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Of Loyalty and Shadow: Chapter 1 Roses and Poodles and Hummingbirds

Summary:

In the very near future, Germany has fallen to the Veril, an alien race of dark elves. They have no interest in land or resources since their realm is vast and bountiful. What they need are women, because no Veril girl has been born in centuries.

Faced with extinction, the Veril strike a Treaty with the defeated German government that grants them the right to reproduce with the country's women.

Six months after the Treaty is signed there is a knock on Katharina's door in a small town near Heidelberg. Standing outside are a high-ranking Veril Colonel and his men who have come to escort her and her parents to the occupied city of Hamburg.

This is the first Chapter of Of Loyalty and Shadow, my new novelette that follows Colonel Vik Ichel. I wrote it in a way that you don't need to have read Once it Gets Dark to enjoy it.

Content warnings

OF LOYALTY AND SHADOW

CHAPTER 1: ROSES AND POODLES AND HUMMINGBIRDS

Bang. Bang. Bang.

She jumped. Who the fuck knocked on the door, after sundown? Who the fuck knocked at all? Unfortunately, she knew the answer even before she opened. Even before she looked into the harsh green faces of the Veril soldiers standing on her parents’ neatly swept doorstep.

She slammed the door shut again.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Somewhere upstairs Merry barked, shrill and almost hysterical. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Aufmachen, oder ich schieße!”

The German sentence sounded drawn out and harsh in the demon’s foreign accent, yet she couldn’t help but be impressed—this was the first time she had heard any of them speak anything other than English or Veril.

She took a deep breath and pushed the handle down.

He towered over her, filling the doorframe completely. A rifle was slung over his shoulder, and he was wearing the typical dark-gray camouflage and leather armor of the Kirtim Shenk. His hair was shaved on both sides of his head and the rest tamed in an impressively long black braid. She stiffened when her eyes fell on the shining mark on his right wrist: two lines and between them a triangle topped with two circles.

He inclined his head. “I am—”

“Colonel Vik Ichel,” she spat the name out. “The Butcher’s right hand.”

The Butcher and his colonel, leaders of the Veril army who had, in one night, slaughtered all the men in Hamburg. How exactly they had done it, nobody knew. Not even now, almost six months after the massacre.

Instead of taking offense at the moniker, he smirked and gave her a hint of a bow.

“And you?” He reached back to a soldier standing at his heels and snatched a piece of parchment out of his hands. The Colonel scanned the lines and zigzags of the alien writing and looked back at her. A slight furrow appeared between his brows.

“Petra Neumann?”

His accent was so sharp she would not have understood the name if it hadn’t been her mother’s. She pressed her lips shut.

He kept scrutinizing her. The effect of his presence was suffocating. She had, of course, seen Veril soldiers before, but never that close and never one as famous—as infamous—as him. She almost thought that she could feel his magic tingle in the hairs on her arms. She was not a cowardly woman, but still, it took all her self-control not to step back. Instead, she raised her chin and narrowed her eyes, fixing him with a haughty gaze as her hand sank slowly into her pocket.

The warrior shook his head and said something to his companions in the elves’ hissing snake language. He was not an unattractive man, she had to admit—if you were into that aggressive, testosterone-dripping, hypermasculine monster type. Which she was not, of course. Fortunately not. Did the Veril even have testosterone? Did they even have hormones at all, or did their bodies run on magic and malice alone?

A voice behind her pulled her agitated mind back to reality.

“Katharina?”

Her mother. She balled her fists. Why didn’t she stay back like she had been told to do? Why had her parents even asked her to come here if they never listened?

Colonel Vik snapped some kind of order, and ere Katharina could try to prevent it, his men had stormed the house, maneuvering past her and taking her mother by the upper arm, not forcefully but insistently. Katharina counted the warriors: five inside; six dark shadows behind the flower beds in the front yard; and a particularly unsettling one on her doorstep.

Her mother protested, and Katharina heard a soldier reply in calm English that sounded kilometers more polished than that of the Colonel.

“It’s fine, Mama,” Katharina called out in German, never ungluing her gaze from the Veril before her. “Don’t fight them. Remember what we’ve talked about. They’re going to bring you and Papa to Anna—they’re not going to hurt you.”

“Katharina…” the syllables rolled over the Colonel’s tongue as his tone trailed off.

