A basilisk was a creature born in the wrong nest. Like a chicken egg hatched by a toad or a snake. Leda could understand that—being in the wrong nest. A part of two worlds, never truly belonging to either. After all, Leda couldn’t say if she had been born or hatched.
She lived forever as a swan maiden, taking one form and then the next.
Until the day she left off bathing in her human form and found her feather cloak missing. And she cursed in a way not fitting for either a swan or a maiden. Losing her cloak wasn’t the same as losing a hairbrush. She could never be a swan again without it.
All right, settle down, Leda told her racing heart. There was no reason to panic yet. It was a big lake. And with the warmth of the summer sun, she had been lounging in the water for hours. She could have just misplaced the cloak—forgotten which side of the willow tree she had laid it.
If I retrace my steps . . . Leda walked from one moss-covered boulder to the next.
No feather cloak.
Leda searched the cattails and lily pads, even following a few of her half-formed footprints in the muddy bank.
No feather cloak.
Leda splashed the water and startled a family of ducks.
No. Feather. Cloak.
Leda’s breath came out in shorter and more frantic gasps. The forest lake blurred in her vision to become a meaningless mix of blue and mossy green. She pulled at her hair, stretching the tight curls between her fingers before letting them spring back toward her scalp.
Was she allowed to panic now?
“Are you looking for this, my pet?” The male voice came from behind the great willow tree, unnaturally dry and unaffected. Leda turned to see a man who certainly hadn’t been there before. She would have seen him. She would have remembered him. He had a receding crop of graying hair that fell near to his shoulders, piercing dark eyes, and a hook-like nose. Long limbs poked out of his doublet and cape, fingernails digging like talons into the white feathers of her beloved cloak. He honestly looked more birdlike than she currently did.
And he was watching her run around naked.
Well, she was always naked. Swans didn’t wear clothing. That would be ridiculous. But it felt different when she was human and featherless. Her sun-streaked curls, medium-brown curves, and even a smattering of summer freckles were fully on display.
She ducked into the cattails and held out a not-so-hopeful hand. “Yes.” Her voice came out too fast and sharp. As a swan, she was dignified. Graceful. Her human form made her weak.
She took a breath and fought for her normal cadence. “Yes, my lord. I am missing my cloak, as it happens. I don’t suppose you will give it back.” It should have been a question, but it wasn’t. She knew what happened when a mortal man found the cloak of a swan maiden.
They never gave it back.
She waited for the man to demand her hand in marriage, or at least a carnal marriage, but he made a sweeping motion with his cape like a shrug.
“I thought about keeping it, but then, what use would I have for a swan?”
To be caught outside the lake without her feathers by a hotblooded male should have been the thing of nightmares. But that was a nightmare Leda understood. One she expected.
To have a man look not at her but through her. To see nothing but indifference in his gaze.
That was a nightmare of a different kind.
Her heart hastened into an undignified gallop, now desperate to agree with anything the man said if it meant she could retake her wings and fly far away from here. “It’s true, my lord. I don’t imagine you would find a swan very useful at all.”
“Indeed.” The man paused as if to give more weight to the word. “I’ve seen you out here before. I could have come and taken this earlier,” he said, passing her cloak from one hand to the other as he spoke. “I certainly thought about it. But you see, I happen to be a very clever man, and try as I might, I have only thought of one use for you. Bait. Fetch me a prince—a human prince mind you, and I will return your coat.”
He tossed something back at her.
The flash of white made her heart soar, but only for a moment. It wasn’t her feather cloak. Her cloak was gone—transformed or perhaps replaced in a sleight-of-hand movement she hadn’t tracked. Instead, she caught a thin linen shift, several years out of fashion and meant for a serving woman to wear, perhaps under another bodice or outer dress.
She would still be running around frightfully underdressed, but she quickly pulled it over her head and tried to find a more dignified stance. She would find a way to reason with this man. She had to. “A . . . prince? And how am I to fetch one of those?”
The man’s eyes roamed up and down her figure again, even with the shift in place. Dismissive. Blood-chilling. “You’re a swan maiden. A fae. Your kind might not be known for your intelligence, but I’m certain you will think of a way.”
Leda frowned, but she couldn’t deny the truth of his assessment. Swans were grace and beauty. Counted as lesser fae in their own courts but still highly prized amongst the humans. If caught in their weaker, featherless forms, they were enchanting and biddable maidens that any man (or prince) should wish to make his own.
She had no reason to be intelligent.
“And after I fetch him . . . how should I find you? What is your name?” She should have asked that first. After all, she had known from the beginning that this man would become her new husband or her new jailor. More likely a mixture of both. The fact that he had chosen the latter option without the former—honestly, it was a bit of a relief.
Swans lived freely for as long as they could, until falling resignedly into a mortal man’s grasp. Any true show of resistance might be useless, going against her very nature as a swan, but she did not want to be married to this cold-blooded fish. Not civilly or carnally or any other way that could possibly be imagined.
“Leander Rothbart is my name,” he said. “You will find that most men know it.” His hook-of-a-nose tilted back toward the forest path. The dirt road led past the great willow tree and on to the local baron’s castle keep. The gray-stone towers peeked through the greenery and likely gave their occupants full view of the lake as well.
True and complete names were a special kind of magic. Higher fae often used the names of mortals to bind them to a spell (and the old stories held plenty of examples of the reverse, where a human had caught a fae in a similar trap), but even with her cloak, Leda had never been that powerful. She could only guess at the man’s importance.
“You are kin to the baron?” she asked, proud of herself for remembering that the human baron was a much older man who had presided over the recent wedding of one of her swan sisters.
The man scowled and puffed himself up like he had feathers. “I am the baron of these lands and a mighty sorcerer.”
“You are a sorcerer?” Perhaps it should have been obvious. She had heard all the old stories shared between the fae at seasonal gatherings and revelries. He might not be showing any sign of magic currently, but he had the caped robes, the ominous presence—he even lived in a castle with several high towers.
And there was the sudden disappearance of her feather cloak to consider.
Of course he was a sorcerer, and if she had more magic and cunning than a featherless swan, she might have seen it at once.
But Leda still wanted to deny it, the very thought summoning another chill.
Human wizards tinkered with existing magic, but sorcerers were different, making devilish pacts to take on themselves the wild magic of the Darkwood. That sort of magic was natural to the fae but unnatural to humans. It twisted them up inside.
This man had a twisted and damaged soul.
He bowed his head. “That is why most men know my name.”
“And when I fetch you a prince—”
“A human prince,” Rothbart reminded her.
“A human prince,” Leda agreed. “What use will you have for him?”
He re-straightened his robes, his eyes far away. “Well, as I said, I don’t have much use for a swan. So, if I’m being perfectly frank, as I always strive to be, I hope he breaks your heart.”
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