FIVE

Two days of Destin’s absence felt like ages to Adriana. She worried about him constantly, even though she knew her worry wouldn’t do anyone any good. It was early in the evening when she returned to her cell, and while she knew why they had been sent back early, she just curled up on the scattered hay and waited.

The new shipment of humans had finally arrived, later than normal, but it had arrived. Chainhome had been rearranged in the days prior, the Stoneborn and Ironborn keepers restructuring entire rooms to make the cells fit for two people at a time. Every human in residence knew what that meant. Adriana had yet to be paired with anyone for the breeding season, so she knew she would get a man from the new arrivals. The last thing she wanted to think about was what kind of man was going to be shoved into her cell, but she knew it was a part of her life no matter what she wanted.

The guard on duty was a Stoneborn she had known all her life, by the name of Takas. She could feel him coming down the broad central hall of Chainhome, his steps reverberating through the corridors. It let every slave in residence know that they needed to be on their best behavior. The group of humans shuffled along in front of her cell, mostly men but a few breeding-age females, all with their heads down and eyes darting from side to side, their hands bound in front of them with stone shackles. Some of them had trouble holding up their bonds, much less walking with them.

Takas stepped up to her cell and motioned her to her feet, saying nothing as usual. He looked her over casually, making sure she still appeared physically fit, then turned his attention to the group he’d ushered in. “You.” He nodded at one of them, and Adriana could see the young man tugged forward forcibly by the stone wrapped around his hands. “Your name.”

The man looked like he was only barely an adult, with shaggy blond hair that fell around his face and the barest dusting of blond hair on his cheeks and chin. He looked barely taller than Adriana, and was neither particularly skinny or well-muscled. He was unremarkable in almost every way except that he looked nothing like any human she’d ever met. He had no scars on his bared upper body, and looked as if he’d actually been well cared for in his life up to that point. “Shian, master.”

Adriana picked out a couple pieces of hay from her hair as she leaned against the bars and looked out at the young man and then over at Takas. She thought about introducing herself, but Takas had an even worse temper than Miris and she never knew how to judge his mood.

He looked at the two of them again in succession, then moved to grab one of the bars of Adriana’s cell. The stone around the edges moved away from the bars until he could pull it open.

Shian made the first wise decision of his time in Chainhome and hurried inside without being asked or shoved. Takas gave an approving nod as he closed the cell on them both, forming the stone around the bars again once they were sealed inside.

“Move.” He growled at the rest of the slaves in front of him, who scurried away down the hall immediately, a few of them shooting glances back at Shian as they went.

The man, for his part, didn’t seem any more excited to be in her cell than Adriana was excited to have him there. He stumbled toward the back of the cramped space, and stood against the wall, rubbing his wrists and hands as the stone fell away into pebbles, released from Takas’ control. His eyes focused on the small barred window that looked out on the overcast day beyond the prison, but he could see nothing of substance through the iron. “What’s your name?” His voice hadn’t shaken when he introduced himself to Takas, but it shook in the aftermath of the wolf’s presence, and he still refused to look at her.

“Adriana.” She spoke softly. She felt bad for the young man, even though she still desperately wanted to be with Destin. Adriana remembered being in his position, being forced into a cell with a man that was much older than herself, knowing the only reason why she was there was to produce a child.

She had been lucky with Piers. He had never mistreated her, and they had been friends, of a sort, for the years prior to his death. Maybe she could be that same person for Shian. Fortunately for her, she was still young, even though she was clearly the older of the two of them. Experience and knowledge could help her make a friend, hopefully.

She went to the corner of her cell where she’d left her uneaten bread and an apple Kaia snuck in the day before, and she grabbed the apple. Adriana looked down at it longingly before she walked over and held it out to Shian as an unspoken peace offering. “Are you hungry?”

He started to refuse it, but took the apple from her fingers after obviously thinking better of it. “Thank you.” He didn’t eat it immediately, though, since he wasn’t actually hungry. He looked up into Adriana’s eyes for the first time hesitantly, through the messy strands that hung over his face. His eyes were a bright, piercing blue that momentarily reminded her of a Skyborn. “They gave us food a little while ago if you’re still hungry. I don’t…is this all they give you to eat?” He looked back and forth between the apple and the bread across the small cell in obvious shock and disbelief.

