Daughters of the King |✓|

Chapter One

Are you devil? Are you angel?

Am I heaven? Am I hell?

|CHAPTER 1|

When I think of my mother, I think of her sitting on the floor as I carefully pressed ice into her back, where the skin was bruised to the exact shade of her dress. The silk fabric pooled around her like a puddle of tar, inky black. But even freshly battered, she looked beautiful, with sharp cheekbones carved into dark freckled skin and a pair of seductive, midnight eyes.

It was a mystery how such a beautiful woman could have given birth to a strange, phantom thing like me.

"Can we leave now?" I asked, keeping my voice lower than the volume of the TV. It sat on the dresser, just a small black box with a cracked screen, flickering between bits of news and pure static.

My mother flicked her hand. "No."

She was doing it again, acting like nothing was wrong. Her moods were always too ill-timed, misplaced.

I pressed the ice a little harder.

She hissed and whipped around. "What's the idea?"

"Are you waiting for him to beat you to death?" I bit out.

"Stop it, Olya." Her eyes flashed, a warning, and her mouth pulled down on one side. This was the look she gave whenever she was genuinely upset, which was rare for her. The genuine part, that is.

Then her eyes flickered to the door, and I watched her hesitate—watched her contemplate being honest. Moments of honesty were few and far between in this house—hardly a house at all, more like a prison—but her lover had gone out since he'd run out of liquor, which meant we had a few moments of peace.

The boy servant was still downstairs, but at twelve years old, the orphan hardly posed a threat. Although my mother appeared to consider if he might be a tattletale.

She must have decided he wasn't because she turned to face me fully. "I'm not leaving empty handed," she spoke in a hushed, urgent tone. "He's finally starting to trust me. I can feel it. But we're not leaving without something."

I didn't have to ask to know what she meant by something. She meant valuables, something to barter with, money. That's all that seemed to matter to her anymore.

"He'll never give you the key to the safe. He knows you'll run if he does."

She shook her head, mouth curling with a small smile and eyes cloudy with denial. "No, no. He trusts me now. Just a little while longer..."

She turned so I could put the ice on her back again, forcing me to stare at her mortified flesh, the skin discolored and ugly. This was the price we paid for a roof over our heads, food in our bellies. It made me sick things had come to this.

I quickly covered the injury with the ice, while my mother hummed, a love song of all damn things, pretending she hadn't just been beaten that morning. I would have admired her act if I didn't hate her so much for putting me through this hell.

For years, my mother and I had survived by lying and stealing our way across the country. It was easy to get away with, for a Daughter of the King. That's what they called them, the women like my mother, the ones who could still have babies. They were protected by the king through a law.

But this same law hoarded them and used them as breeders—and this is the very law we fought to escape, subjecting ourselves to a life on the run instead. The life of outlaws, always on the move, desperate not to get caught.