Page 2 of The Blood of Gods and Monsters

My limbs nearly collapse. If she’s not the one responsible then it doesn’t matter anymore. I sink back to the floor and close my eyes again. A few moments pass.

“So, that’s it then, girl?”

My eyes reopen and I fix her with a dead look. “What do you want?”

“I want an answer to my question. Are you going to lay there and die in my dungeons or … are you going to survive?”

What would be the point? I want to ask her. Nothing matters anymore. My dad is dead. My only family. Unless she’s willing to let me go home, to let me return to the Hinterlands—the only place I’ve ever known—then I don’t want to survive. I want to die with my dad.

The woman, tall and straight backed in her leather trousers and cream-colored tunic tucked into the high waistband, clucks her tongue as if she’s disappointed by my lack of response. “I had hoped that you and I could have a good working relationship, girl, but if you’re so pathetic that one little bad day will leave you to give up this easily, I suppose…”

One bad day? I sit up again and the room spins. I ignore it. “My dad is dead!” I yell. “And you bought me like cattle. What do you want me to do?” I’m a freaking kid. This isn’t fair. None of this is fair. Fresh tears prick at my eyes. I want my daddy.

The woman steps closer to the bars and turns those cold brown and gold flecked eyes of hers down on me. “I want you to fight your way back to the surface, girl,” she states. “I want you to make a deal with me.”

I glare at her, untrusting. “A deal? What kind of deal?”

Her arms unfold and fall to her sides. “Do you know what you are?” she asks me.

Of course I do. I’m special. My dad told me that I was a girl made of two different worlds, born of a love for both.

As if she senses my thoughts, the woman nods. “You are a Mortal God, child, young and so powerful,” she tells me. “If you agree to my deal, then you can be free.”

Free? Why can’t she just free me now? “Let me out,” I snap in response, struggling to drag myself closer to the bars. I’m not far, merely a few feet, but it feels like miles until my fingertips brush the edge of the cold metal.

The woman’s chuckle might be close to laughter, yet it is anything but amused. She bends down, crouching low on her feet as our eyes meet closer this time. “That’s not how the world works, little girl,” she says. “It’s give and take.”

“You took me!” I yell at her, the fingers of one hand wrapping around the bar in front of me as my other hand hangs next to it, trapped in the cuffs still. “So give me back!”

She shakes her head, the dark swath of brown hair held in a ponytail at the back of her head swishing with the movement. “I bought you,” she reminds me. “I didn’t take you. If you want your freedom, you’ll have to pay me back.”

“I…” I don’t have any money.

The woman nods, understanding what I don’t say in that uncanny way of hers. “So, a deal is the only way you can get out of here,” she tells me again. “Will you agree?”

I bite down on my lower lip as it trembles. When listening to the fairytales Daddy had told me, there had always been a hero, always someone who comes in at the last moment to save the damsels in distress. Now, there is no one. This isn’t a fairytale or a story. This is real life, and no one is coming to save me. I have to get up and do it myself.

“What do you want me to do?” I lower my head as I ask the question.

When the woman replies, I can hear the triumph in her voice. “Work for me,” she says. “Become one of my assassins—I will train you, feed you, and ensure your protection—in return, all you have to do is survive.”

I lift my head again and fix her with a suspicious glare. “That sounds too easy.”

She throws her head back. This time, when she laughs, it’s a full-bodied sound. Her throat moves and her shoulders twitch as she laughs. It goes on and on until finally the sound drifts away and she glances back to me, lifting one hand to wipe away a stray tear of mirth from beneath her eye.

“It won’t be easy,” she replies. “It’ll likely be the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do. Being an assassin is no simple task. To be what you need to be in order to survive, you need to become everything that you fear. I can’t promise that you won’t suffer loss from this moment onward. I can’t promise that you’ll get that vengeance that I can see so clearly reflected in your eyes, child.”

My head ducks again, hiding the truth she’s already seen. The woman reaches through the bars and tucks two fingers beneath my chin. She lifts my head so that my eyes are level with hers once more.

“I will teach you everything you need to know to endure this world. I will teach you to be colder than ice. To walk through fire without flinching. To seduce and destroy with a mere glance.” My breath catches in my throat, but she continues. “I will teach you to rip this world apart with your bare hands and teeth.”

“Why?”

She pauses at that, as if surprised by my question. The closer she is now, the more I realize that her eyes aren’t just green. They are flecked with spots of gold and brown. They remind me of quiet mornings in the forest of the Hinterlands.

“Because,” she finally says, “someone did the same for me once.” She pulls her hand away from my face. “And because I can use you. Remember that, girl. Nothing in life is free. If you want to live, grab on to any reason. Death cannot be taken back, but life has a way of changing a soul. Altering you in different phases to fit everything that it throws at you.”

I stare at the woman, my eyes aching from so much crying that it hurts to keep them so fixated without blinking. Still, I stare. In the fairytales, girls are soft and sweet. Girls are saved. This woman doesn't look like she needs anyone to save her, and I want that too.

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