Again, his pronunciation was terrible, the As sounding more like Es. But she was used to her name being corrupted in other countries, and, actually, as much as it pained her to admit it, she kind of liked the way it sounded. Besides, anything was better than Catherine.

He was still looking at her, as if debating whether he should interrogate her or eliminate her right away. Katharina decided to put him out of his misery—and herself out of danger. She didn’t want to be shot or strangled or any of the other horrible things the Veril did with their detainees.

“I’m her sister—Anna’s sister,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes, ignoring the sharp sting she felt in her heart at the little fool’s name.

To her absolute horror, he leaned down, sinking his face into the crook of her neck, and smelled her. Her stomach roiled with disgust, and she pressed her eyes shut.

He straightened up, gave her a curt nod, and called one of his men over. The Colonel glanced over his shoulder at the starry sky above the quiet town. The other man, an older-looking soldier, translated, and Katharina recognized the polished English she had heard earlier.

“You have fifteen minutes to get packed. Then we leave.”

“I’m already packed.” She tried to keep the hatred in her heart from filtering into the words.

“Then get your stuff.” He took a step forward.

“I’m not coming. I’m here to make sure that my parents are treated correctly, and then I’m off.” She put one hand on her waist while the other one, the one in her pants pocket, closed firmly around her phone. “And I’m not letting a mass murderer into my family’s home.”

Even with her less than rudimentary knowledge of the Veril language, she could hear the translator’s voice tremble as he conveyed her words, but, to her surprise, the Colonel laughed. He assumed a more relaxed posture, leaning one shoulder against the doorframe and crossing one ankle over the other.

His words had an almost teasing undertone when he spoke. “You are coming with us. So you either get your stuff yourself or I will have to come inside and fetch it for you.”

“You can’t make me!” That was, of course, ridiculously untrue. But all she wanted was to stall, to distract him. Her fingers ran along the cold metal frame of her phone, searching.

He laughed again, and she couldn’t help but notice that despite his monstrous fangs he had a gorgeous smile. A demon, trying to lure in his prey.

“I can make you,” he said. “I do not want to, but I can. And I have to if you do not cooperate. Orders from above.”

“From above?” Katharina’s thumb had found the button and began pressing it rapidly to activate the connection to her emergency contact.

“Aren’t you the mighty Colonel Vik Ichel?” She made sure to pronounce each word as loudly and clearly as possible, praying that the call had gone through.

He scoffed, casually lifted his left uniform sleeve, and brushed his index finger over another mark: a circle and a half-circle sitting on a line. Then, in one smooth movement, he closed his hand over hers and pulled it out of her pocket, retrieving the phone with it.

Katharina groaned, suppressing her scream. All she saw was the short flicker of the illuminated screen, indicating an active call, before he pressed her cell phone against some rectangular device on his belt. There was a buzzing sound, the display went black, and he stuck it into a pocket of his uniform pants.

“You can have it back when we get to Hamburg. Outside calls do not work there. Until then it stays with me.”

Before she could reply, there was a growl next to her right ankle, quickly shifting into an eardrum-piercing bark.

Fuck! Who had let Merry out? This whole thing was a gigantic mess!

“Merry, aus!” Katharina hissed.

But the dog didn’t listen; he never did. The poodle was half hidden, his fuzzy, copper-colored face peeking out from behind her leg. He was yapping at the intruder, emboldened by the faulty assumption that Katharina would be able to protect him. The Colonel smiled, and the look of it made cold sweat break out on her nape. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if something were to happen to her stupid little beast.

With a fluid motion, conveying the absolute control he had over every fiber of his powerful muscles, the Veril crouched down, stretching out his hand and whistling melodically through his teeth. It sounded like a mix between birdsong and the wind brushing through blades of grass.

Merry stopped barking at once and took a curious step out of his shelter, one paw cautiously in the air.

Despite the harshness of his native language, the Colonel spoke warmly, and even without understanding the words, Katharina recognized the international tone that people all over the world—and apparently all over the universe as well—used to talk with dogs.

It didn’t take much to convince the poodle. He hopped forward, wagging his tail, and began sniffing the demon’s outstretched hand.

“Sumik,” the Colonel chuckled and, to Katharina’s utter surprise, began scratching the dog behind his ears, continuing to praise him in Veril.

