Prologue - The Hunt
 
            Moonlight shines down on the four of them, standing in the open field like standing on a ballroom floor, waiting to dance. I move through the tall grass as swift as a gust of wind and four of them jump. The musty scent of confusion being replaced with much more tangy scents of apprehension and the slightest hint of the bitter taste of fear.
            Smiling, I run my tongue over my gloriously sharp teeth and rake the ground with my claws. The scratching makes them all jump again, clutching their weapons tighter. Searching. The confusion is drowned out by the nervousness, apprehension and fear.
            When the moonlight goes behind a cloud, I silently creep into the center of the four, slipping into a human skin more fitting of being the host of the dance. Moonlight returns and their almost blind eyes land on me. I smile at each of them in turn and whisper, “Run.”
            They scatter like rabbits. I laugh. My claws return before I take my second step after them, the wildcat not an animal you would ever find. One of my own creation and tweaking, designed to be fast and lethal.
            Powerful muscles carry me through the grass after them. The first’s throat lands on the ground before he swings his sword, the metal clattering to the dirt. He follows, clutching at his spurting throat. I spit his blood back on the ground. Human blood is metallic and bland.
            The second actually gets a chance to point her spear at me. I bite the staff and snap it in two, the splintered wood mixing with her flesh in my mouth.
            The final two got farther away so I jump into the air, shifting into something with wings to search for them.
            I cast a shadow on the field. From here, the hunters look more like field mice, scurrying from an owl. Or perhaps in this instance, confused insects fleeing from a bat. Clicking bounces sound back to me, filtering out the soft grass from the sturdy bodies, precise enough I can read the emblem of the kingdom they come from on their weapons.
            The third hunter drops his bow and screams as I catch him in my claws and drag him into the air. He doesn’t stop until I drop him and he hits the ground again with a delicious crack.
            The fourth, another woman, drops to her knees, praying to divinities that aren’t there, spear discarded beside her. I almost consider leaving her. Instead, I cut off her mutterings along with her head.
            I leave my animal skins behind and breathe deeply. Blood fills the air, mixing with bitter fear. Like coffee and raw meat. The wind changes direction. A new smell emerges. Perfume: the spice of wild hawthorn.
            I race out of the field and leap between tree branches after the scent. Near the outskirts of the woods walks a woman in a long dress, a cloak in her arms. Even in a non-human form, I smile. There you are. I lie in wait until she walks under my tree. And then, I pounce.
 
