“Very well,” Grigg said, reaching into a locked box on his table. I heard the rustle of credits inside and I felt greed andwantgrowing in my chest, though I tried to keep my breathing steady. His hand paused. His eyes ran down my covered body, lingering on my small breasts, and my arrow trembled in my palm. “You want two credits tonight?”
I couldn’t judge what other hungry women might do in my village, but I knew one thing for certain: I would never be desperate enough to fuck Grigg for an extra credit.
“One,” I said, hating the way my voice shook, hating how my throat closed.
The older man’s eyes narrowed and he tossed the credit onto the table, though it skidded and rolled onto the floor. I crouched, my fingers scrambling for it, the metal scraping into my palm.
Then I turned, eager to leave. At the door, he said behind me, “Remember how powerless you really are, girl. I’m being nice, you know.”
His unspoken words chilled me. What he meant was that I was a young woman—one of the few in our village—living alone, with no protection but my bow. I had no one. No family, no husband. If he wanted something from me, he could take it.
“Kier tried to take from me once,” I said. I remembered that night, remembered the panic, remembered his rough hands. I turned to look at Grigg. Though I was frightened, I couldn’t show it. I’d learned that a long time ago. Meeting the older man’s eyes, I said, “And he ended up with my arrow in his shoulder.Iwas being nice by not shoving the arrow into another place.”
Grigg’s mouth thinned.
I held his eyes, then I turned my back and left.
Once I was out of sight from the guards, I brought a shaking hand up and readjusted my bow, tucking the arrow into the band around my waist. I made my way to the kitchens, though nausea now churned in my belly. Because I knew the truth. I really was powerless. I was small and weak and hungry and alone. My only saving grace was that I was good with my bow and Grigg knew that. It was my only leverage.
My gaze tracked up to the sky, remembering the merchant vessel from earlier. I tried to imagine what my life would be like on another planet, but couldn’t. Dakkar was all I knew. But sometimes, I just wanted to float away, float into the stars, andleave.
I passed Kier on the way to the kitchens. He glared, that simmering rage boiling just beneath his exterior. When I’d first seen him, I’d thought him handsome with his dark hair and his light blue eyes. We’d been children then. Now, he just felt cruel. I could still feel his cruelness, like creeping shadow hands, even from a distance.
That night, only a few moon cycles ago, when he’d tried to take from me, he’d said in my ear, “You’re lucky, Nelle. Be glad I would fuck such an ugly, strange girl.”
I averted my gaze and ignored him, cutting a wide berth around his intended path. When I reached the kitchens, I slipped quickly inside, giving Berta my credit when she saw me hovering by the door. She harrumphed, always put out when she needed to serve food, but nevertheless, she slipped me a little square of bread when she passed me the bowl of soup.
She didn’t want a thank you, so I didn’t give her one, but I nodded in acknowledgement of her unexpected kindness, knowing she could get in trouble if Grigg found out.
Turning into the corner of the kitchen like a greedy, starved animal, I stuffed the small square into my mouth and chewed the dense, flavorless, powdery thing until it dissolved on my tongue. Then I chugged down the soup, knowing better than to take the food back to my home, unless I wanted to risk having it stolen. I ate fast because I always feared that it would be taken away.
When I was done, I gave the bowl back to Berta, said goodnight, and left. The streets were quiet in our village—not the smallest village on Dakkar by far, but certainly not the largest either, or so I’d heard—and I quickened my pace. When I reached home, I bolted the door and pushed the table in front of it.
My feet felt like boulders as I dropped my bow and lantern onto the table. But I kept my arrow close, the only one I had left, tucking it next to me when I dropped down onto the blankets on the floor, stroking the feathers at the end of the shaft. Once, they’d been beautiful. Now, they were dirty with use, sullied. Still, they were precious to me.
As I sunk into sleep that night, for the hundredth time I mused that humans on Dakkar feared the Dakkari the most, feared their massive, battle-bred hordes and the powerful horde kings that led them.
But me?
I feared humans more.
* * *
Violent poundingon my door woke me the next morning. In an instant, I was pulled from sleep, my hand fumbling for my arrow, which had rolled a short distance away during my thrashing through the night.
I calmed when I realized no one was attempting to break down the door. Groggy but wary, I called out, “Who is it?”
“Edmund,” a voice came.
My brow furrowed, but I rose from my bed of blankets and pushed the table that blocked the door away. When I unbolted it and pulled it open, I found Edmund there, one of the gate guards.
“What is it?” I asked, frowning, noticing that it was barely dawn and the chill made me shiver.
“A horde came during the night,” he said slowly, watching me closely. “They told Grigg they saw a female hunting last night in the Dark Forest.”
My stomach dropped.
I was the only female hunter in the village and hunting was forbidden by the Dakkari. For humans, at least. It was a law agreed upon when humans first began settling on Dakkar as refugees, long ago. To break it was punishable by death. I’d heard the Dakkari had killed humans for much less.
