The air of the night spilling through her window wasn’t enough to cool Maud down even when she decided to lay on top of the golden pelt instead of underneath it. She shifted onto her back and held her hands up with a stretch of her thin fingers. How different they seemed without their shaking, on the tops, the padded lines of her rough fingers, all the scars of a thousand burns, a thousand cuts. She opened and closed fists, wiggled her fingers. Made shapes in the blue moonlight that was marred by the browns and grays of the house walls and beams.

  She pressed the window further open and leaned on her elbow on the windowsill. In the unbroken moonlight, she held her hand out and stared at it, top and palms, stretched fingers and balled fist. It took seconds and Draka’s eyes had gone from a sort of grayed light to golden stars held by a cloudy ring of dark green. There were lines of brown in those shining gold stars, jagged clouds of blues hidden beneath their explosive light with hints of bright green near the centers. They were the first colors she had ever seen.

  She was old enough to be a mother, to have her own house and a garden and, like everyone constantly reminded her, a husband. If only she could be those things without having to worry about the husband part. Perhaps Draka is her future. At least for a few years. He wouldn’t last long enough to see their—she shuttered a little—children to be grown, but long enough to have her established and prepared for life without him.

  How did he grow so old without a wife or any children? Surely, he would have starved to death without one. But to have gotten to be Pa’s age without ever having one was hard to imagine, especially with his…everything. There will be murders the day he’s tied to the Ribbon Pole, she was willing to bet her life on that. They will claw at each other like rabid wolves and possibly murder each other before even placing a ribbon so there is no contest. With those eyes, those lips, those cheeks that were somehow still soft looking once the gray whiskers were shaved away, she had almost forgotten that he was nearly twice her age. Nearly. For her, it was still something that bothered her, but the other girls of Talkro will be leaping at him once they see what she sees.

  “You need to claim him to the others sooner than later,” Ma had said. “Show the others that he’s yours before the harvest festival, that way they assume he’s already taken even if he doesn’t know it.” “Walk with a bit more of a sway.” “Touch his skin, lightly, whenever you get the chance. The more he feels you near, the more he will grow to miss it when you’re not.”

  He did seem to stare at her like a fool when she did all those things after coaxing Vigora into the stable. Like a baffled fool. She grinned at the thought.

  The moonlight shimmered between her fingers. A baffled, colorful eyed, handsome fool that smelled like a bundle of flowers just for her. It must have been for her. She had made sure he knew how important it was to her that he be clean. And to go so far as to shave his beard? Of course she saw that as being for her. Once those gray hairs were cut from his face, once he looked down at her with his auburn hair being less matted and almost like that thin shirt of his in a breeze, she saw less that he was older and more that he was the best looking man she had ever laid eyes on.

  She looked up to the stars by rolling her head on her elbow and reached out toward it like she was plucking a star out of the blends of deep purples and blues and blacks. All so many different colors. In a single second, everything changed. A bright flashing light from his hands and she realized she had been colorblind her entire life. The shaking that had caused so many problems for her was gone. A single blink of an eye and she felt the chains of fear within her broken apart.

  The fear was still there, but less, more in the way that one might fear a bear when they laid eyes upon one in the woods. But, just like the bear, the fear of it wasn’t lingering in her head just because she went into the woods. In a single breath, he had taken the biggest reason she had used to convince herself that he was her future husband away. Took all the weaknesses that caused her to fail at claiming one for so long. The reputation that had arisen out of all this was the last thing, really. The very last reason Draka was her only option, the only man who would care for her.

  If only he had been married and had a son! She would marry him in a heartbeat. Without question. Without hesitation. Draka had everything she imagined in a man except that one irreversible fact. But everything else, his strength, his beauty, his kindness, his fierceness when protecting them, were all things she wanted and yearned for in a match. Not to have someone the villagers would mistake for her children’s grandfather when they went to the market.

