more than a little foolish, I opened my mouth and showed him the injury on my tongue.
With his free hand, he brushed his finger across the tip of one of his fangs, gathering a drop of amber liquid.
When he reached toward me with that dripping finger, I recoiled from his touch. “No!”
I tried to back away, only for my retreat to be blocked by a thick coil that rose up behind me like the back of a chair.
He made a settling gesture with his hands. “Peace, please, my shelshi. I only mean to heal you.”
“That’s your venom,” I protested. “It will kill me.”
“It won’t,” he said immediately. “I swear it on my life. For you, it heals.”
I shook my head. “Not possible.”
“Look at your body,” he said urgently. “Do you remember how badly you were hurt from your fall? I’ve healed all your injuries with my venom, just as I offer to heal you now.”
I looked down at myself, at all the unblemished skin where cuts and bruises had once been. And my ankle…
Careful to keep myself modestly covered by my shift, I stretched out my leg and stared at my ankle that had been so badly swollen that I could barely put any weight on it. It seemed to have healed completely. I rotated it back and forth without a hint of pain.
“How?” I breathed. “Is this the magic of your people?”
“That is part of the answer.” He reached for me again, his gaze troubled. “Please, may I heal you?”
“It’s just a little injury,” I protested, though I leaned forward and stuck out my tongue just enough for him to see where I’d bitten myself.
“I cannot abide your pain for even a moment.” Very slowly, perhaps so he didn’t spook me, he gathered another drop of venom and cradled my jaw with the other hand. “Just a touch, my shelshi,” he murmured.
Holding me steady with one gentle hand, he drew the very tip of his finger lightly over the wound in my tongue. I braced myself for it to sting, or for it to go numb or tingle or be foul-tasting, or for the worst to happen and my body to succumb to his deadly toxin.
Instead, I felt only a pulse of warmth. The taste was very pleasant—similar to wine, but smoother and less sharp. Sweet, like summer cider.
As he cupped my face and jaw, I licked my lips without meaning to. His gaze zeroed in on that tiny movement as if he were a hawk and my mouth were a rabbit. For many heartbeats, neither of us moved.
I wanted to cover his hand with mine and lean into his touch.
I wanted him to cradle me again so I could burrow against his hot chest scales.
I wanted to move farther back so I could look at all of him.
I wanted to explore this cave and figure out where I was, and perhaps find some water to drink.
But to my surprise, the one thing I did not want to do was run away.
“What’s your name?” I asked. If my voice was a little breathless, perhaps it could be blamed on having only just woken up.
“I am Terolon,” he said, giving me an elegant bow. “Long ago, I lived in Izaelon, but now I make my home here. I am of no clan.”
He watched me closely as if expecting scorn. But I was certainly in no position to mock or look down upon a male with no family, since I had no family either—at least, none I cared to claim.
“I am Hazel Fain,” I said, and raised up on my knees to give him a wobbly curtsy. “I am also of no clan. I’m most pleased to meet you, Terolon.”
To my surprise, he caught my hand in both of his enormous ones and pressed my palm to his chest, where I felt the rapid twin beating of his hearts.
“I’m most pleased as well, lovely Hazel,” he said, his amber eyes bright. “It has been difficult this past day and half not knowing your name.”
I chose to ignore his claims of my supposed loveliness. Even without a mirror, I was quite aware of not only my plainness but how thin and listless I’d become after nearly eighteen lunars of mistreatment by my cousins.
“Is that why you called me shelshi?” I asked. “Is that a familiar name among your people? A nickname, perhaps? Like the other word, athava?”
“They are,” he said, his expression cautious. “But both have a very specific use.”
I frowned. “Which is…?”
“Athava means my sweetness,” he said, his tongue flicking out to taste the air between us. “There is no direct translation of shelshi to your tongue. But you may say shelshi means my light. For the serpentae, it is how we address our mates.”
The shock of finding myself in the company of a beautiful serpent-man gave way to an even greater sense of an upended world.
I pulled my hand free of his grasp, well aware that I could only do so because he allowed it, and sat down hard.
My bottom, despite Terolon’s healing venom, was somehow still a bit sore from my rough ride on Cibran’s apple cart.
“Your mate?” I managed to say, clutching the hem of my shift.
“Yes, my sweetness.” He sank down on his coils until his head was level with my own, as if trying to make himself seem smaller—or at least less enormous. “I scented you from my garden and found you where you’d fallen, or been thrown, and left to die.”
His eyes blazed in anger and he let out a hiss that sent chills down my spine, not all of them from fear. When his tongue flicked the air, I pressed my thighs together to hide my very inexplicable reaction.
Perhaps noticing or scenting my uneasiness, his features smoothed and his fury faded.
“It is the way of my people to feel in our bones when the goddesses have brought us together with the one whose soul will find comfort and home with our own,” he said.
“Never in all my years have I felt like this.” With his fist, he rubbed his chest over his hearts, his expression one of both pain and rapture.
I found myself caught between disbelief and awe.
I believed in the Goddess, of course. I saw her workings every moment of every day, and carried her blessing of magic in my blood.
Her threads wove through all lives, forging paths and guiding her children, bringing some together and separating others according to her great wisdom.
Had my desperate flight from the misery of servitude at my cousins’ home been meant to bring me here to Terolon’s cave rather than the Coldspell riverfront? It was just so difficult to believe.
“You are far from your homeland,” I said carefully. “You must keep yourself hidden, because I’ve never heard even rumors of a serpent-man in this forest. Perhaps because you’re so isolated, you have seen few women—few females. I may not be…this might not…”
“I lived for many, many years among my own kind, surrounded by females,” he said, interrupting gently and with patience rather than in anger.
“And for one who keeps to the shadows, I have still seen and scented many human women. And never have I felt such knowing.” He rubbed his chest again.
“I’ve heard it described, of course, but I never imagined such a blessing for myself.
I believed…I believed the goddesses had forgotten me. ”
My breath caught in my chest.
Had I not felt the same in my darkest days, on my knees scrubbing the floors of my cousins’ house, my face or my back aching from a slap or a beating?
Had I not felt abandoned by the Goddess the day my family’s longtime landlord arrived on the doorstep of our home not two weeks after my parents’ death demanding I lie with him as part of my rent?
Had I not sobbed myself to sleep the night my mother whipped me for using my magic to coax our garden into producing a robust harvest despite the drought so we might have good food to sell, only to see the vegetables thrown into the woods so no one would suspect someone in our family of having magic?
The Goddess had healed my heart and kept me strong through all those despairing moments even when my future seemed grim, and I’d always found my way back to the warmth and love of her light.
Terolon looked at me as if there could be no doubt the Goddess—or his trinity of goddesses, who were aspects of the same nurturing Divine—had brought us together.
And I couldn’t say with any certainty it wasn’t true when there was something warm and settled in my chest that could well be the Goddess’s own reassuring touch.
Perhaps there was one way to know for certain…
If this was the will of the Goddess, she wouldn’t guide me to a male who’d curse or condemn me for my magic. So before I made any kind of choice—to stay, to go, to do or feel anything at all—I must know one fundamental truth.
“Terolon…” I began, then hesitated.
He leaned close, his gaze searching my face for some hint of my thoughts or intentions. “Yes, my…yes, Hazel?”
He’d said Hazel, but my shelshi hung in the air and shone in his amber eyes.
I took a deep breath. “May I see your garden?”