Alive.
Chapter
Two
Alexandra Vidaltos gripped the sides of her head, her hair a knotted mess around her fingers. The once brown, now black strands crossed her vision in an uncombed web. Voices beat against her brain like wild drums in a tantrum.
A groan crept up her raw throat.
The shadow knelt before her. “Be our voice.” They spoke in layers. Too many.
Too many.
Too many.
Too many.
Textured, gritty like sand caught in her teeth. Weighted, like hands pressing on her skull from the inside out.
“Please.” She’d never begged a day in her life. She’d been begging now for months.
Tears spilled over her lids, blurring the figure-shifting forms like smoke dancing within a breeze. Man, child, woman, beast.
Images of the world outside, parts she’d never seen, people she’d never known, flashed through her overtaxed mind. The thunder of hooves across plains. Bellows of battle. The call…the alluring call…don’t listen to it!The stones, marble monoliths—reconnect, reconnect,reconnect. They’re dead.They’re all dead. Selene taking the hand of a man who wasn’t Augustus…he loved her, and his eyes…who was he?Daughters, daughters,daughters.Pieces on a board. They all have their parts to play.
“Tell them,” they said. “Tell them all.”
She couldn’t. How could she?
This was madness.
Kai Silver Wolf of First Clan, first in line to the Grand Matriarch of Yiria, sat atop her barbed oxbeast and scanned the barren landscape. The frozen earth was white and raw, marked only by clawed tracks behind her. Her spear had gone cold in her grip. She couldn't feel her face, and yet she wasn’t ready to end her patrol.
The sun would dip below the horizon within the hour.
And then…potentially, the worst night of her life. The first of an entire week.
Tonight wasn’t just a ceremony. It was a life sentence. One she’d been outrunning since coming of age. Tonight, it might finally catch her.
She exhaled a puff of frosty air. This happened every year, and every year, it was the same torment. The clans ensured the continuation of bloodlines in a series of nightly ceremonies that lasted seven days. A male must be paired with a female. Or females.
If the gods were good, she and Fala would go another year unassigned.
Kai didn’t know which would be worse: the Eternal One calling on her to take a male or for Fala to lie with one. The idea of anyone’s hands on her wife other than hers made her feel violent.
She could still hear her mother’s ire on the subject, and several days had passed since that argument.“Of the nine clans, the First Daughter of Silver Wolf has always been called upon to ensure the succession of the Matriarchal line. You will be called, and you will perform your duty as the gods demand.”
Her mother had six blood-born daughters, so why did it have to be her? Any one of them could ensure succession, and they’d gladly accept the role of Grand Matriarch when the time came.
Kai had no desire to lead the clans when her mother passed through the veil. She’d proved further disloyal by marrying a Quiet Rock female. She might as well have spit at her mother’s feet when choosing a mate from another clan—as if love were a choice.
Kai patted the thick gray fur of her beast. “Let’s go home, Dryja. There’s nothing out here.”
Dryja grumbled low in response, a large puff of cloud appearing. Her long, curved horns cut through the frozen air as she turned.
Most days, Kai thought continuing these patrols was a useless endeavor. But there was precedent to worry. There’d been a time when foreigners had arrived with wide smiles and clever words, only to turn vicious in the end. Entire clans vanished during those years of war. They used to be twenty clans strong. Now, they were nine. Holding onto their way of life by the grit of their teeth and the tip of their spears.
Yiria wasn’t the type of land outsiders wanted because they needed a place to live. They wanted unlimited access to their mines. The supply of maclinite gems was one of the few items keeping the clans from starving, and they relied heavily on trade with the outside. The land couldn’t be farmed, and any beasts strong enough to tough out the extreme weather were more dangerous than not. The barbed oxbeast was a mild version of the things lurking in the Yirian mountains, and the clans raised the cubs from birth to tame them.