Adriana looked over at the bread and then down at the apple before she looked at him again. “They gave us broth and bread tonight, but I drank the broth while it was warm. The apple was a gift yesterday, but most humans never see them. Not unless you’re lucky.” She raised an eyebrow and watched him carefully as she took a few tentative steps closer.

“Where are you from?” Adriana reached out and ran her fingers across one of his arms where there was not a single scar. She knew it would make him uncomfortable, but knowing the things they would need to do, touching his arm was nothing in the grand scheme of things. Her arms and hands held their fair share of scars and bruises. “You’re…you look untouched.”

He hadn’t been self-conscious about his appearance the moment before, but as soon as she touched him, his pale face flushed and she could see him tremble a little at her inspection. “I um…I was raised on the Shield Isle, under the care of Lord Calis and Lady Ressa. I was a slave of their household, with my parents and brothers and sisters.”

“With your family?” Adriana was shocked to hear that, but she didn’t stop her inspection of him. Adriana looked him over slowly before she lifted her green eyes to look into his blue ones. “You seem extremely nervous. You’ve never been used for breeding before, have you?”

“No, I haven’t.” He shook his head with confidence in his answer for the first time, but didn’t move away from the wall. “My parents and masters told me my whole life growing up that I would be paired with someone once I had eighteen winters, but I didn’t know I’d be leaving the Shield Isle.”

“Eighteen?” Adriana was quiet for a moment, since she had to wonder if it was likely that the man hadn’t any experience at all. She touched the light scruff on his face before she dropped her hand to her side. “Well, I’m sorry you were sent here.”

“I just…didn’t know it would be like this.” There was horror in his eyes as he looked around at the cell over and over again. He was obviously having trouble coming to terms with the fact that the two of them barely had enough room to lie down comfortably beside each other. “At home we have our own quarters and we eat what the masters and the army don’t want.”

“I always heard that Calis was the soft one.” She didn’t know what it would be like to live underneath the rule of a wolf that would be kind to her, but she was sure she would never know.

Adriana was about to say something else when she heard footsteps again. There was a faint ring of laughter that followed, and while she seemed confident before, she looked horrified in an instant. “That’s Chiara.”

He looked worried at her expression, but he was obviously more confused than scared. “The princess? I didn’t know she lived here?”

“She lives where she likes, and they bring her in for the breeding season.” She said softly but she moved closer to him. Adriana slipped her hand into his and gripped his firmly, but not painfully. “Let’s back away from the bars.”

He didn’t let go of her hand as he looked back through the bars. As they waited for whatever was coming, he lowered his voice, since he wasn’t sure what to expect. “Why do they bring her in for the breeding season?”

“She’s a…” She was surprised he hadn’t been informed about Chiara or what Chiara could do, but she supposed that maybe that was the design all along. The humans on this island knew about her, but the others wouldn’t. “She’s a Heartborn.” Adriana whispered into his ear and kept her face close to his. “If the new matches seem troublesome, she…removes the trouble.”

He huddled down a little into the corner of the cell beneath the window with her, listening to the rest of the slaves go silent at the woman’s approach. “How does she do that?”

“She…” Adriana started to answer, but she went quiet as the woman stopped near their cell.

“She makes people fall in love.” A smooth, silky voice answered, as Chiara leaned forward so her face was visible to those in the cell. “Hello, young Shian. I could sense your anxiety all the way down the hall. Why are you nervous? Don’t you think you’ve been paired with a beautiful woman?” Chiara raised an eyebrow, her face almost teasing.

He immediately went pale as the woman looked him over, and even as he began to ask how she knew his name or anything about him, the words caught in his throat at the sight of her. She was like no wolf he had ever seen before, but he could see echoes of his former lord Calis in her features. Her hair was a bright blonde that fell around her shoulders, just above the deep purple dress she was wearing. The dress was a pale match for her eyes, sparkling violet in the darkness. She was so beautiful it was almost painful to look at her. “I…yes, my lady. She is b-b-beautiful.”

