Chapter One
Calavia kicked at the water. She liked to watch the spray land like rainfall around her. The reeds would bounce from the weight of the falling drops, the bog would play a tune of plops, and then the water would return to the swamp. To her. Only to be kicked again.
She did this for hours, trying to kick the wetlands away, and for a while she’d laugh and curse and pretend she was winning, but she always knew she’d lose in the end. It was a game, and she liked games.
Then, like always, a quiet hand reached for her from behind, out of the darkness, to bring all her nightmares to life, and her mother would appear.
Calavia dropped her legs and clutched at the stone ledge she sat upon, feeling the water settle back to marsh slime between her toes. She clenched them as her mother’s form faded in and out of the mist outside her temple entrance, down its broken steps, and finally down to where the rotting wooden trails through Prayer began and ended.
Her hair was wet today—the blood on her belly had been washed away—and there were small clumps of algae clinging to her mother’s exposed curves.
The mist caressed her mother’s body with worshipful love.
Calavia slowly raised her feet from the water and straightened to her full height, dragging her fingers over the rags of her dress as her knees knocked.
Her mother’s mouth opened wide in a silent scream, the hole a black abyss. Calavia closed her eyes and a gust of wind and magic blasted her, the sudden burst coursed through the stagnant swamp air, whipping her hair across her forehead. When Calavia reopened her eyes, her mother was gone, with naught left but the memory of a phantom.
Her mother’s magic settled over her skin like a wet blanket. It seeped into her flesh and hid her most damning secret from the terrible world beyond.
Her humanity.
Calavia stared at the spot where her mother had just been and waited for the ghost of her past to return and haunt her anew. But she didn’t come back, to Calavia’s sudden remorse, and following her mother’s thrall deeper into Prayer would do nothing to help her predicament.
Her hand drifted into the air, the mist drawing toward her, and with it she drew the sounds from all the marshes bordering her sanctuary. The sounds of hooves racing across the lands filled her ears, coming ever closer. They grew in decibel and washed over her, through her, reverberating her body with their beats.
They were coming.
Ever closer.
The centaurs and their weapons of war, spears and spiked whips, their hooves sharpened into points, all of them waiting to penetrate her until there was nothing left.
Several centaurs who’d survived the slaughter scouted the borders of Prayer, over and over. She watched them from afar as they tried to gather information on her defenses. They did not know that the minotaur and human female they were chasing had fled from her settlement several days prior.
Now, the centaurs were left for her to deal with.
And more of them were coming. They intended to trample her settlement into the mud, to leave nothing behind…
And I’m weakening.
She dropped her hand and shuddered. The weaker she became, the harder it was for her to protect her home and those she cared about. It was up to her to protect them, like it had been since the very beginning.
But to call a champion to her aid? It was dangerous, possibly suicidal, and if they ever discovered her secret…
Calavia looked down at her hands and the shallow wrinkles above her palms, and pictured the blood that flowed beneath them. It was human blood. Pure blood. She had kept it hidden for so long, she now feared it. Her mother had told her so many things.
“They are ravenous for it.”
“Our blood is the source of all powerful magic.”
“Every monster hungers for it, they want it inside them any way they can get it.”
“They will eat you, or worse, breed you.”
She reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out the wax vial within. The wax was cool against her palm, the cap tight at the top. It had only been days since she received it from Aldora.
She held the power of the Minotaur in her hand. The ferociously hungry seed of the bulls, ripe for battle, each eager to find an egg and subjugate it. She saw the way Vedikus cared for his human female and Aldora’s devotion to him. Perhaps that was her answer. Now that the bulls roamed the lands of her birth, maybe she could have that for herself.
Calavia had witnessed what Aldora and her minotaur shared, and loneliness and envy had taken root in her heart. She had watched, unseen and unheard, as Vedikus ravaged Aldora, and the image of their coupling had remained with her. She wanted tofeelwhat Aldora had felt. She’d never seen a beast care for a human like he had. Like the mist had cared forher. There had been companionship between the pair…something Calavia never had.
