Tribute
On the morning I turned twenty-one, my mother braided my hair as though she were preparing me for a wedding. Neither of us mentioned that brides were generally expected to survive the ceremony.
The summons lay open on the kitchen table, its heavy paper obscenely white against the scarred wood. At the bottom, beneath the black seal of the vampire court, was the narrow silver mark of a witch. I'd traced it often enough to know every curve.
Examined. Sound of body. No active magical inheritance detected.
A witch witnessed the selection. A witch declared me healthy. A witch searched my blood and found nothing unnatural hiding inside it. Human, in other words. That certainty should've comforted me, but it didn’t.
My mother stood behind me in the dim light of our kitchen, separating my chestnut hair into three uneven sections. Her fingers trembled whenever they reached the ends, though she kept her face carefully composed in the warped little mirror above the washbasin.
“Too tight?” she asked.
“No.”
It was, but I welcomed the sting. Beside the door waited the single trunk I was permitted to bring. Two dresses. One wool cloak. A comb missing three teeth. My mother’s sewing kit. A loaf of black bread wrapped in linen, though the summons had assured us I would be adequately fed in accordance with my station.
Outside, the warning bells began to ring. Their uneven clamor rolled through the village, announcing the approach of outsiders. Beneath them, faint but growing louder, came the grind of carriage wheels over the road. My mother’s fingers stopped halfway through my braid. The entire hut seemed to shrink around us.
We had known the carriage would come. The summons provided the date, the hour, and a list of everything I was permitted to take. The vampires were considerate that way, if it could be called consideration. They gave families sufficient notice to count down the final days they had together.
For one foolish moment, I imagined the carriage might pass us by. Maybe the driver had the wrong road. Maybe — and I hated myself for even thinking it — maybe some other girl’s name was on that summons instead of mine.
Three knocks sounded against the door.
My father didn't move at first. For one breath, I thought he might refuse to answer. Then his shoulders sank, and he crossed the room. He had as much choice as I did.
A human man waited on the other side, dressed in the charcoal-gray uniform of the royal household. The coat was finer than anything owned by anyone in our village, but the man inside it looked as human as the rest of us. His face was lined, his shoulders slightly bent, and his eyes remained fixed somewhere above my father’s head.
Two armed figures stood beside the black carriage behind him. Those were not human. They were perfectly still beneath their dark cloaks, their pale faces uncovered despite the weak morning sun. Neither appeared especially interested in our home. One watched the road. The other watched me.
“The tribute is prepared?” the official asked.
My father’s jaw tightened.
“My daughter has a name.”
The man’s expression flickered. He might once have objected to that word himself.
“The court has recorded it,” he said.
“That's not what I said.”
One of the vampires turned its head toward the doorway. The movement was slight, but the official noticed. His mouth tightened.
“I was instructed to ask whether the tribute was prepared.”
My mother made a sound behind me. I stood before either of them could see what those words had done.
“I’m ready.”
I wasn't, but readiness was a luxury for people who could refuse. My father turned toward me. He'd aged during the months since the summons arrived. Gray threaded through his beard now, and the lines around his mouth seemed deeper than they were yesterday. Yesterday, I'd still been twenty. Yesterday, I'd still belonged here. He placed both hands on my shoulders, his calloused palms warm through my dress.
“Listen before you speak,” he said quietly. “Keep your eyes lowered. Don't accept promises from anyone.”
“I know.”
“And don't let them make you ashamed of being afraid.”
That nearly undid me. I looked at my mother instead. She finished my braid and tied it with a faded green ribbon — the nicest thing she owned that could be spared. Her eyes were bright, but she refused to cry in front of the collector.
“Happy birthday,” she whispered.
I laughed once, dryly.
“It certainly is memorable.”
Her mouth trembled. The official stepped aside as I left the hut. Every door in the village stood open. No one approached. No one spoke. Humans learned early that grief was safest when witnessed from a distance.