  She looked at her steady hand again. A blink, a breath, a flash of light, and she was changed. Healed. Maud pressed her brows together. Her heart burst within her chest. It wasn’t for her. She was not more or less important to him, was she? Her mouth fell open as her memories placed blood on those fingers. Thick, syrupy blood that dripped in long drops while she wiped away what seemed like a lake of it, searching, begging to see where on her mother it had come from. Scars. New scars but healed and faint enough that she barely saw them. Where the blood was thickest.

  Maud stiffened and turned her eyes toward the stars, toward where Draka pointed when meaning his God. She wasn’t the first one he had healed. To see colors, to have the shaking taken from her, was wonderful, but they were nothing in comparison to her mother and father sleeping soundly in their bed instead of sprinkled as ashes on the field. He—no, he had been so intent on correcting her every time—his God was the only reason she still has parents. Still has her family. And never a mention of sacrifice or cost to be paid for his asking. His God had given her back her family and never took anything in return, only, once again, took away her suffering and gave her…color, happiness, contentment that she had forgotten was possible.

  She felt it within her then. Anyone a god works through is someone of greatness, of that god’s deepest desires for all their followers to be. And Draka’s God worked through him. And all the stories told of the gods caring for their heroes so that they lived longer than any other. That must be why he looks so much younger once the gray hair wasn’t so noticeable. Tomorrow, she drew in a breath as she lay back on her bed, tomorrow she will learn how to make him hers.

  She closed her eyes.

  The cool air caressed her cheeks.

  She took a long, deep breath and let sleep take her.

  There was a weight on her bed that made her feet dip. Her eyes burst open. Glowing red and yellow eyes calmly shifted from the shadows beyond her feet. She wanted to scream, but there was no sound, no voice within her. Barely enough breath to keep her from suffocating. Her heartbeat was thunderous. She was frozen, trapped.

  The fear was back.

  She could only see the shapes in the dark shadows the red and yellow orbs hovered within. She could see the different shades of black now. She could see the twisting horns. The shape of its very human face. The folded wings whose lines shifted as if with feathers, bent where there was a long curved and sharp talon reaching to the ceiling. Claws or talons on its feet. Three each, sticking just within the moonlight falling through her window on either side of her feet. In the blue of the moonlight, they were pale yellow like bone.

  The talons sank into the pelt, gripping it with a strength she felt in her bones. Frozen, she was numb. Maud felt her blood turn to ice in her veins. It wasn’t sitting, it was perched over her. The moonlight spilled across it as it leaned toward her. Those red and yellow eyes changed to bright green like hers when the light flowed over them.

  Sallow skin, smooth as bone, was tight over high cheekbones. Thick red lips grinned curiously at her. Large blazing green doe eyes looked down on her from over a pert nose. Pointed chin, long neck, and bare pale shoulders became visible. Then came the rest. A bare woman with thin shoulders and curves that the shimmering light only made seem more perfect came into view. A perfectly beautiful woman with thick twisting horns rising from above her ears through the thick dark waves of her hair. Her legs, from the knees down, were scaled like a bird’s with the sharp, curved talons to match. Feathered and also somehow leathery wings rose from its back and were folded so that they draped around it and over the edge of Maud’s loft.

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  The creature lifted its gaze to the moon. Its eyes changed from bright green to glowing red and yellow orbs as shadows covered them. They became bright emeralds again when the light touched them as it returned its calmly intrigued stare to Maud.

  “Precious little flower,” the creature caressed the side of Maud’s face with pale fingers whose long sharp nails traced her skin. “Your heart is so deliciously pure.”

  Maud wanted to turn away from it. She wanted to close her eyes. To scream. To run. To get Draka. But how could Draka protect her from this?

  Her head wouldn’t turn. Her eyes only widened. There was no weight in her voice to scream with. Her body was immovable.

  “What are you?” Somehow Maud was able to whisper. Not scream. No one would hear her if that was the loudest she could get.

  The creature smiled, teeth white as the clouds, and a pair of fangs that were thin and sharp in place of its incisors. “That’s always the question I get. Never who, always what. What are you, Precious Little Flower?”

  Maud felt the trembling more than ever before. It was as if it had been taken from her only to return in this moment with vengeful intensity. “Hu…hu…human.”

