by Rene Folsom
“Speak up, Zhavia. Admiral Willis needs your support.”
I shake with a barrel of emotions coursing through me—rage, empathy, loyalty… it’s all so confusing. They’ve put me in a corner, and I have to either choose to help or deny them. But I am very aware of what it means to want out. I’ve wanted out of this life for so long. I want out as much as the rest of them, if not more.
I look Willis in the eye, lifting my chin and forcing the words to leave my heartbroken chest. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
I make it back to my room without incident, my fake limp a convincing act for anyone who glances my way.
At least I thought there wasn’t an incident until I opened my door to find Greann sitting on my bed, her strawberry-blonde hair the only thing noticeable in the darkness.
“Lady Greann.” I dip my head in acknowledgement as I say her name, even though my insides curdle at the sound. “To what do I owe this honor?”
The black kohl beneath her eyes spills onto her skin as tears stream down her face, mussing her makeup and making it clear she’d been crying for some time.
“Did you really think I’d let you have them?” she says, her voice a screeching whisper—a sound way more terrifying than a full-on scream.
I take a step back, using my hands to search for the knob that opens my door. I knew she was fucking crazy, but her showing up in my room is a whole new level of mad.
“I don’t know what—”
Greann cuts me off.
“Don’t pretend that I don’t know. I went to Graham today like Madame Kincaid instructed. I went to him, and he rejected me.”
She stands from my bed and makes her way to me, her hands grabbing fists full of my hair. I bend low, trying desperately to get free of her grip, but she uses her shoulder and her weight to keep me in place.
“Greann, I had nothing to do with it.” My voice sounds damn near begging, and it hurts my soul to know I’ve come to a point in my life where I would have to grovel before my own kind.
“You do! My servant saw you!” she says, and this time, she is screaming. “She saw you with him.”
How? Graham said no one could see us. How could anyone have seen us?
Her knee connects to my face, the crunch of bone against bone echoing in my head.
I feel and hear the ripping of my hair as I fall back, my ass hitting hard against the unforgiving floor.
I’m stronger than this. I’m too strong to allow a priss like Greann to overtake me. Tougher things happened to me back at camp all the time.
I don’t hesitate to grab hold of the wall, using the steady surface to help me stand back up. Not even thinking twice, I step forward and backhand Greann’s pretty little face. The slap echoing off the hard walls of my room is like music to my ears.
“You spoiled ass brat! Do you really think you can have them? I am the chosen. I am the selected. Not you, bitch.”
Greann’s hand comes flying toward me. My reaction is on point as I duck and return with an uppercut of my own. It sends her stumbling back just as the door is thrown open by two of Madame Kincaid’s guards.
While Greann’s presence in my room was a shock, it comes as no surprise at all when the guards restrain me, taking me down to the ground with an overly forceful thud. A knee is embedded in the back of my neck, holding me down as my hands are pulled behind me and put in cuffs.
It isn’t until I stand and see Madame Kincaid embracing a crying Greann that I realize my error.
“You dare to hit Lady Greann when she is with child? This woman is a sacred blessing from the heavens above, and you struck her as if she were an errant pebble in your shoe,” Madame Kincaid says with pure venom lacing each word directed to me.
“I want her gone!” Greann hisses while cradling her nonexistent belly.
“This act is punishable by death!” Madame Kincaid says, spittle flying from her wrinkled lips as she points a crooked, arthritic finger in my face. “You will be given over to fire. All the servants will watch as your body burns to ash.” To the men on either side of me, their arms holding me hostage, she orders, “Guards, take her to the square. Alert the others, then go fetch my sons.”
I don’t say a word. I don’t fight it. There’s no point. I knew this was coming. After all, I’d been playing with fire by allowing the Kincaid brothers to speak to me as they have been. The last thing I will do is throw them under the bus or tell of their dragon secrets, my mind still unsure of how to handle the rebellion that seeks to take the brothers down.
I’m not walked out to the square. Instead, I’m dragged. The knees on my pants are ripped open from the cobblestones, and the blood against my skin has begun to chill as the wind picks up.
I don’t make a sound. There’s no point in my protest. The only thing that touches my heart is when I can hear as well as see the others as they gather in the square. I can’t see Langston, but I know he, as well as others, will witness one of their own being burned at the stake.
I try to find something, anything, that will bring me some sort of comfort, even if it’s fleeting. Do I rejoice in the fact I am about to burn like a piece of meat on the fryer? Is this the only way for me to escape the life that was given to me?
I didn’t ask for this, yet I know it must be my fate.
I don’t even see the Kincaid brothers or the horrible Lady Greann.
I do see Admiral Willis and Talia, their faces finally making me realize the levity of the situation I’m in. They are off to the side, and I can tell they don’t want to be here. They don’t want to see another of their own being executed like a criminal. An expression of annoyance passes over Willis’ face, his lips thinning and his head giving the slight shake of disappointment.