The landline rang. The shrill sound made Katharina start, and the Colonel straightened up again. He lifted his index and middle fingers, and Merry obediently sat down, completely calm and quiet, his ears pricked up and his eyes fixed immovably on the warrior.

One of the Veril standing guard next to the stairwell leading up to the second floor pulled out a long, jagged knife and cut the phone cable. The silence that followed was deafening.

“Fetch your things,” the Colonel said. The warmth had left his voice.

At this, her parents reemerged, flanked by Kirtim Shenk warriors, her mother carrying her favorite purse and a fully stuffed Pilates bag, and her father as pale as the pastel wallpaper of the foyer.

“Wait for me, please,” Katharina mumbled, unsure if she was talking to her family, the monsters, or herself, before she rushed upstairs.

When she stepped out onto the front porch, the air was charged with an uncanny energy that made all the hairs on her body stand up like antennae. At first glance, everything looked as it always did: the neatly trimmed grass, the small pear tree, and, climbing up a trellis next to the door, the lush blooms of pink roses—her mother’s greatest pride.

Petra Neumann liked to tell the story of how she had driven all the way to Steinfurth to get her hands on that special variety. Katharina’s sister Anna, for her part, liked to tell the story that the only time she had seen Mama cry was when the neighbors’ boy had broken off a branch. Of course Anna would conveniently leave out the detail that the same boy had later become her first boyfriend—and that the stolen branch had been for her.

Katharina wanted to smile at the memory, but her gaze caught on a leaf falling off the tree. It hung in midair, dropping as slowly as if the atmosphere had turned into thick molasses. Something was wrong, deeply, intrinsically wrong. The summer night, normally fragrant with grass and flowers and the dung of the cows farther out in the fields, was… scentless. Nothing was moving except for their party.

Cold unease took hold of her like fingers closing around her nape. She shot a sideward glance at the Colonel. He was walking at a brisk pace, Merry dutifully at his heel as if the pampered poodle had suddenly turned into a little soldier himself. One hand hovering behind her back, the commander ushered her forward, not touching but making it clear that he wouldn’t hesitate to drag her with him should she fail to keep up.

A convoy of six military vehicles was parked in the middle of the quiet residential road. Black and massive, they might have passed for Humvees, were it not for the eerily glimmering blue headlights and a dark camouflage pattern that seemed to be constantly, yet almost imperceptibly, shifting form and shape like an oil film on a puddle.

One of the warriors, carrying a polished spear, opened the door to the third vehicle, and her parents quickly took their seats inside. Katharina automatically followed, but something held her back by the collar of her shirt.

She whirled around. The Colonel shook his head and pointed one authoritative finger at the vehicle in front, where the interpreter was already waiting for them.

“You go with me.”

She opened her mouth, ready to protest. “But—”

“Shh,” he interrupted her with a sharp hiss, and his eyes narrowed as he patted the pocket in which he had put her cell phone.

When they reached the car, he crouched, picked up the tail-wagging dog, and abruptly pulled the passenger door open. Confident that his order would be obeyed, he didn’t grace Katharina with another look as he circled the car and took the driver’s seat.

She got in, placing her leather backpack carefully between her feet—all her belongings reduced to one single piece of luggage. She was not so stupid as to think that she could run, that she could stop these soldiers from dragging her to Hamburg whether she wanted to or not.

At least you’ll get insight into the forbidden city, she tried to console herself. Would Anna be there? The thought of her sister felt as if something very hard and blunt had been rammed into her stomach.

The Colonel casually put Merry on her lap, and as they set off and left the strangely frozen small-town streets of her childhood behind, Katharina buried her hands into the little animal’s warm fur.

Shapes and darkness.

The single-family houses of the neighborhood had become nothing but meaningless forms, like a text in a language she couldn’t read.

The narrow residential street became a two-lane country road. Frozen shadows of trees looming on each side. Their trunks flashing up in the faint blue of the convoy’s headlights was the only movement in this nightmare—the snapshot of a reality that had ceased to exist many years ago. Before the world had ended.