Chiara laughed softly and looked over at Adriana with a smirk, but the smirk didn’t reach her eyes. “Looks like you got a young one this time, Adriana. He should keep you busy.” She raised an eyebrow and looked at their joined hands. Chiara wanted to remind the human woman of her place, and so she looked at the two of them a little longer. “Show me how well the two of you go together, Adriana.”

Adriana knew how Chiara worked, though knowing didn’t mean that she was able to protect herself. She felt Chiara’s power settle into her thoughts, and did nothing to resist. It would have only made matters worse. She leaned in closer until she ran her nose along the side of Shian’s neck and kissed his skin gently. “We could make a strong, beautiful child together.” She whispered into his ear before she could stop herself, clearly as bewitched as Chiara wanted her to be.

Shian twitched and shuddered under too many different emotions to settle on any one in particular. As soon as Adriana was close, his shaking hands settled on her waist, but he didn’t respond to her kiss or her whisper aside from turning comically red in the face. “I…” He looked back and forth between Adriana and the beautiful wolf outside the cell, fear pounding in his heart at the suddenness of what was happening.

“I’m…sure we could?” He said hesitantly, his eyes darting around the room, looking for a way out even if there was no hope of finding one. He didn’t want that wolf in his thoughts, and every time she looked at him, he could feel her looking right through him.

Chiara grinned at him and took a deep breath as though she could inhale every emotion he felt all at once. Adriana continued to kiss along his skin as Chiara watched with a raised eyebrow. “Now, now, young Shian, that’s not how you return such passionate affection.”

His panic soared to new heights as he felt the invasion of the wolf’s power in his own mind, but his panic was limited to a distant corner of his thoughts as he turned back to look at Adriana. It was as if the image of Adriana had haunted his dreams for years, the sound of her voice, even the scent of her, something so deeply a part of his fantasies that he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t realized it the moment he entered her cell.

She was holding him so close, like every wish he’d ever had, granted in a single moment. The world became a different place, just for a moment, and his hands locked onto her waist, no longer trembling or uncertain. His lips returned the attack of her own along her neck while he moved to pin her against the wall of the cell. He had never wanted anyone or anything so much in his life as he wanted Adriana in that moment.

Chiara giggled and glanced back at Miris as the humans enjoyed each other’s kisses and touches. It was as if the wolves didn’t exist outside the cell at all. “She’s been too long without another human male, don’t you think?”

Miris was always the first wolf in Chainhome to take pleasure in someone else’s misery, but as he stood in Chiara’s presence, everything about him was subservient. He stood in one place, leaning on his spear with both hands, keeping a respectful distance from the Heartborn princess and his head bowed. There were very few wolves Miris feared, but one of them was standing in front of him. “Yes, Majesty. Much too long.”

Chiara glanced at Adriana once more and smirked once she saw the young man left marks on Adriana’s neck. Without another thought, she stepped away from the cell and moved on to another that contained a new arrival. As soon as she turned her attention elsewhere, her spell on the two started to fade, but she hoped that Adriana would remember what she was up against.

The intensity between them continued for a while before Shian was finally capable of turning his mind around and questioning what was going on. By then his simple slave clothing was in a state of complete disarray and he was trembling all over again, though most of it was at least still in place on his body. He still held onto Adriana, and the sound of their heated breaths echoed off the walls around them. Their breathing mingled with the low ghosts of conversation and cries of various types flowing from the stone cells around them.

“What…” he gasped for breath, fear entering his eyes instead of the passion that had filled them before, “what was…what did she…”

Instead of pulling away, Adriana ran her fingers across the cheek of the strange man in front of her. She wanted to feel guilty because the man she really wanted was out on the ocean, but guilt would do her no good.

“I think that was because she wanted to prove something to me, but also to all the new arrivals. Heartborn can make you think and feel a lot of things that you never thought you would.” She met Shian’s light blue eyes and dropped her hand to hold his again. “I don’t know you, but I think I would rather get to know you on our terms instead of hers.”

