Page 7 of The Bone King and the Starling

His full, pink mouth tightens and he speaks in a gruff voice that cuts like broken glass, “Does another soul here hold your heart?”

I shake my head even though I am confused by the question.

“Where is your family?”

I shake my head more quickly, my hair shifting around my shoulders. He reaches up and grasps the end of one curl. His nostrils flare. I wonder if he smells my stench. I am embarrassed…humiliated…confused. My stomach is in knots and if it would not have embarassed me further, I suspect I’d have lost control of my bladder the moment he touched my arm.

“Are you claimed by another?”

I shake my head.

“Are you promised to another?”

I hesitate and before I can think of a more acceptable, decent answer, I stutter, “Not for a w-wife, my king.”

“Hm.” He is twirling a single curl around his finger, watching it with fascination before his gaze slowly passes from my hair to my shoulder beneath it, and then across the top of my dress. His hand tightens just a little around my throat in a way that can only be interpreted as a threat. Is he…is he going to kill me here? Like this? Perform the ritual of Davral on me right now?

“My king…” I whisper. “Mercy. Please…”

I haven’t led a particularly beautiful life, but it’s mine and I intend to see it through. I might not have much, but I have hopes…hopes for furs, for clean shoes, maybe even one day, if I get really lucky, a poor farm boy to take me for his…and if I were truly to be spoiled by the gods, maybe even with him a couple children to raise and to love and to shower with all the affection I didn’t receive from my own kin. Yet the king does not release me. Instead, he closes his eyes.

“Mercy,” he repeats. He repeats it two more times.

His eyes open and his gaze grows distant as it lingers on my ear. He tucks the curl he’d been toying with behind it and says so softly I strain to make out his words, “How can I offer what the gods have denied me? The gods do not intend mercy on either of us.”

“Please,” I say again, heat pressing at the backs of my eyes. “I have nothing to offer.”

His gaze snaps to mine and his hand drops halfway onto my chest. He rubs his thumb across the thin bones of my sternum. “Would you like to come with me?”

I freeze. Panic consumes me. “I’m just a thrall,” I whisper brokenly.

“I can see that.” His gaze travels down over my clothing all the way to my feet. His hand falls with it, exposing my throat and landing on my shoulder, which he squeezes. “You will come with me,” he says in an even deeper tone. “That I allow you to believe you have a choice in this is a gift that I now revoke. It has been decided. Come. You must be hungry.”

He takes my sticky fist in his, swallowing it whole in his palm and begins to pull me away from the wall. My feet are blocks of stone as they drag behind me, passing all of these people staring at me as if I’ve grown seven heads. The king retraces the path he took and pulls me to the front of the room, to the high table where only the favored sit, and then pulls me down onto his lap as he retakes his seat beside the Chief of Winterbren.

“Tell your females to be seated. I have made my selection,” he grunts as he settles me on his lap, positioning my legs across both of his so that my outer right hip is pressed right against his abdomen and my rear uses his thick thigh for a seat cushion. He ignores Chief Olec and the other men and women seated at this table.

Rosalind, seated at Chief Olec’s other side, stares at me around the chief’s body with menace in her eyes. Torbun and his family sit on her other side and strain to see over the top of her immaculately arrayed hair to look at the king and me. Behind me sit a smattering of King Calai’s warriors. I cannot see their expressions to interpret them, but I can hear the easy way they continue to speak and laugh amongst one another, as if this issomething to be celebrated. Then again, they know the king best. Perhaps, he does this type of thing all the time, at every village he passes through. Maybe, they are simply animated because they are used to it.

Chief Olec meets my gaze fleetingly before I tear my attentions to the heavily decorated table. King Calai stretches both arms around me to reach his plate, which is clear until he ladens it anew. He cuts a piece of turkey off of the bone and surprises my wits out of my temples when he does not eat it himself, but instead brings it to my bottom lip.

“Open,” he says, voice easier than it was.

I obey and take the succulent turkey off of the tines with my teeth, noting that this is the same fork King Calai used and now, we are sharing it. He takes the next two bites and, as I finish chewing my first, has another piece of meat ready for me. This one, ox. I’ve prepared ox many times before, but I’ve never tasted it and I nearly moan with the pleasure that glides through me at the rich and fatty texture.

“You like ox?”

I nod and then in a trembling whisper, add, “It is my first time.” I glance up at his face, hoping he understands what I’m trying to tell him. The fork in his hand dips, his brows furrow, he opens his mouth, but it’s Chief Olec who speaks.

“Your choice is surprising, my liege,” Chief Olec offers with a loud laugh.

The king continues staring at my face, deep into my eyes like he’s trying to mine for some precious resource, but he should know, I don’t have anything. I break his gaze first and after another weighty silence, he resumes skewering pieces of meat from his plate and alternatingly eating a bite and feeding the next to me.

“I make no choices. I am merely led by the gods,” the king says in a way that nearly sounds dismissive as he surrounds mewith his body and his attention, sparing Chief Olec little. “Do you prefer wine or ale, little bird?” he says to me.

His chest lines my shoulder and arm, his body cupping mine so intimately. His head is positioned high over mine and the fact that he didn’t seem to register what I was trying to tell him before makes me especially apprehensive. My mouth is dry and I am thirsty enough to try either wine or ale, whichever is offered.

“Wine, I think?” I’ve only had a few sips of ale and found it unpleasant. I’ve never tried wine at all, but I’m hopeful it won’t taste worse than the ale I sampled.

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