Occasionally, they passed another car. Katharina avoided looking, as if catching a glimpse of the paralyzed humans inside might turn her into stone as well. Instead, she peered over at Colonel Vik Ichel. He was leaning back, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gear shift. Despite the ample size of the cabin, his presence filled it up entirely, overly confident and commanding. Voices sounded over the intercom, their hisses almost indistinguishable from the static. When the Colonel answered, Katharina heard something that sounded suspiciously like her own name.

Her stomach churned, and for a moment an image superimposed itself over her vision: an explosion of dust and debris and a blinding light as if the midday sun had risen in deepest night, the view out of the window blurring as their car swerved off its lane.

She squeezed her eyelids shut in a well-practiced maneuver, trying to wipe the scene away.

The Colonel threw her a sideways glance, and she breathed in deeply to settle her pulse. She knew that the monsters’ senses were much keener than those of humans—and she needed to be more careful.

Her heartbeat quickly returned to normal, and her mind steadied. He likely just thought that she was scared of being kidnapped. Which would be—in all honesty—the normal reaction to her current predicament. But just as so often before, the world around her could spin out of control, and she would feel nothing but a detached calm.

And that recent premonition? Katharina frowned, her eyes still on the black street ahead of them.

“What’s this?” She pointed at a triangular button above a small screen, pulsing with soft blue light.

The console of the Humvee was a weird amalgam of human and alien technology. It bothered her. She would have felt more comfortable if she had known what she was looking at, if she could lose herself in the illusion that she would be able to take over the wheel herself if worst came to worst.

“Hm?” The Colonel’s eyes flicked to the button. “Inirmeshtel.” His answer was as automatic as it was useless.

Katharina threw a glance at the interpreter in the seat behind him, the only other passenger in their vehicle.

“Sun shield.”

She leaned back without comment. She wasn’t entirely sure anymore how much about the Veril’s sensitivity to daylight was common knowledge and how much of it was confidential. All the information she had learned from different sources over the last months seemed to be flowing together into a big stew of terror. That probably meant she was actually more nervous than she had initially believed.

Had they received the info she had tried to send? The call had gone through, but that didn’t mean they had understood. She was under no illusion: they wouldn’t come to rescue her—nor did she want them to. But hopefully, the news that Colonel Vik Ichel himself had come to the South had reached the right people. A warning that the time for the final step was near.

She glanced into the rearview mirror, past the translator and at the ghostly blue headlights of the other cars in their convoy following them closely behind. Her parents’ faces remained invisible behind the reflective tint of the glass.

“Why have you taken us?” she asked. “Why now?”

There was no answer. Katharina looked out of the window, her muscles tight with unease. It was almost physically unbearable to be so close to them, to sit inside one of the machines that they had used to slaughter thousands of innocents. How many men had these two elves murdered? How many women had they raped?

To them she was nothing but an animal—worse than an animal. She gently caressed Merry’s soft snout. The little poodle had fallen asleep, rolled up like a croissant on top of her thighs, his warm body trembling as it rose and fell with the slow pattern of his breath.

The Colonel’s gaze had followed her hand. “I…” He paused, as if he were searching for a word, and tapped his armored chest. “Dog.”

“You’re a dog?” Katharina remarked without looking up. “I already knew that.”

There was a sharp breath from the backseat. For a moment, the Colonel remained silent. Then he directed a question at his interpreter. In the mirror, Katharina saw him shifting uncomfortably, his forehead glistening with sweat, as he mumbled his translation.

She pressed her teeth together, bracing herself for the blow or whatever else the elven monster had in store as punishment for her disrespect.

A loud laugh. Deep, slightly hoarse, and full of life. The Colonel gave her a pat on the shoulder, wiped his caramel-rich golden eyes, and turned to ask something else.

Katharina felt the memory of his touch prickle on her arm, and she brushed her hand over the sleeve of her blouse to stop the sensation.

“I have… a dog,” he said carefully and gave the other soldier a wink. “Suyulkinshvun,” he added and gestured vaguely toward the dark sky above.

“The Empire with Three Parts,” the interpreter offered automatically. “The Shadow Realm.”

Katharina thought she saw a hint of displeasure lowering the corners of the Colonel’s mouth, but then he looked at her and his expression evened.

“Like this.” He brushed his fingers over Merry’s head. “But bigger.”

“Of course it’s bigger.” Katharina scoffed, reluctantly amused and also mildly concerned that Colonel Vik’s attention appeared to be everywhere except on the road.