He didn’t pull away from her either, clutching at her hand when she held his, but he didn’t stop shaking. Shian’s eyes darted between looking at her and watching the iron bars of their cell for any signs of the woman coming back to change him again. “I never knew they could do anything like that. Any of them. Her brother, Lord Calis…he’s always been kind to us. Never…never like that.” His hand moved up over her back in a caress that had seemed altogether natural the moment before, but froze the moment he remembered. His fingers moved off her skin slowly, as if they were apologizing as they went. “Will she come back?”

She gave him a rueful smile and a one shouldered shrug. “Most of the time, there are about half of us that struggle to get along during breeding season, so it keeps Chiara busy. Luckily for me, you’re attractive. You and I can be friends, right?” The corner of her lips turned up slightly, since she was trying to deal with this situation the best that she could. There were worse men that she could have been paired up with.

Shian nodded nervously, since he had been just as worried about who he was going to be paired with, but Adriana seemed like a kind person. “My parents taught me never to say no to a friend when someone offers to be one. We don’t have much, but we can have friends.” He offered a hesitant smile, still incredibly nervous, but he was stuck with the woman, and she with him. Even if it was nothing like the life he’d previously known or the life he’d envisioned, it was something, and he wanted to make the most of it.

Adriana squeezed his hand and looked out at the bars for a moment before she led him into the corner farthest away from Chiara or Miris. She sat down on the floor and pulled him down with her before she released his hand. “Tell me about yourself. Tell me about your family and your home. It will help.”

He still looked nervous about the wolves outside their cell being so close, but he turned so that his back was pressed along one side of the corner, and hesitated as she moved in close to sit against him. She was a complete stranger to him, and even as fiery as they had been a moment before, he was still nervous about opening up to her.

“Well, I…my parents were personal servants of the lord and lady in their household. They helped run their manor, prepare their meals, their clothes, all of it. My mother had nine children. Four of us died before being named. My older brother died last year in an accident.” He shook his head, since he obviously didn’t want to talk about it.

“My older sisters were paired off to other slaves in our household the last few years as soon as they bled, but my parents managed to keep me around to help them even though they said I should’ve been sent off two years ago. This year, lady Ressa decided they had stalled long enough, and sent me here. She told my parents they had taken advantage of her leniency too long, and their punishment was that I would be sent away instead of being paired off with a woman on the Shield Isle so I could stay close to my parents.”

Adriana could still see his mother’s tears in Shian’s eyes, and his parents’ begging still rang in his ears. But they were separated by walls and bars and miles of ocean, and Ressa had been adamant they would not see him again.

She slid away so he wouldn’t be so uncomfortable, but she wanted to comfort him even though she barely knew him. “I am sorry to hear that. I know you must miss them terribly.” She sighed and looked over at the bread she previously left untouched. Adriana grabbed it and pulled off a piece to eat. “This island is never going to be like your home, but there are still some things to find happiness in. I’ll introduce you to the people worth knowing and people you can trust.”

“There are so many humans here.” He seemed to settle down for the first time. A little distance from her and a lot of distance from Chiara and Miris seemed to help. “Back on the Shield Isle I saw maybe a few hundred of us over the whole island when running errands for the mistress, but this place is huge. There have to be thousands of us here. I never knew there were so many of us.”

“The King and Queen are here. They keep us busy. That’s why they have the princess oversee the breeding season.” She shrugged, glancing up into the ceiling as if she could look at all the other humans present through the stone. “We’re not actually as worthless as they like to make us seem, and the wolves here like to do as little of their own work as possible.”

“I just…I guess I didn’t know what to expect.” His fingers twitched over the simple clothing he wore to cover himself a little more, but it didn’t seem to help the faraway look in his eyes. “I thought I’d grow up on the Shield Isle and serve lord Calis like my parents for the rest of my life. I didn’t even think about what life would be like for us anywhere else.” He looked around nervously to make sure there were no wolves lurking outside the door, and relaxed a little more when the hall remained empty. “Have you lived here your whole life?”

