Page 373 of Kingdoms of Night

ENCHANTING THE DRYAD PRINCE

KINGDOMS OF LORE

ALISHA KLAPHEKE

CHAPTERONE

ISA

Isa wondered if this would be the day that she finally strangled someone with her bare hands. She hoped so. And it was important to stay positive.

Thin clouds churned above the ship like wraiths, and she adjusted her stance to keep from listing to the left as she hid a seashell behind a barrel of hard tack biscuits.

Eighteen months ago, after a storm destroyed her tapestry shop, she’d been desperate for food. The Brunes—masters of this ship—had told her they were headed to sea in search of treasure and investments, and that if she agreed to a period of indenture with them, she’d see the world. Her mind had whirled as she’d envisioned dragons, rubies the size of her face, and mysterious folk like dryad elves. She hadn’t waited one single day before signing on the dotted line.

She rolled her eyes and pushed her black hair out of her eyes. At twenty-one, she should have been well on her way to success. Instead, she was a slave in all but the paperwork—paperwork that had undoubtedly been thrown into the waves by Seigneur Brune himself.

Thankfully, she had little Nico to love in the middle of this hell. He was a scrappy kid who was as trapped as she was, forced into indenture by a lack of options.

“I hid three treasures in our berth and on deck here,” she said to the one individual not on her to-strangle list.

Nico had shut his eyes, as she’d requested, but now he opened those big blue beauties as she explained the game. She’d surreptitiously snatched a rose-striped seashell, a piece of sea glass, and an odd bit of bronze from the crew’s fishing nets over the past two weeks. Nico loved small things like that, and it was about all she could do to help him smile once in a while. Poor fellow. He was an indentured servant like her.

“Once we each finish a duty,” she continued, “we get two minutes to search while pretending to work. First of us to have two treasures gets to keep them all. Deal?” With her continually bleeding, chapped fingers, she tied her skirts up at the knee so she wouldn’t trip going belowdecks or up the stairs to the forecastle.

Nico grinned, his freckles light on his tanned skin and his blue eyes shining like gems. “Deal. But I’ll save one for you if I win.” His gaze went all serious and it was enough to break her heart.

Isa kissed his mop of tangled hair. “You are so much nicer than I am.”

“That’s because you’re a wild monster, remember?” Nico laughed as he grabbed a bucket he’d used for emptying the galley slops from last night’s meal. He hurried away as quickly as an underfed, beaten boy of nine years old could manage. When they’d first started talking, she’d told him she was a wild creature from the craggy cliffs of Wylfenden, who would shed her skin once a moon and become a boy-eating monster. She’d hoped to scare the lad into leaving her alone to wallow in her utter misery. But the boy’s sweet smile and determined spirit in the face of their situation had grown on her, and now she had to admit that she loved him like a brother.

Her heart ached as she watched him disappear belowdecks. He’d perked up since she took him under her wing, but she feared what would happen if he grew sick again. His slight frame could only handle so much.

Isa took up her own bucket—this one filled with what she needed to start up Seigneur and Dame’s iron heating grate—then she headed for their quarters. Seigneur Brune was captain as well as master of the ship, a man born to wealth but still ridiculously desperate for more gold, more rare finds, more, more, more. His wife, Dame Brune, was a vulture in a pretty dress. Her favorite pastime was picking the bones of her dead-in-spirit servants.

Slipping into the Brunes’ quarters, Isa used the soft-footed steps she’d learned on the streets of Nid de Lapin.

Seigneur’s rumbling snore stayed consistent as she woke the banked fire in the belly of their iron grate stove. She scuttled over to Dame’s side of the bed to place a cleaned chamber pot in the space between the ropes holding up the down-stuffed mattress and the salt-stained floorboards.

She stood to leave, but a sharp voice stopped her.

“I told you to bring us bread to break our fast, little mouse. I bet you ate it when the kitchen master gave it to you.”

Isa knew better than to argue. Her tongue touched the still-healing lump on her bottom lip, a wound Dame had given her three days ago for talking back. She nodded, anger rising in her blood like sparks.

“I forgot the bread. I’ll get it now, Dame.” Isa hurried out of the room and toward the galley. The morning sky was blood red and wispy; gray clouds flew above the ship. It was going to storm.

Voices rose as Isa clambered down the slick steps to belowdecks.

“You clumsy wretch.” Ursane—part gray-haired head maid, part black stain on humanity as a whole—was no doubt yelling at Nico.

Anger kindled what felt like a dancing, crackling fire in Isa’s middle and she swallowed. The sensation began as unpleasant but grew to be a powerful, positive feeling. The odd fire—as she’d always called it in her head—arose when she experienced other strong emotions too. She’d always been too afraid to ask anyone else to see if she was alone on that one or not. Trying to suppress her emotions, she fisted her hands as the corridor led to the galley.

Nico sat on the floor as he looked up at Ursane, his jaw set like it did when he was trying not to cry. Ursane’s slim cheeks rose into a smile as she set her beating stick on her shoulder.

Strangling seemed like the best recourse, really.

“What did he do this time?” Isa said, unable to school her tone. “Look at you wrong? Sneeze? How dare he be a human?”

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