 
The Blood Pact I
 
            Gusts of wind break open the doors to the royal court and extinguish every candle in the hall, plunging it into darkness. I call the gusts back to me and as they travel, they reignite the flames a blood moon red, casting the marble floors and the whole court in a ruby glow. The magical equivalent of stretching my fingers.
            I straighten my collar and smooth my coattails as I stalk into the room, hands clasped behind my back. The gaggle of nobles and royals parts before me. Guards draw scimitars with each of my steps but none dare to use them yet. The kingdom’s royals sit at the opposite end of the hall on a dais covered in plush pillows and elegant fabrics whose colours are all altered from the light. The sultana reaches for her daughter’s hand but the sultan levels a stern glare at me, cheek resting on his knuckles.
            Once the crowd has parted enough to form a clear path from the royals to me, I stop, surveying the hall, the banners, and musicians in the corner, with curved lips. “A party for me? You shouldn’t have.”
            The sultan’s hand clenches into a fist. “What do you want, sorceress?”
             “I’ve come to claim what is owed to me.” I take in the room again, the expensive fabrics, imported food, exotic animals in gilded cages. “You seem to have enjoyed your end of it.”
            The sultana grabs her daughter’s arm more intently, eyes growing wider by the second.
            Of the three royals, the daughter is confusingly the calmest. Brow pinched, she leans closer to her mother’s ear. “What is she talking about?”
            I turn my curious gaze to the stone-faced sultan, cocking my head. “You didn’t tell her?” I punctuate each shake of my head with a click of my tongue. “Leaving it to me to be the bearer of bad news.”
            Sultana clutching her arm with both of hers, the daughter watches me expectantly.
            “Well then,” I hold her gaze and trace two circles in the air at my sides “many years ago—”
            The sultan’s fist tightens enough I smell blood. “Seize her.”
            A scimitar swings for my head. “Seventeen to be precise,” I lean out of its path, “this kingdom was nothing like you know it,” and duck under the blade, flicking one arm up. The first circle glows to life, trapping the soldier’s leg as surely as if it had turned to stone.
            “It was poor,” I send the trapped soldier sliding across the marble into another pair of armed people, “and destitute,” spin a kick and send another’s blade skittering across the floor as the court scrambles away from the fight, “and crumbling under its own weight.”
            Footsteps charge from behind me. “Your mother,” I tilt my head to the side, grab the end of the spear and throw the woman attached to it over my shoulder, “approached me.” The second circle stops her sooner than it should and another man trips over her body. “And asked me for help.”
            I catch an arrow and snap it in half. “Asked me to solve all the kingdom’s problems.” A row of soldiers approaches from my left. “To use my magic to stop the famine and bring back trade, a full menagerie of wealth.” I call the familiar buzz of magic to my fingertips and sweep my arm across their path, conjuring a barrier their weapons stick in. “In exchange,” I finish my sweep and point to the daughter, “for you.”
            The daughter stares wide-eyed at her parents.
            The sultana stands, daring to take a few steps forward. “I only agreed to it because I couldn’t bear children!”
            “That’s not how it works.” I smirk. “Don’t you know anything about blood pacts? You can’t fool them. In any case,” I drop to the floor as a barrage of arrows soars overhead, hitting the floor and careening off wildly into the shins of nobles, “the pact would have compensated for any… lack on your part.” I straighten, call the arrows into the air with a gust of wind and shoot them back. “Although, that’s not what happened.”
            The sultan seems torn between shouting at his soldiers and demanding more answers out of me. He settles on neither.
            “You did ask me to fix all the problems with your kingdom.” I call more wind to carry me off the floor, out of the path of a second round of arrows. “It seems the pact remedied more than the land’s barrenness.”
            The sultana clutches her daughter. “Please, she’s our only child.”
            Eyes still on the sultana, I land and catch the staff of a spear, slicing magic through it – to the shock of the one wielding it. “Perhaps you should have had more children.” I spin to stab the tip into the leg of another attacker.
            “Take it all back then,” the sultan grates out. “You can have it back and let us keep our daughter.”
            I shake my head with a sneer. “Oh, nice try. But blood pacts are not so easily broken.” Kicking another guard over the head, I return my attention to the sultan, holding my arms out to the sides. “Are you going to send your whole army after me?”
            “If that’s what it takes.”
            I roll my eyes. “Let’s move things along then.” I let my arm hang by my side, drawing on the cool thread running through my blood. It anchors just below the crook of my elbow and reaches towards the dais. I whisper to the pact, “I’m claiming all that is mine.”
            The red flames from the chandeliers above all spear to the marble below, then bend outwards like bent bamboo. Like blood splatters frozen in midair. It forms a path between me and the daughter. The sultana yelps and stumbles back into her husband. The daughter jumps, hands clutched to her chest, whipping her head back and forth as the barrier closes behind her.
            “Khadija!” The sultana bangs on the red wall, hissing as it burns her.
            The pact makes itself known, a cross between a red thread and a vein, stretching from my arm to Khadija’s chest. There’s the familiar stinging heat, as if I was cut, as the pact claims what it’s owed. A debt paid.
            The sultan simply sags back to his pillows, staring death at me. I return it with a smile.
            At last Khadija gets it in her head to try and flee, darting towards her mother. I let her press her hand against the barrier. “What’s going on? Make—Make it stop.” She looks to me. “Let, please let me out. Please.”
            Her mother ignores the burning and matches her daughter’s hand. “Khadija, I—I didn’t…” Her voice breaks. Still, I know her sobbing isn’t from the physical pain. “I’m sorry.”
            That’s enough of that… “Come,” I say and give a tug on the bond.
            Khadija steps back from her mother, surprised by her own movement.
            “Khadija! No! No, no, no!” Her voice gets shriller with every word. At last, the sultana looks to me, tears streaming down her face and falls to her knees. “Please.”
            One hand behind my back again, I hold the other out for Khadija and give a harder tug on the bond, hurrying her steps. Corner of my mouth upturned, I nod to the sultana. “May you make peace with your bargain.”
            Khadija’s hand touches mine – soft, clearly never having worked a day in her life – and I open a portal home, golden light mixing with the red. As I step in and pull her daughter through it, the sultana screams. The portal closes before she finishes.
 