Adriana nodded. “I was born here, raised here, never knew who my parents were or even who my siblings might be.” She knew the reason why they took the human babies away from their families was so that the slaves would feel connected somehow, and that it might stifle violence, since everyone had no idea if they would be fighting against their very own flesh and blood. “I’ve had two babies taken from me, and I still don’t know if the children I see running around could be ones that I carried and cared for that first year of their lives.”

The horror and disgust on Shian’s face would have told her plainly that he hadn’t grown up on the Queen’s Isle, if nothing else had. “I’m sorry. I knew…I mean sometimes we would get other children that came in from the other Isles, and my mother or my sisters would take care of them for a while, but I just…I guess I never asked. I thought they were just orphans whose parents had died somewhere else.” That was purposeful blindness on his part, he knew, but it was still hard to deal with everything he ever thought about the world crashing down with every breath. “So your…The man who was here before me, what happened to him?”

“Piers. A couple years ago he died in a fight. Just a brawl while out working that got out of control. He was very kind to me, and when I was a scared, young girl, he didn’t have to be kind.” She watched his expressions, and suddenly she felt more pity for him than she would for most. He knew something different and better, and that made his loss worse. “I will do my best to be kind to you in turn. I’m sorry this is your future.”

He looked around the cell slowly, taking in the sight of the place as she proclaimed it his future. It was uniform grey stone, the bars the same color he imagined the night would be if it could bleed, rust coating them in places, perfect wolf-formed blackness in others. “The wolves on the boat coming here had a lot of fun telling me how hideous a hag I’d be paired with when I got here. How I’d have to work in the shipyard and I wouldn’t last a season.” He shook his head, trying to clear his mind of their taunts, and reached over to take her hand and pull her a little closer. “I’m glad they were wrong about one of those things, at least.”

Adriana laughed softly and tried to convince herself to focus on the new person in front of her. Destin was so far away, and after what Chiara did, Adriana had to be careful about everything. Especially her thoughts and the truth of her heart. She ran her fingers along the outside of his hand and leaned in a little closer. “Maybe we can just start with getting comfortable?” She waited for him to nod before she moved in and snuggled against his side. “I’m glad you don’t think I’m too unfortunate looking.”

“You’re not. At all.” He repeated, putting his arm around her and holding her tight, even though he knew she was still very much a stranger. He looked up over her head at the tiny window in the cell, then across the hall at its equivalent in their neighbor’s wall, where the light was beginning to turn a fiery orange, headed toward sunset. “Do they um…do they leave us alone at night, at least?”

“Yes, they leave us alone at night.” Her voice was soft as she wrapped her arm over his chest. Adriana closed her eyes and she took a deep breath as she told herself silently that it was alright for her to be pressed against some strange man. “It may seem like they’re all against you, but you and I will be a team. Alright?”

He nodded against her hair, but didn’t say anything else for a long time as they sat there in each other’s arms.

* * * * *

The daylight faded around them until all that remained to give life to their world were the sounds of their fellow slaves somewhere out in the darkness. Some of them obviously hadn’t needed much encouragement from their masters to become more than friendly, and were vocal about it. Some were voices crying on the first night far from home.

Others were singing, and Shian held his head up to listen. The music was low and rhythmic, almost a lullaby but less comforting, in words too distorted by echoes for him to hear clearly. “What is that?” He asked as his fingers trembled again, not sure whether to feel more comfortable or be afraid of something the other slaves were warning the rest about.

Adriana didn’t open her eyes, as she held a little tighter to the stranger that was now supposed to be her closest companion. “It’s a song of mourning.” She said softly against the side of his neck. “They’re singing for you and the rest who arrived tonight. They sing the same song when the wolves come to collect the new children every year.”

He listened a little longer, hypnotized by the music that was apparently for his benefit. He could see his brother’s face in the darkness looking back at him from the life they wouldn’t get the chance to live together. Adriana could feel a few tears fall from his thin blond beard against her cheek, but he neither sobbed nor sniffled. Some aspects of being a slave were apparently universal, even under a kinder master. “You don’t sing?” He asked when he could do so without his voice breaking.