At first, I thought he was upset about the fact I was being punished for a fault that wasn’t my own. But now… after looking at the expression on his face… I realize he’s disappointed in me. He’s upset with my actions, and that I wasn’t the link to the brothers he needed for his rebellion.
I’m disappointed in me, too, yet I’m not strong enough to lead others into battle. Hell, I’m not even strong enough to pave my own escape.
Clearly, enough is enough. One guard yanks me to the stake in the ground, obviously over all the ceremonial parading that happens when a servant is to be executed. Rough rope is placed around my neck. When it’s pulled, it grips me by the throat, preparing to rob me of my breath. This noose alone could kill me, leaving my body behind as a shell to be burned as my soul floats above, watching and repentant to my sins.
It’s like they are already prepared for the production as the logs are stacked neatly in place below me. My feet barely touch the wood, giving me a very slight relief against the rope wrapped around my throat. My waist is restrained, as are my hands. There’s no way of escaping, not that I would dare to anyway. I might not be able to move, but I surely can see.
When I glance up, seven pairs of eyes stare down on me from the top of their platforms. I hold the gaze of each one, beginning with Graham. I hope he can see how much I hate him for letting this happen to me. I will despise him until my last breath for allowing Greann this right. His eyes seem remorseful, as do Drake’s. Even Vulcan has the nerve to appear saddened. William and Seneca are focused, as if they need to stare through me to make this moment pass. There are no expressions on their faces. They’re void of emotion, and it cements my thoughts about all of them, especially since they sit right alongside Lady Greann and Madame Kincaid.
It’s all good. This is how it has to happen. Regardless of my feelings for the Kincaid brothers, I am solid with my fate.
From atop her high chair, Madame Kincaid shushes the crowd of onlookers before she begins to speak. “Lady Greann is with child and was attacked by this weed of a servant, Zhavia. No cause, no reason, other than jealousy that they have come from the same camp. The attack was malicious and meant to cause harm to not only Lady Greann, but also to that of my son’s unborn child. For her crimes, she will burn.”
The square stays silent, most of the onlookers servants as well. They all fear the day they will be in my shoes, and for that, they won’t cheer.
I watch with disbelief as a man cloaked in black approaches me. With a lit torch in his hand, he advances toward my pyre. In the dead of darkness, a bright fiery light bursts free. It rushes over the wood at my feet. With the wind comes the heat, the temperature rising as each flame snaps and pops against my boots.
I don’t scream.
The heat consumes me, overpowering my senses. Yet through the lick and glow, I see them. In a moment of crystal clarity, I feel the anguish Graham and Drake are projecting toward me, because of me. I feel their heartache and use it for strength—a surge of vitality to survive.
My life doesn’t flash before my eyes, but my bones do feel stronger. My skin grows hotter as my body continues to be kissed by the flares of fire. My clothes are the first to go, leaving me naked and bare. The hair on my skin goes next, each fiber on my body consumed by embers. As each moment passes, my levels of pain deepen, pulling me further inside myself.
Closing my eyes, I let out my last clean breath, a breath I’d been holding in until the very last moment before the flames reach my face. When I inhale deeply, I don’t cough, but my chest does burn. It burns like I just inhaled a breath full of lava. It feeds on the fire. As it washes through my body, it gives me peace. It gives me strength. It gives me life. And as my body goes limp against the stake, the fire gives me power.
One single thought flows through my brain as the last of my old self gives way.
Ashes.
Graham watched her burn. Did nothing to save her. He couldn’t grasp she was really gone. Gone forever. There was nothing there but a pile of ash. He should have done something. Anything. But even as he thought of ways to save her, it was his brothers who convinced him he’d been the foolish one.
“She is not the one,” Vulcan, his twin brother, said, patting him gently on the shoulder.
The same brother who ran hot while he ran cold.
Fire and Ice was how his mother referred to them as children.
Much later on in life, it was hot to cold, or calm to angry.
“She should have been the one,” Graham whispers at the backs of his retreating brothers. “She should have been the one, but you all were too foolish to see it.”
Did he sound like a pussy?
Maybe.
But he knew in his gut that she was the one.
She has to be.
If she were, though, she wouldn’t have been burned to ashes. She would have been able to withstand the fire. She’d still be alive.
His subconscious whispers to him. She is alive.
“The least you could do is come down with me to collect her ashes. We will give them to Langston. He is not her kin, but I know the two of them were very close.”
His brothers turn to face him, and Drake is the first one to speak. “I’ll go with you.”
The others mumble their agreement as they make their way down to the square.
They’d stood there for hours and watched the last bit of her go, the remains of her body left to nothing but ash.
Somber, though attempting to seem untouched, they’d gone to eat dinner with their mother and Greann, who were all smiles at the dinner table. Greann had tried to give herself to Graham last night, but he’d declined her, feigning distress. Now he knew he would have to see to her needs. He was next in line after all.
The sun was about to rise, and no one would be searching for them. Everyone always assumed they were locked away in their offices, when in reality, they were locked away in the bodies of dragons.
Their true forms.