 
The Sorceress’ House
 
            I’m blinded by the sheer, utter confusion of what just happened as much as the change from the dim red glow to bright sunlight. It only adds to the uncertainty. I was half expecting to step out in a stone dungeon. Instead, the sorceress lets go of me, wipes her hand on her pants, and leads me towards the entrance to a sprawling garden. Faint trickles of flowing water stream out from inside.
            My body follows after her of its own accord, through the circular gate in the stone wall and into the garden within. The house inside towers over me like a great tree, parts of it reaching out seemingly in defiance of gravity like branches, it’s pagoda roofs almost like giant, cedar flowers. But the red walls are similar enough to the light I just left that it sets a round stone of unease in my stomach.
            “You can do what you want as long as you don’t leave the walls and stay out of my rooms,” the sorceress says with a voice both practiced and bored.
            “How will I know which ones are your rooms?”
            “Because you won’t be able to go in them.”
            The matter-of-factness in her control makes the stone weight heavier. The air is heavier here, too, thicker, harder to breathe in a way that’s more than the knot in my chest.
            “There’s food in the pantry and plenty to do. Amuse yourself as you please.” Her steps don’t make noise like they should as she stalks down the stone path and I swear plants straying too close bend out of her way. “There is no shortage of rooms. Take whichever one you want, it’s just you at the moment.”
            I lag behind, admiring the garden in its entirety. “Do… Do you often have other… guests?” Spread among the plants and flowers and flowering trees are rock paths and ponds. My eyes catch on the wall as I look back. Above it, doming above the top of the house, is a shimmering wall akin to silent lightning.
            “Occasionally.”
            Then there’s the… pull again, something deep in my blood that propels my feet back into motion as the sorceress opens the doors, splitting the golden design on them in two. That again sends a spike of panic through me, but again nothing horrible or ominous waits inside—just a house. A heavily decorated house, each spare wall and surface covered, with painted panels separating rooms, but a house nonetheless. Red, again. The sorceress takes off her boots and sets them to the side of the door with the ease of any motion completed thousands of times. I find my slippers off and across from them before I realize.
            The sorceress continues into the house without me and up the staircase across from the entrance.
            “W—Wait!”
            She pauses, back still to me.
            “What… What just…” I stare down at my chest, where that strange… thread went into me. “What just happened? I don’t understand— I… I’m some sort of… debt to be paid? I-I wasn’t even born yet! What do you want from me?”
            She places her hand on the railing with surprising delicacy. “Nothing. Your parents needed my magic. You were the price. I’ve been paid it.”
            “But, but you were, you kept talking about a… a blood pact? What is—”
            She points up and to the left and drones, like she’s repeated the words as many times as she taken off her boots, “Library’s up two floors, second door on the left, along the back wall, sixth bookcase from the right, bottom shelf, seventeenth book in.” She continues up the stairs.
            I stand, rooted to the spot but not by her, by the idea of being left on my own in this strange house. “You didn’t tell me your name.”
            Without breaking stride, she says, “Call me what you like.”
            “You—You never asked my name.”
            “Khadija. Your mother shrieked it enough times.”
            I bristle, set my shoulders and follow after her. “Don’t you feel even a shred of remorse?”
            “Not particularly.” She reaches the first landing which splits off to the left, right, and straight back, and continues higher to the right. “If she wasn’t prepared to pay the price, she shouldn’t have sold you off.”
            “She- She didn’t sell me off, she wouldn’t do that.”
            She chuckles. “Then how are you here?”
            “You took me!”
            “I can only take what others are willing to offer. Page two-hundred and thirty-seven.”
            “Huh?”
            “The book.”
            I hurry my steps to catch up to her. “So, if you didn’t want to take me, then why am I still here?”
            The sorceress stops again. Sighs. She still doesn’t look at me. “You can follow me and pester me with questions all day, but I can just make you be quiet and leave me alone. Though I imagine you’d rather choose what you do.” She keeps ascending. “Page two-hundred and forty-one, by the way. But I doubt you’ll find the answers you’re looking for in that book.”
            I can’t take a step when I try and follow her again. Instead, I watch her go until she’s out of sight and I’m left alone in a stranger’s house. The sorceress’ too-quiet footsteps silence entirely. It’s so quiet my ears ring.
            Wind blows. I look up as the house creaks.
            I clutch my hands to my chest, like I could reach inside and pull the thread out and walk away from this place, and look around. Having nothing else to do, I start back down the stairs towards the supposed library. I reach the first landing where the stairway splits. My legs grow unsteady. I reach for the railing. As soon as my palm touches the smooth wood, still warm from the sun, it all becomes tangible – this place, this woman, this… pact.
            The tempo of my heart picks up. I’m overcome with the feeling of a thousand eyes on me at once. Watching. Waiting. Half blind, I bolt up the opposite staircase, looking for any place to hide. This must be a trick. It has to be. I grab the railing and use it to spin myself up the next flight of stairs faster. Any moment, more red fire will descend, or she’ll pull me into a cage. An exotic animal on display.
            I blindly open doors until I find a bedroom—whether it’s truly the first or just the first one I notice as a bedroom I don’t know—and dart inside, slamming the door shut. Panting, I back up until I hit the bed, clutching the bedpost, watching the door. Waiting.
            But there’s nothing. No footsteps chasing after me. The sun shines steady and bright.
            My legs give out. I keep one hand on the bedpost to keep myself upright. The other covers my mouth in a poor attempt to muffle my high-pitched hyperventilating as tears spill over.
            I hope she hears it.
​
The Morning After
 