Yet the vehicle stayed perfectly in its lane, not swaying even a millimeter. Demon magic. Katharina’s jaw tensed.

“Not…” He laughed and switched to Veril.

“A wolf,” the interpreter translated. “There are no dogs in the Suyulkinshvun.”

“Chunshul,” the Colonel added, a smile playing about his lips.

“Is that his name?” Katharina couldn’t help being intrigued by the idea. A tamed wolf—every girl’s childhood dream!

“Yes. Her name.” He beamed at Katharina, and for a second she found herself hypnotized by the brightness of his sharp teeth. Why was a filthy murderer like him allowed to have such a beautiful laugh?

“This is Merry,” she said, keeping her tone nonchalant. “He’s mine. But he’s been living with my parents for a while now…” Her voice trailed off.

“Merry?” Colonel Vik’s accent made the word sound like an exotic spice.

“Yes. That was my father’s idea.” She scoffed. “It’s from a book he likes, and I thought the name was sweet.”

It felt strange to speak. She hadn’t had a long conversation in English in a while, not since her gap year volunteering on Europe’s borders. She could hear how clumsy the words sounded as they stumbled off her tongue. It made her almost grateful to have an interpreter so that she didn’t need to adapt her sentences further to accommodate the Colonel’s limited vocabulary.

“Sweet.” He smirked and fluffed the poodle’s head.

Merry’s ears gave an ever-so-slight twitch. He blinked his lids half-open and closed them again when he saw that it was the elven colonel petting him.

“Why did you leave your wolf in the Shadow Realm?” Katharina asked.

“Orders,” the Colonel said in Veril, and his subordinate translated. “We were not allowed to bring any plants or animals, so we would not impact your realm’s nature.” He chuckled. “They had to loosen the rules a little after we got the shits from the terrible food you have here, but still, strict restrictions on live animals remain in place.”

Katharina raised her brows. It seemed that he was getting into a talkative mood. Good.

“Why are you taking us to Hamburg? Why now?” she repeated her earlier question.

“Protection.” His face hardened and he finally directed his gaze at the road again.

“Protection from what?”

“From your kind. From our kind. From war.”

Despite the mild summer night outside, it felt as if the inside of the cabin had suddenly turned freezing.

“War?”

A muscle right above the Colonel’s jaw twitched. Then he nodded. “Etelverk.”

It took Katharina a second to understand that this was the Veril pronunciation. Heidelberg.

“Is my sister in Hamburg?” Her voice sounded higher than usual as it was forced to squeeze past the lump in her throat. “Will I get to see her?”

“Shuk Iskich?” he asked. “She is in Verlin still.”

Katharina dug her nails so deeply into the seat that she felt the coarse fabric rip. “Her name is Anna.”

His shrug made the leather armor over his impressive shoulders creak satisfyingly.

She wanted to hit him right in the handsome face. Her muscles burned with the urge. To hit him and bury her nails into his cheeks. To tear off his skin.

A message rustled over the damned radio again, and even though it was in Veril, Katharina could hear the alarm in the speaker’s voice. Both warriors straightened up. Katharina didn’t give a fuck.

Her baby sister. She had tried to hold the thought away from herself during the last dreadful days, but now it finally caught up to her. Little Nana. Taken. Kept captive. Even though it went against all the occupiers’ own grandiosely proclaimed rules. What had they done with her? The world started spinning, and Katharina fumbled for what she hoped was the button to open the window at her side.

The tinted glass sank soundlessly into the door, letting in even more silence from outside.

Air. With each breath Katharina’s vision steadied a little more. The Colonel didn’t object. He didn’t even seem to have noticed as he kept listening to the report, his forehead furrowed and his sharp teeth bared.

“Shuk Iskich,” said the voice over the radio.

It was the name that the monsters had given her sister, but they weren’t talking about her. It was a simple number, as Katharina had found out by now. Thirteen. Her sister—the symbol of the nation’s utter humiliation.

Katharina had watched the news reports about the Veril leaders’ meeting with the Bundeskanzler over and over again. Every different channel, every different angle. That devil of a general—the Butcher—with his hands all over Anna.

To others she might have looked intimidating in the Kirtim Shenk uniform, but Katharina had seen the way her sister walked, her shoulders only a tad too stiff. At first she had thought that Anna was trying to cover up how scared she was.

