Page 6 of The Bone King and the Starling

He rises to his feet, pushing his chair back. It groans under his displaced weight. He drops his empty horn on the table and begins to walk with purpose. There’s no way he’d be able to stick his meaty legs through the narrow gaps between the benches, so he does the reasonable thing and comes down the servants’ aisle. The one Ebanora is currently standing far too near to. It’ll put her directly in his path.

My stomach clenches as I watch him. His heavy feet are wrapped in fur-lined boots. The leather and fur of his pants strain against his powerful legs. His weapons knock against his thick thighs as he takes step after step, moving down the row lined with servants, closer and closer to Ebanora while his gaze sweeps to his right, across the tables where so many eager women have risen.

Those nearest to him look so hopeful as he approaches them, and their hope is immediately crushed as he continues, his steps sure, his stride unfaltering. His red beard catches the light, shimmering brown and burgundy and orange. As does his hair, the top half of which is bound back away from his face, a few loose braids woven through the mass that falls down to his shoulder blades.

His large head swivels and his massive breadth storms forward. Ebanora and I stare at one another. Her expression has fallen slack and I don’t quite understand why she’s staring at me in such shock until it hits me that the king has come to a stop directly before me.

Me.

The immense presence of the king of Wrath tramples me like a horse and my gaze is wrenched from Ebanora to the male standing above me. His shoulders twist smoothly to face me, and his head turns away from the risen women, gaze finding my face and focusing on it like it’s the first face he’s ever seen.

His black eyes move over my forehead and nose, cheeks, chin and lips before dropping down to my chest. He looks my body over briefly and then returns his gaze to mine. Face tilted up, I disgrace myself by not looking down quickly enough. It is not appropriate for one of my station to look at him directly, and yet, he does not punish me. I stare down at his legs, waiting — hoping — for him to ask me to fetch him something. I am a thrall. That would be my duty. Anything more I am not prepared for.

Beside me, Elena stiffens while the male to my right edges away from me, putting space between us. What is happening? Heat hits the backs of my eyes as I wait and pray to Raya for mercy.

And then he takes a step. There can be no mistaking the fact that he’s standing in front of me now. Any cowardly hope I might have had that his focus was on Elena beside me is gone. King Calai’s enormous body eclipses the world behind him. I take a tentative glance up to his chest and warily eye the leather straps that crisscross all over it. Beneath them, scars shimmer. He has a cut on his stubbled jaw where no hair grows. It’s small but glistens silver when he tips his chin down to look at me. I shame myself by glancing into his eyes a second time. Fool. If he hadn’t intended to punish me before, he certainly will now.

He edges forward another step, and then another. My back is plastered to the longhouse wall, yet his chest is almost against mine, separated from it by only the pitcher between us. And then…not even that. I flinch when he takes the pitcher by itsopen mouth, using just one of his massive hands to remove it from my grip and hand it absently to the male standing to my right. The bone king then reaches for my left hand, clenched around my treat. It shakes. I cannot control it.

His large, leathery fingers skim the outer edge of my wrist. His hand is so big, it doesn’t look real. I’ve never met anyone as big as he is. He deftly turns my palm over in his. Lingering over the veins in my wrist for a moment, he opens my fingers with his thumb. They’re dirty, my fingers. His are callused, but clean as they stroke my skin. All of his movements are sure. His thumb moves down towards the heel of my hand and flicks one edge of the folded napkin with his short nail. I don’t dare try to keep my treat from him. If he came to punish me for having it when I shouldn’t, I won’t resist. Whatever punishment I shall receive, I’ll live.

He makes a soft sound through his nose, one I can’t interpret. Then his thumb pushes my fingers back around my sacred, stolen morsel.

“Are you willing?” he says, his hand still cupping mine, holding it aloft between us. He rakes his thumb over my knuckles, the gesture strange and familiar even though he doesn’t know me and I exist in a world apart from his. He is as distant to me as the gods. At least…he was.

I still do not believe that he could be talking to me. I want to glance to someone — anyone — for aid, but I’m too frightened to look away from his hand closed around my trembling fist. I gnaw on my bottom lip, too afraid to answer.

“You are standing,” comes his low brogue, “so I will assume that you are.”

I’m a thrall. I’m not allowed to sit at a feast. He knows that. He has to know that. There’s a male standing right beside me. But who am I to tell him any of that? I open my mouth but a whimper is all that I emit.

“Look at me.”

Oh no. I can’t do that. It’s a flogging offense for a servant to meet a king’s gaze directly like this.

“I give you permission.” His hand releases my fist and it drops like a stone. I am unbearably attuned to the brush of his fingers on the outside of my dress. His fingers trail up my forearm, past my elbow. He picks a loose string — one among many — off of my dress before he reaches my shoulder and touches the place where my shift meets my skin, tracing the edge with his callused fingers. He moves his hand along my clavicle, his knuckles brushing over it so softly, yet with so much threat. He could break the bone with just that hand, I’m sure of it. And I feel like sobbing at the realization.

“I require it, little bird.”

I shiver from head to toe despite the heat of the hall — and the even greater heat he emanates. I may be a thrall, but I have never been touched like this before, not on my bare skin, so intimately, with such implied intent. My lower lip trembles as his hand moves to the side of my neck, which he strokes gently with his rough thumb, up and down my quivering muscle.

“Shh,” he says. “Be still.” He touches my jaw and then forces my chin up, but I keep my eyes closed, much to his disproval, because he clacks his tongue against the backs of his teeth. “Little bird, look at me.”

I swallow hard. His hand momentarily fists around my throat as I do. I struggle to lift my gaze past his beard and take several short, hot breaths to build the courage. I finally take in his nose, but he loses patience and tips my chin even further up with his thick thumb, giving me no other choice but to look into his dark and violent stare or up at the patchy thatch roof above his head. I don’t dare defy him again and choose the more frightening of the two options. I meet his gaze.

Later, I will wonder if what I heard was true or a conjuring of my frightened imagination, but in the instant our eyes clashed, I could have sworn I heard the king take in a sharp breath, as if I’d startled him. But I will never know for certain.

In the next moment, his cheeks turn ruddy and his naturally pink lips take on a more striking carmine color, flushed from wine or something else. A vein throbs across his forehead and a muscle in his neck jumps. His hand flinches around my throat, making me jump. In a moment of silent shame, I drop my sweet bread.

I wipe my now sticky palm off on the rough material of my threadbare dress as my gaze passes between his eyes, trying desperately to decipher if the corners of his mouth and the stitching of his prominent brow betray ease or an edge. Right now, I feel all of his sharp edges stabbing and jabbing into me as I wait and pray for whatever ill is to befall me, but when he speaks, he does so gently, his voice taking on a tone that tickles my sense of familiarity once again.

“Have you bled?” His words are low and soft.

Startled by the question, I answer in truth with a shallow nod before the humiliation of his request can wash over me.

His brows pull even closer together, as if he is displeased with my answer, or unsure if I’m telling him the truth. “How many years?”

I hold up one hand with my thumb, pointer, middle and ring finger lifted. My pinky finger I keep lowered against my sticky palm.

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