She shifted her body and gently wiped away his tears. Adriana didn’t cry unless she had to say goodbye to Destin, but she could understand the pain of the life Shian had lost even if she had never had something so grand to lose before. “I sing to my children. Only because I hope somehow they’ll remember something about me that way.”

“Maybe they will.” He tried to see in the darkness if she was crying as well and needed tears wiped away from her cheeks, but he didn’t see any to be had. He marveled again at the gift he’d been given in his cellmate and companion. “Will they let me stay with you after they’re born, or put me somewhere else? I could sing with you.”

That made her smile and was also grateful that she had been given someone who was a little more timid instead of someone who would have been overbearing and controlling. “That would be nice. And no, they won’t move you anywhere else. You and I are together until something happens to one of us, or if a few breeding seasons go by and we aren’t successful together. There have been some people that have been paired together for many years.”

Shian couldn’t think that far into his own future at the moment, so he shook his head, especially with the mourning song echoing through his thoughts. “I hope you won’t regret me being thrown in here with you.” He said quietly. “You seem like a good person, and good people don’t deserve to be stuck with things they hate.”

“I already like you.” Adriana gave him a sideways hug. It was nice to have someone to hold onto instead of just curling up on the floor. “This could have been much, much worse for both of us. I know some women…” She listened carefully, but she didn’t hear anyone nearby. “Who enjoy taking new, young men and changing them for life. I don’t know what you’ve already experienced, but I don’t want you to be fearful of me or anything that happens between us. It can be enjoyable, and I want it to be. There’s so little we can enjoy around here.”

“I um, there was one girl back home, we…well, we got along pretty well.” Even without much light in the cell, Adriana could almost feel the heat rising to his cheeks again, just one more mark of how different his upbringing had been. “So I’m not completely stupid. At least I hope you won’t think so.”

Adriana couldn’t help but laugh, since she didn’t think that he was stupid. “You kiss very well. I think you’ll be fine.” She emphasized her point by kissing him on the cheek somewhat playfully. “So you got along well? Do you miss her?”

He didn’t sound like he was smiling when he answered. “She um, we were found one time when we were together, and one of the Lady’s friends in the house didn’t like it that we were together without having been paired. So she was beaten and I was confined to the house. She hated me after that. Never talked to me, never even looked at me again. So no, I guess I don’t, really. I’m sure she was paired with somebody this year.”

“I’m sorry.” She whispered before she sighed against his skin. “I didn’t mean to bring up a bad memory for you.”

“Our life seems like a series of bad memories.” He said so quietly it was hard to hear him above the continuing hum of the music around them, but he took a deep breath and let out a heavy exhalation that blew her hair back over her shoulder. “I’ve never understood it. But my father said the point isn’t to understand. The point is to accept the world around us and learn to do the best with what we have.”

Adriana wanted to tell him that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be like that all the time. Maybe they would get away, maybe the both of them could be happy and truly just be friends, but it was too soon to tell and she didn’t know him well enough to spill any secrets. She ran her fingers along his forehead and then along his cheek. “I think I got lucky again.”

“I’m glad you think so.” He leaned in hesitantly and ventured a kiss along her cheek, but then looked up sharply as he heard something dragging along the floor toward their cell. Whatever it was, it stopped every few feet for a while and then continued on slowly.

Before he could ask what it was, a young boy no more than four or five came into sight, two more his size with him, all of them pulling as hard as they could on ropes that were dragging a large box of straw through the hall. The lead boy stopped in front of Adriana and Shian’s cell and went back to the box, taking out a few large armfuls of straw and shoving it through the bars toward them before crouching and smiling at them as he hung onto the iron with his tiny fingers. “Hey, ‘Ana. Who’s he?”

She smiled widely as soon as she heard the familiar little voice, and she sat up to crawl closer to the bars and touch Malcom’s little hands. Adriana had spent a lot of time with the young boy, and somehow she felt as though she was a kind of mother to him, even though he looked nothing like her. “This is Shian. He just arrived from the Shield Isle.” Adriana looked back at Shian and motioned toward the small boy. “This is Malcom. He’s one of my closest friends. Aren’t you?”

