“Would you like me to hold your hand, little Silk Girl?”

I think I nod.

The next few moments I meander through in a dream state. He presses my wrist to the tattoo table, and I anchor myself to his gaze—almost feline. Lots of Xin De have glowing irises.

Unbinding my wrist from his grip, he moves his hand to blanket mine, pinning me to the counter.

“Gentle with my property or you’ll discover the true meaning of pain,” he orders the man, though his eyes haven’t wavered from me.

He holds my hand.

I hold my breath.

Heat from his palm radiates into my skin.

The buzzing starts, his eyes anchor me, pain from the needle fires, dark intent rolls through his gaze, and I practically moan against my conflicting senses. Warm discomfort pools in my bellybutton. Blue eyes pierce through me to my bones deeper than any needle.

Everything is hot.

Painful and pleasant.

And his eyes.

Oh my, his eyes.

“It’s all over now,” he states smoothly, releasing my hand, a cool absence sweeping across the grieving flesh.

I blink up at him, the loud fantasy of him and me and whatever strange painful, pleasure that was slips away.

Heat flares through my wrist, so I look down to see the tattoo’s burning presence. It is pretty. A purple womb created from flowers and stems. The same smile I saw on Iris’s face slides across my lips.

I am officially a Silk Girl.

Too soon, he is striding away. I am flooded with desperation that I’ll never see him again, that he’ll forget about me, that Iris and the girls are right about me being Fur Born, so I reach for him before I can think.

Gasps expel.

Eyes widen.

My fingers clutch at a piece of his velvety shroud.

“Take me with you, my king.” The words tumbling from my lips like apples from a barrel.

Shit.

He turns, a creature more predator than man, but his expression becomes one of amusement. I’m not sure I like it. It’s playful in the way an eagle might play with a mouse.

Looking down at my small hand, clinging to the fibres of his jacket, he says, “Not today.”

“I’m ready,” I blurt out, ignoring the girls who gape and the Silk Wardeness who shakes her head, scolding me silently. She doesn’t dare speak in his presence. It’s a vow. Speak only when spoken to. Never touch the king without permission…

Yet here I am…

He studies me, dark eyes drilling through my confidence. “How many years have you bled?”

I swallow. “Five. I can live Meaningful Purpose, my king. I’m stronger than I look.”

“You’re small.”

“I’ll eat more,” I counter.

“What was stopping you before?” His lips twitch with a smile when I have no answer for him. “You have an answer for everything? But not this.”

“I know what I want, my king.”

“And that is?”

To prove them wrong.

“Meaningful Purpose.”

A pause thickens the air.

He steps toward me again, his gait graceful, contradictory to such a large, menacing man.

He cups my face in both big hands, his fingers cradling the back of my head. He could crush my skull. Pop it.

Gone.

I wonder whether he has. I’m sure he has crushed bones within these warm hands, turned them to powder.

Looking down at me, he drinks in the sight, the intensity in which he maps each feature, in which his gaze slices across my cheeks, eyes of violet, my parted mouth, peels me back to bone and breath.

“You’re pretty.” The words are licks of warmth, and my knees buckle with each letter. “I bet the other girls despise you.”

Shit.

I glance quickly at the girls, at Iris and Lavender. “We have no jealousy, my king,” I lie. It’s one of our vows: no jealousy between Silk Girls.

Meaningful Purpose is what matters.

“Lies,” he purrs, and all the hairs on my neck rise. “Do you know what I do to people who despise me?” He lifts my chin with his thumb, a silent demand to answer him.

I shake my head. “No.”

“I give them more reasons to.”

Then his hands drop from my face, and disappointment hits my stomach as he strides away.

The press in my chest gives way when he disappears into the streets, closely tracked by two men who might well be his shadows. But I know they are his Guards. The Guard. One of them is Kong. His Guardian.

I have studied him. That is surely him. He is large, tanned-skin, and has long dark hair that he pulls away from his face and into a knot at the back of his head.

The quiet stretches to a low, frantic musing between the girls and the Silk Wardeness. “Did he come to see us?” “Perhaps, Ivy.” “To check on his property?” “Why would he be in the Lower-tower?” “Visiting Lord Bled, perhaps.” “I don’t know, girls. Quieten down.”

The questioning continues, and the tattoo man calls, “Next,” but I’m still staring at the door to the parlour.

Outside, the Redwind now swallows any sight or sound, but for the unmistakable screech from above, piercing and fierce, parting the atmosphere to warn us he is here.

His great eagle—Odio.

How I wish to see him. His wingspan must be larger than my outstretched arms to coast the deadly gale.

I exhale hard, finding plenty of room in my chest now that he isn’t close. He’s an enigma like his eagle, present but too high to ever reach.

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Rome of the Strait,

The Cradle’s Monarch and Protector

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Chapter Two

Aster

I wander down toward my favourite place.

It’s the setting of my earliest memory, from when I was too small to talk fluently, but too fast on my feet for the Silk Wardeness to keep me in her sights.

I had wandered off the pretty pebbled path and into the depths of the aviary, following a scent that I couldn’t quite place. Like mushrooms with floral notes. Wet, yet fresh.

I walked with flowers in my fist, birds rattling trees overhead, and ladders in my forever-ruined stockings, in a direction without supervision—with freedom.

That was when I saw it.

A body of water that boasted more colours than possible, a light reflecting yellows and oranges in an endless green abyss.

A pond.

It was the first one I had ever seen, and I couldn’t swim for the life of me, but I needed to touch it.

I knelt on the grass bedding by the bank and placed the flowers down on the greenery. I skimmed my fingertips across the moving colours along the water when an odd shape caught my eye.

Blinking at it, I reached across and plucked the strange thing up. It was a baby bird floating on the water. Belly up. Legs awkward. Feet curled over as though they were wilted petals.

“Bird,” I whispered, the feathers tickling my young palm. I remember that it felt so small. Even to me. So wildly insignificant—even to me.

I didn’t know this at the time, but that young bird had hit the glass boundary of the aviary and broken its little neck.

I was too small to understand empathy, but I had a feeling inside my chest that pulled and pulled and pulled. I felt like the bird, all upside-down and tense.

Alone.

It was my earliest memory, but it would become a tradition that lasted for many ages. I would soon spend many days collecting broken-necked birds for my friend.

For my friend to eat.

I reach the bank and wait.

A big raptor-bird appears from the bushes. Its wing is perpetually broken, and its beak is already covered in blood from a first-light of cannibalistic hunting.