There was no one standing in the courtyard when the brothers arrived to collect her remains. All that remained of Zhavia was a pile of ash.
As they all stood there, heads bowed, their hands in their pockets, Graham stared at all that remained of the girl. Without warning, movement begins beneath the ash, causing him to kneel to take a closer look.
“Do you guys see this?” he asks as he tries to keep his voice down.
“See what?” Seneca asks.
“There…” Graham points. “Right there. It looks like a fucking knee.”
“You’re wasting your time, Graham. No one could endure such a fire. She didn’t survive.”
But something deep within him told Graham they were wrong.
18
Why can I hear Graham’s voice? It’s subtle, but it’s more a feeling than an actual sound. It’s luring me to the outside, forcing me to attempt to escape, attempt to swim to the surface where I can finally take a breath.
I feel trapped. Suffocated. My chest burns from the inside, no matter what I do to make it better. As my body moves and adjusts, I sit up and cough, causing grayish-white flakes to float around me.
“What the fuck?” I hear Drake’s voice exclaim before I feel a pair of hands pulling me up to stand.
“That’s not possible,” William says with an audible gasp. “She should be dead. We watched her burn.”
I can hardly believe it myself. I know I burned. I was the one there, crying and screaming on the inside with the overwhelming pain of fire. But yet, here I stand, in front of the Kincaid Brothers.
All five of them gape at me as if they see a ghost. And I guess they do.
Graham is the first one to take a knee. “I pledge myself to thee.”
Drake drops next. “I pledge myself to thee, forsaking all others.”
Then it’s William. “I pledge myself to thee. My allegiance and my honor is yours.”
Seneca is next. “I pledge myself to thee. May your will be my will.”
Vulcan is the last to drop, but he does so gracefully. “I pledge myself to thee, in all things. We five are eternally bound to you.”
I flinch when I feel the warmth of the sun at my back, the rays warming me although I should’ve been fried long ago. As the rays touch my skin, I feel the sun’s energy take over in my veins.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” I whisper to the five men who are still kneeling before me. “How is it I’m still here? How is it I’m still alive?”
Before any of the Kincaid brothers can say a word, the answer comes to me as if I already knew it from the start. I’m still here because I am the one to end their curse. I am the one fated to be with them for all eternity.
Finally, Graham raises reverent eyes and says, “Because you are the beginning of us.”
Graham goes to stand, but when the light of the sun touches him, he shimmers in and out of view until his dragon takes his place on the platform. The others all rise at the same time, allowing the sun to warm their skin. One by one, they morph into their beasts. Drake took the longest to change, his body waving in and out of view. I turn to Graham, who stands off to the side while Seneca and William take flight.
“You will come with me, Zhavia, and you must come now before anyone sees you.”
“And if I don’t?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“You don’t have a choice,” Graham clarifies.
I take a step back. If I go with them, I will never come back. This much, I know.
They are taking me from here to the caves where they intend to have their way with me—a way to break the curse.
Is that all I am to them? A means to an end?
“There’s always a choice, Graham.”
He steps forward, his powerful wings outstretched, blocking out the morning sun. When he steps closer to me, I don’t cower. I’m no longer afraid of what they can do to me and I’m definitely not afraid of Graham, dragon or not.
His front talons reach toward me, palms up, ready and willing to carry me to safety.
He knows as well as I do just how safe I felt in the cave—his cave. He also feels the definite connection between us, because I go to him willingly. My soul compels me to trust him, even as my brain has decided that, in doing so, I have already signed my own de
ath warrant.
The idea is almost laughable considering I should already be dead, especially if Greann had anything to say about it.
I don’t know what the future holds, or even what all this means.
I only understand one thing…
I am now bound to the Kincaid Brothers.
I am the missing piece to their puzzle.
I alone can break their curse.
Now it’s only a matter of will. Do I have the will to be there for them? Do I have the will to fulfill the prophecy?
“Come with me,” Graham beckons.
I don’t look back. There’s honestly no reason for me to. The past has not been kind, and everyone thinks I’m dead.
Without another moment’s hesitation, I step into his palm and gaze into Graham’s sapphire eyes.
“I will fly with you.”
The End
Thank you for reading Interwoven: The Selection, book one in the Sacred Six series. Do you want to read more about Zhavia and the Kincaid brothers? Sign up for our mailing lists and stay updated when Interwoven: The Rebellion, book two in the Sacred Six series releases to all major retailers.
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Interwoven: The Rebellion
Bonus Teaser
As a creature of habit, I have a tendency to focus on one thing and repeat my focus to the point of insanity. Take my need to escape, for example. For as long as I have been breathing, I’ve wanted something better for myself—something that drives me to try and escape my lot in life until I can no longer stand upright.
Yet now… now I am flying… Naked, I might add. I don’t have time to be modest or even debate why that is. There wasn’t time for niceties. No one offered me clothes, and why would they? I belong to them now, and I know this changes everything. The dragons that have taken me up into the clouds will very likely be my destruction.