“Mhm!” The boy nodded vigorously and went to grab another armful of straw while the other children did the same with other cells nearby, making sure everyone had enough to accommodate the newcomers. He then grabbed a thin blanket from a pile in the straw and handed it over as well. “He’s not hurting you, is he, ‘Ana?” Malcom attempted to look very fierce for a moment as he glared up at Shian, just to make sure.

That made Adriana smile even more, but she shook her head. “No, he has not hurt me. I don’t think he will. Especially now that he met you, I know that he’ll be on his best behavior.” She glanced over at Shian and then back at Malcom. “You’re going to be a strong warrior, aren’t you?”

Malcom nodded again, obviously showing off in front of Shian, and his hands tightened around the iron bars of their cell as if he intended to bend them back on themselves. “One day.” He said with the depression of childhood impatience dripping through his voice.

Shian laughed, and the sound was deep and genuine for the first time since he’d walked into Adriana’s life. “I’ll be on my best behavior, Malcom. I promise. Go on, your friends are leaving you, you shouldn’t get in trouble for falling behind.”

Malcom turned in panic and saw that his friends were dragging their cart farther along the aisle, and he spun back to grab Adriana’s hand. “I have to go, ‘Ana. See you tomorrow at the ships.” He grabbed her hand and kissed a knuckle, then ran off with the others, grabbing more straw and giving it away as quickly as he could.

Adriana chuckled softly as she gathered up the new straw so she could make a pallet that would accommodate the both of them. “I love that boy. I really do. He hasn’t been working out on the ships that long, but he’s quick and he’s an excellent climber. He and I watch out for each other.”

Shian helped with the pallet and took one of the thin blankets in the cell to wrap around the straw to hold it in place, before laying out two more on top of it for them to sleep under. “This, at least, feels a little like home.” He took off his shirt to lie down on the rough straw mattress, pushing the blanket beneath his head into a sort of pillow as he settled in.

Adriana laid down next to him, but she gravitated to his side again, since she liked being close. “I’m glad something does.” She rested her hand on his bare chest. “Don’t lose hope. I think maybe someday things will be different.”

“Different?” He pulled thin blankets up over both of them, though his movements were still unsteady, since it was the first time they’d even spoken to each other, let alone slept in the same bed. “Different how?”

“Just different. Less…brutal and cruel.” She knew she was being too comfortable with him, but she was hesitant to pull away. It was easier to jump in with both feet than to think about what was happening and who she really wanted to be with. “Should I sleep closer to the edge?”

“No.” He said quickly, reaching out to pull her closer, but hesitantly, since he didn’t want her to think he was either trying to tell her what to do or being so needy that he had to have her close. “No, I um, I don’t think us sleeping on the edges would make for a less brutal and cruel world. We can use both blankets and be warmer this way.”

Adriana smiled and curled back into his side easily. “This is nice. I forgot how nice it was to not be alone in this cell.”

He tucked the blankets around them securely and shifted to get comfortable on the straw, one arm around her shoulders and the other wrapped up in the blanket to keep it in place. He resisted the urge to continually look past her at the bars of their cell to see if any wolves were walking by, but he couldn’t help listening for footsteps. “I’ll try not to be an embarrassment to you with the other slaves. And don’t worry, I’m not dying in battle any time soon. I’ve always been useless in a fight.”

She yawned against his cheek before she kissed his face lightly. “You’re the first male who has ever told me I won’t have to worry about that. It’s good to hear. I don’t want to lose anyone else.”

Shian looked down at Adriana as she said so, even though her eyes were closed, since it seemed like there was more to what she was saying. But she was already half-asleep, and he wasn’t going to ask her for more information than she was clearly willing to offer at the moment.

He just leaned down, kissed her hair, and pulled the blanket a little higher around them. He had imagined a number of different possibilities for his first night on a strange Isle, but none of them had resembled comfort or warmth. Adriana deserved her secrets, whatever they were.