Page 1 of Velvet Folds (Velvet)

Chapter 1

In which our heroine tempts fate and fang

The moon bleeds, the village is locked up tight, and I dart between trees, hoping no one sees me.

I’ve watched and waited since the sun set. No one lingers in the streets anymore. The brave have been hauled back inside by the cautious.

Hood cinched tight over my hair, I creep closer to the shuttered back of a house I’ve visited too many times to count, and hear the prayers muttered with trembling breaths.

Two voices, two different requests lingering on their lips.

She begs for safety and forgiveness. He bargains for things he does not have.

I will help her if I can.

Creeping through the streets, I hope my cloak is dark enough to hide me as I climb the two short steps to their door and drag the bag of crushed blood berries across the wooden planks.

They stain the whitewashed boards with a red X, the juice dripping toward the stoop.

Even if I don’t get what I want tonight… others will whisper and wonder.

A shadow passes over the moon and I flinch away from it. Not because the stories scare me, but because my time is running thin.

Bolting, I hope my footsteps are heard too late to draw anyone to their windows.

I can’t be caught.

I race just as fast as I can, but it doesn’t feel fast enough. Even though the path that leads to the base of the cliffs is clear, and the night is bright with the red light of the moon, I cannot risk turning an ankle.

Felicia needs me.

But I reach the sacrificial stone before he does.

Felicia stares at the ground, her eyes vacant as she trembles.

She prays too, but only some of the words are audible.

I curse under my breath as I look at the too-thin nightgown she’s been left out in, and she flinches up at the word.

“Cia!” She says my name too loud and then leans forward, the rest a sharp whisper. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to send you home.” But first, I need to warm her up. The edges of her lips have begun to turn blue.

The laces at my throat come apart quickly and my hair flutters in the chill breeze as my hood falls back.

“I can’t go.” She shakes her head as I sweep my cloak off of my own shoulders and over hers and start rubbing at her arms. “It’s my turn to be the sacrifice.”

The sincerity in her voice makes me want to spit. “No, it was your father’s turn. He can’t force you to do this.”

“If I don’t…”

“I know.” Her father made threats. He made demands. “I know what he said and I promise you, he won’t be able to do anything to you or your mother.”

Tonight is their family’s turn to send a sacrifice. Good men leave their wives and children at home, offering their own blood to keep the village safe.

A mixture of cowardice and greed have brought Felicia to the stone tonight. Neither of them are her own.

Those whispered prayers I’d heard through cracks in the shutters asked that Lord Adrik take her away.

The woman he takes for his bride will save the village from this monthly sacrifice. Her family will reap the benefits.

But if he chooses Felicia…

Her father wished a life of terror for her. She is not weak, but she is too gentle for a life as the creature’s servant.

“I asked Clade to come for me,” she says softly, gaze vacant. “I asked him to run away… but he didn’t come.”

I am not surprised.

Clade, the man who claimed he loved her—the boy —was too much of a coward to come rescue her from this fate. I’m glad. He doesn’t deserve her.

“Tomorrow, we will make sure that he can’t sit with ease for the next month.”

A watery smile twitches on her lips. But I don’t expect a thank you. “Let’s get you up.”

“Papa chained me,” she says, softly, looking behind her. “I can’t get free.”

And if she could—if she did—her father would burn her books and destroy her favorite things. He’d make her life a living hell afterward. Her mother’s too, and with nothing Felicia loves to give her solace.

She might not be able to remove the chain around her ankle, but I could manage something half as good.

I wrench the stake from the ground, slipping the other end of the chain free and throw it away to clatter on the rocks, ignoring the splinter that digs deep into my palm

“Go now, I will take your place.”

“I can’t. He’ll demand to see the bite marks.”

Felicia rubs at the parts of her wrist where the old metal has bitten into her flesh. The ring is red and angry.

I’m angry too.

If I didn’t need to stay, I would take her back to town, find the key, and once she was free, I would beat him to death with those chains.

Taking a deep breath, I shake that thought away. The villagers whisper that violence runs in my blood… I’ve come too close to proving them right, too many times.

“Wait for me in the woods. When it’s over, we’ll measure mine and I’ll make you a pair to match with thorns.”

A shadow passes over us and she flinches.

“Go,” I tell her. “We will find a way to make the marks before morning. I promise.”

The ground trembles as Lord Adrik drops out of the sky behind me and Felicia flees.

Swallowing my trepidation, I turn to face the creature who dwells in the castle above our small village. Our protector and, once a month, our predator.

“The moon bleeds,” he says, his voice low and dark and rattling.

“And you need to feed.” I know the old rhymes as well as anyone.

I go to the stone hewn into a flat bed that sits between us. It’s freezing cold beneath my palm and feels colder when I sit, easing myself to the center of it so that I can lie down.

“Feed from me.” I turn my head, giving him my throat and holding my palms face up, hoping the splinter isn’t already too red.

Waiting, my breath misting, I try to calm my breath. It still flutters from my sprint to reach Felicia in time.

But Adrik doesn’t bite me.

He stalks around me and his wings shake and shudder, his tail flicks. “You are not the promised sacrifice.”

“No.” I meet his blood red eyes.

In the dark of the night, they and his sharp, glimmering teeth are all that I can make out of his face.

“She was forced to be here.” I tell him. “I came of my free will.”

“Forced?” his claws scrape along the top of the slab, tracing the shape of my body. “Forced by who?”

This time, when I shiver, it has nothing to do with the cold. “Her father.”

He turns his hand over, trailing the back of it down the center of me.

I am also only wearing a nightgown. It’s the only thing I own that is white… like the stories say, I need to wear.

Even though mine is far thicker than Felicia’s, I feel naked laid out before him like this.

Stretching my palms out so that I don’t reach for him too—so that I don’t let my curiosity take me somewhere I am not supposed to go…

He is silent. The forest is silent. I watch his face and while it’s shadowed by the bleeding moon behind him, I can see his red eyes study me.

“You are a true sacrifice, then?”

I swallow and meet his gaze. I might only be sacrificing myself to save Felicia, but the answer is the same.

“Yes.”

His wings shift, blocking out even the moonlight. “I am your sacrifice, Adrik. Will you take me?”