The carriage waiting in the road was black, with silver wheels and curtained windows. It looked absurd among the sagging roofs and muddy paths, like a jewel dropped into a graveyard. Two enormous gray horses stood at its front, steam rising from their nostrils. The official opened the carriage door. I climbed inside without looking back. I managed three breaths before I failed.
Through the window, I saw my father with one arm around my mother. She pressed both hands over her mouth as the carriage began to move. Our hut disappeared behind the bend, followed by the village well, the old ash tree, and the narrow path I'd walked every day of my life.
The road revealed the realm in the order its people mattered. First, came the human fields, narrow and exhausted, surrounding huts patched with clay and moss. Then the forests opened around the stone walls of the werewolf territories. Their mansions rose between the trees with broad windows, iron gates, and roofs built to survive a hundred winters. The packs governed themselves. They had their own leaders, their own laws, and enough strength that even the vampire crown treated their borders with care.
We passed through without stopping. Beyond their forests, the land began to climb. At its highest point stood the vampire castle. Black towers divided the clouds. Narrow windows reflected the pale afternoon light, and bridges of dark stone stretched between sections of the fortress high above the mountain. It didn't look built so much as carved from the ridge itself.
Humans lived at the bottom. Wolves claimed the land between. Vampires watched from above. Every part of the realm had been arranged to remind us where we belonged. The carriage door opened. My heart stuttered as panic climbed into my throat.
“Come along,” the official said. “Don't delay the inevitable.”
I steeled myself, released a slow breath, and took my first step onto the castle grounds. My boot landed on polished black stone. I expected dirt. Perhaps gravel, or mud churned beneath carriage wheels, something ordinary enough to prove that the castle had been built upon the same earth as our village.
Instead, the courtyard stretched before me in an unbroken expanse of dark stone veined with silver. It gleamed beneath the weak afternoon light, smooth enough to reflect the towers looming above it. Black walls rose directly from the mountain, their highest points disappearing into the mist. Narrow bridges joined towers too far above the ground to serve any sensible purpose. Stone creatures crouched along the rooftops, their wings folded and their mouths open in silent warning.
My hand tightened around the side of the carriage. Something beneath my ribs stirred. The feeling followed me since the mountain first appeared beyond the forest, but here, it became impossible to ignore. It pulled gently at the center of my chest. Familiar.
“Is there a problem?” the official asked.
“No.”
My answer came quickly, laced with an unexpected fury. His gaze lingered on me before dropping to my hand. I released the carriage. A servant already removed my trunk. He carried it beneath one arm as though it held nothing more substantial than air.
“My things—”
“Will be delivered to your assigned quarters.”
The servant continued without looking at me. My entire life had been packed into that trunk, and a stranger carried it away as though it belonged to the castle now. Perhaps it did.
The two vampires who accompanied us remained beside the carriage. One surveyed the courtyard with visible boredom. The other continued watching me. I followed the official before he could instruct me to do so. At the top of the wide staircase waited a line of attendants dressed in charcoal gray. Most looked human. Their eyes remained lowered, their hands clasped before them, and no one moved as we approached.
A man stood apart from them, wearing a long dark coat embroidered at the cuffs with silver symbols. He was younger than I expected a witch to be. I never met one before, but village stories had prepared me for age-bent women with blackened fingertips and dead things hanging from their belts. This man looked nothing like the stories.
His ashen-brown hair framed his face in soft, tousled layers, brushing just past his ears in muted, cool-toned strands. Meadow-green eyes stood out against his fair skin, steady and thoughtful beneath straight brows. His features were youthful and refined: a straight nose, softly sculpted cheekbones, and a composed mouth that made him seem quiet, observant, and difficult to read. The markings shifted when I looked at them. I blinked. They became ordinary thread again.
“Master Alec,” the official said.
The witch’s eyes moved from him to me.
“The tribute from the southern settlement,” the official continued. “Examined and certified before departure.”
Alec accepted the summons and read it without speaking. His attention paused over the silver mark at the bottom. Something in his expression changed slightly.
“Your name?” he asked.