            I wake with a pounding head, curtains already closed last night in preparation. Too much magic yesterday and now I pay the price for it. I smirk. But wasn’t it so much fun?
            With my foot, I pry the curtain open a fraction, enough for the sunlight to hit the sun calendar on the opposite wall. Not today. I let the curtain fall closed and settle back into the pillows and blankets stuffing the hammock. The more I move the more the pounding spreads through my body, like carpenters are banging on my bones. Such an inconvenience.
            On the precipice of falling back asleep, distant shouting pulls me back. It’s the girl’s voice. Speaking of inconveniences… It’s a rare occasion I wish blood pacts allowed access to the mind, but if it would prevent me having to get up right now…
            Eyes still closed, I find my way out of my study and to the nearest banister by memory.
            “Is-Latif?” Khadija calls from several floors below. “Hello?” Her voice barely wavers. She’s holding up well. They usually spend at least the first day crying. Or screaming. Or trying to escape.
            I lean my full weight on the wood, rubbing my temple. “What are you yelling about?”
            “Oh. I was looking for you.”
            “By shouting nonsense?”
            “It’s the name I picked for you.”
            I crack an eye. “What?”
            On a balcony three floors down, she nods. “You said to call you what I wanted. I picked Is-Latif. It means gentle thief.”
            A coarse laugh escapes me. “Gentle? I fought two dozen soldiers to get to you.”
            “But you haven’t hurt me.”
            Perhaps this is her own way of trying to insult me. I massage my temples with both hands. Too much movement…
            “Are… Are you alright? Does your head hurt?”
            “What do you want?”
            “Um, I found the kitchen but I, um, I don’t… I’ve never cooked.”
            “Sigil on the center counter. Put your ingredients in there.” I push back and return to my study. “The kitchen will take care of the rest.”
            “Oh. Do, do you want some?”
            I shut my door forcefully and hope she gets the message, and flop back into my hammock. It’s such a pain keeping them alive… I check the sun calendar again. At least it’s not indefinitely.
 
~~~
 
            My hands occupied by the other two, I pull the third leather strand tight with my teeth around the bundle of plants. Fresh from the garden, they give an earthy tinge to the air. Muttering incantations, I cut a section of hair from the nape of my neck with a ritual dagger. I braid crystal shards into the hair and tie knots in each end. Still murmuring, I sandwich the hair between the plants and an engraved stone, tying them together with the leather strands from the bundle.
            Complete, the stone buzzes faintly in my hands as I carry it down through the house and into the garden. The stone I’m replacing sits against the wall around the back of the house. Its carved surface has been worn away from the elements so the rune is barely visible. Best to catch these things before they stop working.
            I sit cross-legged with the stone in my lap and painfully and tediously empty my mind. I focus on the void, the empty, blissful quiet as I switch the stones in one swift movement. The barrier around the house doesn’t even have time to begin unraveling.
            Satisfied, I take the old stone, collect the crystal shards for reuse and burn the plants, leather and hair and collect the ashes. Arcane magic is an ancient, almost forgotten thing and tedious at best, temperamental at worst, but it does have its uses.
            “Is-Latif?”
            I swallow a groan. Khadija falls into step behind me.
            “Are you feeling better? Could—”
            I round on her with a look sharp enough she jumps back. “You are here purely because you have to be. You know how to feed yourself. You won’t starve. Figure out the rest yourself.”
            She clutches her hands to her chest but puts on a brave face as see-through as glass. “I was going to ask if there was anything I could to do help if your head still hurt.”
            I laugh. Throw my head back and laugh. I stop as suddenly as I started. “I don’t think you comprehend the situation you find yourself in.” With the pact, I pull her backwards to the nearest banister, sit her on top of it and lean her body over the edge, holding on only with her fingertips, and legs outstretched in a precarious counter-balance.
            “What are you doing?” she exclaims, wide-eyed.
            “Explaining how blood pacts work since it seems you neglected to find out on your own.” I lean on the railing next to her, nodding to the floor below. “If I wanted, I could make you let go and send you tumbling down. You’d be crippled at best and that’s if I bothered with healing you. And there’s not a thing you could do to stop it, no matter how much you wanted to.” Her fingers begin to shake. “If I want, I can have complete control of every movement you make, every breath you take.”
            She swallows hard, whole body quivering with the effort to keep her in place.
            “I can make your life a living nightmare without ever raising a finger of my own. But we don’t want that.” I look at her as if over glasses, brows raised. “Right?”
            She shakes her head. “N-No.”
            “No. You have nothing to offer me except the pleasure of your absence. Understood?”
            She nods frantically.
            “Good.” I grab her ankle and pull her forward onto the floor and leave her trembling on the ground.
 
~~~
 
            It’s that night I hear the expected sobbing from Khadija. Not the quiet, shocked, almost refined crying from the first day. Now it’s undignified, loud sobs, the kind that shake your whole body to your core. Perhaps my little demonstration scared some reality into her. It echoes through the otherwise silent house.
            Well-practiced by now, I tune it out and go to sleep.
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