Chapter 1

I am twelve years old when the seventh serpent man buckles his belt and walks out of my mother's chamber.

My father is in the corridor. Vespera — his whore — is hanging off his arm. He is watching my mother's ruin like it amuses him.

"You used to call yourself a highborn Vixen," he says, low and lazy. "can't share a Hold with my Vesp."

"Now look at you. How many beasts have fucked you tonight? How many have touched it? Tell me, my Queen— surely you can let me take Vesp as Second Mate now?"

This time, Mama does not scream. She does not fight.

She only takes the Beast Bond pendant off her throat — the tiger-fang my father carved for her the night of their bonding — and drops it into the brazier.

The flame eats it whole.

The next morning, he throws a Mating ceremony.

Louder. Grander. More gold than the one he gave my mother fifteen years ago.

He takes Vespera Nyss as his Mate before the whole Hold. The Stripe Hall is hung in crimson. The lesser shifters howl her name. The Hold elders bow.

The feast is still going at dusk when the parchments come down from the rafters.

Drawings of my mother. Naked. In half-shift. Vixen ears, two of her nine white tails curled out at the small of her back — tails she has never shown outside her own mate.

And around her, drawn in cruel black ink, seven serpent men with their hands on her fur.

I throw myself at the parchments. I tear them. I crumple them. I cover the worst ones with my body.

It is not enough. The Hold is laughing.

Kael's face goes black.

"So you like to be seen? Then I'll let the whole Hold see her. Guards — take her to the Iron Beast Rack!"

I scream. I lunge forward. Old Nan Brynn clamps her hand over my mouth and drags me away.

The voices follow me down the corridor.

"A Vixen who's been on the Beast Rack — even if she lives, her body'll be broken forever. Half a beast. Less than a beast."

"Generous of the Tiger King, eh? Sharing his own Mate with the rest of us."

"Going to taste sweeter than any beast-whore, I'll swear."

The cold goes through me from the soles of my feet up.

By the time Brynn gets me back to my chamber I have no voice left. I sit on the floor. I stare at her.

"Nan. What is the Iron Beast Rack?"

She doesn't answer at first. She just sits down across from me, very slowly.

"It's the cruellest thing one shifter can do to another, my kit. That is all you need to know tonight."

I wait by the window all night. Mama does not come.

It is past noon before they let me into her chamber. The moment I push the door open, the smell hits me — iron, sweat, something deeper and worse — and my stomach turns inside me.

She is on the bed. Not moving. Her vixen-eyes are open, staring up at the carved beams. Under the thin white robe, her skin is one long bruise — black, purple, yellow at the edges.

Her nine tails are gone. Tucked away under the robe, or unable to come out at all. I cannot tell which is worse.

"Mama —"

My voice will not steady. My fingers will not touch her. I turn, about to run for the Hold's healer.

The door bangs open behind me.

Kael walks in with Vespera on his arm — painted, perfumed, the stolen tiger-fang pendant already swinging between her breasts. The moment she smells the chamber she lifts her sleeve to her nose and gags.

My father looks down at my mother. His voice goes flat.

"Iselle. Stop playing the dying swan."

"I told every beast at that feast not to actually touch you. Must you lie there like a corpse?"

I open my mouth to fight him. To say she's covered in bruises, can't you see —

Mama's hand finds my wrist. She squeezes once, hard. Then she reaches under her pillow and brings out a folded parchment.

A Bond-Break.

"Kael. Break the Bond. I want it ended."

"I want nothing of this Hold. Not the gold. Not the name. Not the crown."

"I only want Lyra."

His brow knits up like he's heard a child's joke. His voice goes tired and impatient.

"Don't be a fool, Iselle. Your father is dead. Your brother is dead. Your mother died before you came of age. Leave me and where do you go?"

I freeze where I'm standing.

So he remembers.

He remembers that my uncle drew the enemy off his trail in the Bone Wastes and took every arrow in his own body. His bones are still out there, bleaching in the frost, without so much as a cairn.

He remembers that my grandfather smashed his own forehead open on the pillar of the Lion Throne Hall — begged the King of Beasts, bled all the way down the gold steps — just to get my father the war-bands he needed to come home alive.

He remembers swearing under the moon in front of the Bloodline Altar of House Vale —

I, Kael of the Drayven Streak, swear by tooth and claw — Iselle Vale of the Hollow, is my only Mate. One Bond. One bloodline. No other, while I draw breath.

One life is a long time.

It only took three years.

He went north with the war-bands. He came home from the Bone Wastes with Vespera Nyss at his side.

Serpents run cold-blooded, he said. Vesp couldn't bear the chill. So Mama was to be gentle to give Vespera the warmer chamber.

Because Vespera could not bear the scent of moonflowers, he ripped up Mama's moonflower garden — five years she had spent on that garden — to spare her pretty nose.

And when Mama quickened with a cub, Vespera laid her head on Kael's shoulder and whispered, "The healer says this cub's blood is set against mine. I will not live to if he draws breath — "

So he poured the wolfsbane brew down my mother's throat himself.

That night Mama lay on her bed bleeding through her shift, sobbing so the whole Den could hear her.

And down in the Stripe Hall Kael had Vespera in his lap, listening to the moon-singers play, the drums so loud they smothered every sound my mother made.

That was the night I understood.

My father — the one who used to watch the bonfires of the moon-festival with Mama and I — was already dead.