The official shifted beside me. “It is included in the record.” I quietly wondered whether his authority required him to be rude or whether that was a private talent.
“I didn't ask the record.”
“Mara,” I said.
Alec repeated it quietly.
“Mara.”
The sound of my own name in his voice sent warmth crawling across the back of my neck. He folded the summons and tucked it beneath his arm.
“Your wrist.”
I looked down at the hand he extended.
“What for?”
“To confirm the examination.”
“It was already confirmed.”
“Yes.”
His gaze flicked toward the silver mark on the paper.
“That's what concerns me.”
The official’s expression hardened. “The southern examiner is appointed by your own conclave.”
“And even appointed witches can be wrong.”
The official didn't appear to like that answer, but he said nothing further. I held out my arm. Alec’s fingers gently closed around my wrist. The courtyard vanished. One moment I stood beneath the castle towers, and the next I was somewhere warm and green, surrounded by the scent of rain-soaked earth. Water moved beneath tall trees. Candles burned upon roots twisted into the shape of an altar.
A woman stood with her back to me, chestnut hair falling nearly to her waist. She was singing. I recognized the melody. I heard my mother hum it while kneading bread, though she always stopped whenever she noticed me listening. The woman began to turn. Pain tore through my arm.
The courtyard returned all at once. I gasped and tried to pull away, but Alec’s grip tightened. The silver markings around his cuffs were now glowing. Not silver anymore, green. The same deep meadow shade as his eyes.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“I'm not doing that.”
Heat raced from his fingers into my veins. It moved upward, passing my elbow and shoulder before gathering beneath my collarbone. Something inside me reached for him. The sensation was instinctive, desperate and utterly foreign. Alec inhaled sharply. His carefully composed expression broke.
He released me and I stumbled backward, clutching my wrist. The green light disappeared. Silence settled across the staircase. Even the servants lifted their heads.
The official looked between us. “What happened?”
Alec didn’t respond. Instead, he opened the summons again and stared at the witch’s certification.
“No active magical inheritance detected,” he read.
My pulse pounded beneath the place he'd touched.
“That means I’m human,” I said.
Alec slowly raised his eyes to mine.
“No,” he said. “It means the witch who examined you couldn't find what was hidden.”
The official stiffened. “Hidden by whom?”
“I don't know.”
Alec stepped closer. I resisted the urge to retreat. His eyes searched my face with an intensity that made the strange heat beneath my collarbone flare again.
“Has anything unusual happened to you recently?”
“I was selected as a tribute to vampires.”
His mouth almost moved. Under other circumstances, I might have thought he was suppressing a smile.
“Before that.”
“No.”
“Unexplained dreams?”
“No.”
“Voices no one else could hear?”
“No.”
“Objects moving when you were angry?”
I hesitated. It was too small a pause. Alec noticed. The official did too.
“When I was twelve,” I said reluctantly, “a bowl fell from a shelf.”
“A bowl fell.”
“I was across the room.”
“What were you doing?”
“Arguing with my mother.”
Alec’s gaze sharpened. “What happened to the bowl?”
“It broke.”
“That's not what I asked.”
I remembered the pieces scattered across the floor. Not fallen beneath the shelf. Thrown against the opposite wall.
“I don’t know.”
Alec studied me for another moment. Then he turned to the official.
“I will complete the examination privately.”
“The tribute is expected inside.”
“The court can wait.”
The official stared at him as though no one ever said those words before.
“You intend to delay the presentation?”
“I intend to determine whether you have brought concealed magic through the castle wards.”
The color left the official’s face. Alec found the precise fear required to end the argument. He gestured toward a narrow door beside the main entrance.
“Come with me, Mara.”
I remained where I was.
“Am I in danger?”
Alec looked toward the official, the servants, and the two vampires beside the carriage. Then his gaze returned to me.
“Yes.”
My stomach dropped.
“From what?”
His eyes lowered briefly to the hand I pressed against my collarbone. The skin beneath it had begun to burn.
“That,” he said quietly, “is what I intend to discover.”