  “As am I.” It leaned its beautiful face close to hers, the long waves of hair blocking the light so that it was the red and yellow orbs that Maud looked closer into than when she pried at Draka’s and Alden’s.

  “You’re…you’re not,” Maud stammered, struggling for her body to move. “Yo…you can’t be.”

  “No?” It cocked its head at her. It leaned close enough that their noses touched, fangs glistening as she growled with insidious calm through the grin, “I am the first.”

  Blink, but she can’t. Breathe, but her breaths are too shallow. Run, but she can’t run. Trapped. Helpless.

  “Now, ask who.”

  Maud hesitated. The trembling was making the bed vibrate. Perhaps that will wake Alden. No, the creature looked able to tear him apart. She had no choice. She never has a choice. “Who…”

  “I have many names, but Lilith was my first and seems to be everyone’s favorite,” it leaned back from her with a caress of her cheek. Emerald green eyes looked to the moon then down at her, “What is everyone’s favorite name for you, Precious Little Flower?”

  “Ma…Ma…Maud.”

  “Bland name,” Lilith shrugged at her with a wave of her black nailed fingers. “I think Maudeline is more fitting for the woman you’ve become. It sounds more…mature, don’t you think?”

  “H…how di…did yo…you know?”

  Lilith lowered herself into a perch over Maud’s hips. “You think I don’t keep close watch over what is mine?”

  Maud felt her body begin to seize. She jerked and shuttered uncontrollably as Lilith leaned toward her and took a long whiff with lolling eyes.

  “You smell,” Lilith looked as if she had smelled the most delicious meal, “of love. How lucky you are that it isn’t the kind I was expecting.”

  Sudden as a flash, red and yellow orbs blazed at Maud, fangs glistening, “And that Jehovah is still within you, or I would rip your ovaries out through your flat little stomach and feast upon them here and now. Then your heart. His is not yours to claim. Nor any others in this house.”

  Lilith returned her gaze to the moon. “I waited for eons,” her voice was distant. It darkened when her gaze fell back to Maud, “You must be terrified, Maudeline. So na?ve. So pure. And innocent.” She brushed her black nails through Maud’s hair. “Your world is so simplistic and hollow. A cradle of thin glass holds it in place.”

  Maud’s seizing intensified, her eyes beginning to roll back into her head. Her legs and arms began to flail.

  Lilith lowered her voice to a whisper in her ear, soothing like a mother's lullaby, “Your world will be broken. The cradle will shatter. If you survive, be mindful that you don’t shatter with it, Precious Little Flower.”

  An owl screeched.

  Maud lay still. The seizure stopped.

  “I wonder if he will save you or them this time?”

  Maud’s eyes burst open with a deep breath that arched her upright.

  Maud leapt nearly half of the ladder to get to Alden. She shook him. Called his name. It was her kicking his side that finally woke him. “Grab your spear, we’re going to Draka.”

  “What’s happening?” Alden rubbed at his eyes.

  Maud stood on her toes to be sure she had latched her window shut. “Just get up! I’m getting ma and pa.”

  Screeching turned her to the garden window. It was closed. She let out a sigh of relief and started for the bedroom door.

  An owl thudded into the garden window. It scratched at the glass, flapping its wings to stay afloat in it. Maud froze. Red and yellow eyes, dark feathers.

  “What is that?” Alden took a step from his bed with his spear in hand.

  Maud tried to breathe. She tried to move. A few steps and she would be at her parents’ door. A few steps and she could get all of them to Draka. Draka would protect all of them. He would save her and them. She knew he would. If she could get her feet to move forward.

  The owl shrieked. It clawed at the window. A talon caused the window to crack in a web.

  Maud’s feet drew her backwards.

  A bloodied arrow penetrated through it and the glass. Blood dripped from its jagged point onto the shelf of herbs.

  Maud grabbed Alden, who had come to her side with the spear ready like the villagers that night, and she pulled him to her. Her fingers clawed at his shirt. She would have climbed him if she could get her muscles to let her. She was trembling. He wasn’t.

  “Draka,” he pointed out the window, beyond the impaled bird.