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fourteen

Dove

G ilded amber eyes stare back at me. A slight gleam showcases my dishevelled appearance within the depths. His mouth bends towards my ear in a low rumble as he whispers, “I intend to.”

The little hairs all over my body stand on end at his taunting words as his warm breath cleaves my eardrum.

In his firm grip, he can feel exactly how my body is reacting to his calm strength, and it makes me want to knee him in the balls. Unfortunately, I’m still only halfway down his chest, feet barely scraping the floor.

Closing my eyes, I sigh, remembering my crime and why I was brought here. The whispers find me once again, and I retreat inward, finding my once-heated coals diminishing.

A huge, calloused hand grips my chin and makes me look up at frowning eyes. “Fight,” the growled whisper finds my ears. I blink multiple times, knowing it comes from the wolf holding me—the wolf who has brought me back here to my execution.

My mouth opens and closes in wonder, but my eyes do not lose their focus as I see the whole universe before me. I consider the possibilities of sitting here in surrender to another person higher up on the food chain than me or fighting for myself for once in my godsdamned life. For the Goddess I spent rotation upon rotation dedicating my voice to. But when it comes to myself, I retreat.

Not any longer. If this wolf wants a fight, I will fight to my last breath.

I will scratch, and I will scream, and I will breathe fire.

Argus wakes and flames the coals within, and I groan, my body instantly feeling relief at my newfound strength.

“Place her in the cage, Gideon,” a loud voice booms over the crowd.

At the last of the barked words, my breath rushes out of me as the wolf slings me back over his shoulder. We move further towards the dais, and once again, my body is whipped around like a rag doll and shoved unceremoniously into something hard and constricting.

The sound of a lock clicking echoes through the hall. That’s when I notice all the whispers have stopped, leaving one voice to drift through the open space.

His voice .

“This servant plotted and killed the high priestess, my mother. She will be brought before my father, the king of Haven, for sentencing at first light,” Prince Castor directs towards the crowd.

Swishing his blue cloak, he walks from the dais.

I look around the walls of the tiny cage, my trembling fingers weaving through the unbreakable metal to grip on as two men in black tunics embossed in the silver wolf sigil of Haven grasp either end of the enclosure, heaving it up into the air.

With barely enough room to move my body around, I try to bunch myself into a corner when ice-blue eyes find mine. “Time to take out the trash,” Castor seethes through the bars, then tells his wardens to take me to the manor dungeon.

I used to think that one turn, those ice-blue eyes would save me. He did save me once from falling as a small girl. When he would pass me in the halls, he gave me a knowing wink as if he remembered a secret only we shared. I foolishly dreamt that one turn he would save me from her—his mother, a woman I both adored and despised. Castor is the future king. Surely, he will protect me . But as he got older, the knowing winks stopped, and compassion was replaced with cold eyes and harsh orders. I should have seen it coming. He is his mother’s son. I am a servant of the realm. Protected by none. Easily replaced.

A slight rumble to my right pulls me out of my sullen reverie as the cage jiggles around me. Dark, golden eyes met mine. This time, the wolf is fully clothed in a black blouse and pants.

As the unnerving beast stares me down, I gain strength, but I do not shrink from him. Instead, I fight, just as he instructed.

I don’t lose eye contact until my coals grow hotter than they have ever been before. Though he is the enemy to me now, all I feel is his warmth.

As we make our way down the temple steps, I see others giving the beast a wide berth, which makes me curious about what they see in him. This massive dyre wolf shifter is the protector of the kings of Haven and killer of the old world before humans graced the place we now claim as our own.

Slowly, my limbs grow cold as the brittle air warns me that we are now outside.

Ahead of our procession is Prince Castor himself, astride a brown stallion, seemingly very smug as the guards ahead shout, “Make way for your prince.”

That’s when I understand where we are. My lungs seize, and my gaze skitters around. Oh, no. No. No. No.

My internal radar struggles against what it is seeing—a cobbled street I have not walked since I was eleven rotations old, a relic of my past I’d hoped to keep lodged deep in the cave Argus protects within my chest.

I grip the white material around my body and keep my face firmly downward. The open rectangles of the metal below are little windows that replay scenes from a rhythm that brings nothing but sorrow—s our breath, hard fists, screamed words.

Gripping my hands to my dirty, exposed feet, I let a drip fall from my eyes, then close them, squeezing my eyelids as tight as I can. I will not let evil win.

“Wren?” the prayer falls from my lips. I don’t know why I bother. I know she won’t answer—never when I’m sad or angry. After everything we’ve been through, she can’t bear to feel the extreme emotions lacing our shared past.

One thing I am now certain of is that no one is coming to save me. The Goddess wanted the wolf to find me. Otherwise, she would’ve never let me sleep under her. Right? She would’ve made me leave.

I sang to her, and she listened. She gave me strength when I had none, when I only had fear. Is it my fate to fight this or surrender? Mother Goddess, do you want me to fight? I close my eyes and release my thoughts towards the stars.

Something reaches within my chest and pulls— well, that’s what it feels like —and my breath leaves my body in a shock wave.

What does that mean? I shout at the Goddess in my head. Are you the one constantly tugging at my chest as though an invisible rope is pulling me towards something?

My eyes open to the cage and the dark sky above. The expansive moon illuminates the sky, and the brightest twinkling stars surround it. We always loved to look at the night sky together. Until he took it away from me.

The thought of my father envelops me with a rage darker than I have ever experienced. If the psychopath hadn’t killed himself, I would have done it for him. Instead, all he left me with was serpent-green eyes and a fire scar running down my neck.

“Argh!” I bash the bars.

“Look, she speaks.” The voices following my procession cease, and I notice the villagers around me clearing the way for my unceremonious parade towards the king’s manor.

The temptation to scream reaches me, and I take a deep breath and let a crazed screech fly. The villagers gasp, hearing my gravelly voice. It isn’t crisp or sweet, but I was never mute. That was just something the priestesses chose to believe when I never spoke after the incident, and I never swayed them otherwise. I don’t know why, really. At the time, it felt like an extra layer of protection—something I got to have all to myself when so many things had already been taken from me.

Now? Now, it feels like every part of me wants to scream with the pain of my existence, and everyone should be privy to it. I want to roar at the villagers who looked the other way when I needed them most. I want to bash at the cage like the animal they think I am. I want to scream. I am the animal of your creation.

Because that is what I am. An animal created by the negligence of this kingdom. Did humanity even exist in a place like this?

The cage jostles to a stop, and I notice villagers surrounding us on all sides. Castor and his horse rear up, startling the people in front, and I hear his laugh all the way back in my cage.

“Make way,” the wardens protest, and that’s when I finally see who they are trying to get past—people in rags, shivering, lying on the steps leading up towards the manor.

The manor steps are long. When I was younger, I used to think they were so long they could touch the Goddess herself. I often gazed at them from the high priestess’s quarters, but I could only see the top half of the staircase—the part beyond the gates that kept the villagers from reaching the precious king and his son.

Now, I see what is hidden below the gates. With this new acceptance, the Goddess’s song starts to burn a hole through my body.

Hundreds of people—elders, children, men and women—huddle together under blankets on the steps, faces dirty and eyes sunken. Are they displaced? The villagers never mentioned this in their weekly offerings to the Goddess.

None of this seems real. Food is scarce, but I didn’t know it was this dire within the village. I suspected but never heard definitively.

My fire burns bright as the injustice spurs me on to catch the eyes of all the people I pass. The wardens demand they make way and leave the steps, pushing and shoving the villagers to get their point across, which only stokes my fire brighter. How can they treat their own people this way?

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice someone—a very large someone—drop small pieces out of his pocket as he moves up the steps.

My cage begins its climb up the stairs. At the sight of children rushing for the small bits lying on the steps, my heart tears anew, latching onto the sullen face of a dirty-looking little boy, his hands greedily shoving the dropped treats in his mouth.

The wind whispers one word. “Sing.”

“What?” I question the air around me. “Sing, sing, sing” repeats.

I know only one song . A song meticulously researched and practised for a Goddess long remembered but ultimately forgotten.

I watch on as Castor and his guards push through the impoverished people before us. The beast lingers behind them, leaving a trail of food in his wake. Children clamber for any morsel they can scavenge, and I start to sing a song never celebrated by my people but now ingrained in my soul.