But then there was that one take that the former Franco-German collaborative channel had caught: Anna looking directly into the camera. Her face was covered; there were only her eyes, almost green in the stern light, and in them lay an expression that Katharina had never seen on her before—dissolved and closed off. The effect of Veril venom in her veins, altering her brain.

Katharina’s stomach roiled. She dug her fingers deeper into the seat until her nail cracked. She flinched back.

The Colonel shot a glance at her. He opened his mouth, then made a disgruntled sound and looked at the road for a change.

They had left the country road and were now merging onto the wide, eight-lane Autobahn, a tall concrete barrier separating them from the oncoming traffic to their left, and dark forests to their right.

Wind rustled the leaves of the trees ahead, sluggish, like a video played at half-speed. The observation finally pulled Katharina’s thoughts out of their spiral and back into the present. The outside sounds had returned: the soft hum of their tires on smooth concrete, the air hissing over the car’s roof. The noises were still somewhat unnaturally elongated, but it seemed like the farther they went, the more the world thawed back to life.

That was how they had done it. It played before her mind’s eye, like some science fiction horror movie. The city cut off from the world around it, and the monsters killing everyone inside. A bell jar filled with carnage. All the men in Hamburg, slaughtered in one night.

Katharina kept her face relaxed, careful not to let the realization filter into her expression. Her eyes slowly wandered to the Colonel’s pocket.

Time magic. She needed to get this info to her contact and she had to do it soon, before they reached Hamburg. This was a much better revenge than hitting the Colonel. She folded her arms behind her head, casually reducing the space between the massive warrior and herself. The hairs on her arm pricked up, reacting to his proximity.

He lifted his hand from the gear shift.

Katharina braced herself, but his motion was not aimed at her. Instead, he turned his palm up and elegantly curled his finger inward, as if he were trying to call and grasp something at the same time.

And the shadows followed.

Night clung to his fingertips like dark spiderwebs, growing denser around their car until they were completely wrapped.

Suddenly, Katharina was blind. A shaky breath sobbed out of her chest before she could suppress it. Then there was a whirring sound followed by an almost glass-like ping, and a dim blue light illuminated the cabin: Colonel Vik had switched on a small emergency lamp. When he saw her expression, he gave her a lopsided smirk and pulled a thread of darkness inside. It uncurled through her open window like a vine of a monstrous jungle plant.

He left it floating, outstretched before her face, and Katharina froze, as if she were staring into the barrel of a rifle.

With a twitch, the shadows compacted into a ball of darkness, rolling to the side until it hovered above the Veril warrior’s large, calloused palm.

Following the irrational instinct to keep the shadows locked out, Katharina quickly pressed the button and the window slid closed again. Panic and awe were fighting an internal battle inside her chest and the plan to steal her phone back was momentarily forgotten. The fear of rushing down a high-speed road without being able to see grew suffocating. She forced herself to lean back. But as much as she tried, she couldn’t relax, not as long as her life and that of innocent little Merry lay in the hands of the grim demon warrior at her side.

He knows what he’s doing. Just because you cannot see in the dark doesn’t mean he can’t either.

She stared at the globe of shadows, swirling and twisting above the Colonel’s hand like a storm of night, as beautiful as it was terrifying—just like him. He can see because he himself is made of darkness.

She squinted. Was there something moving inside the conjuration? Yes, she saw it more clearly now: a flutter like a trapped animal.

Open-mouthed, she looked up at him. The dark skin on his sharp jaw and cheekbones seemed to glow in the blue light.

He winked, and her pulse began hammering in her throat.

The ball of darkness cracked open, and from it emerged a shadow-winged animal, small, flitting, and sharp-beaked, almost like a hummingbird, but with a long, flowing tail of black feathers. The interpreter’s uniform rustled as he shifted on the backseat and the Colonel gave a dismissive huff.

As soon as the bird landed on the dashboard, its shape shifted. The beak became shorter and stouter, the wings and tail pulled in, and two floppy ears sprouted on the sides of its head. A little shadow dog, sitting attentively on its hind legs. It looked at Katharina and wagged its tail. Just one tiny, expectant jiggle. Merry. The motion was so much like the real one that she couldn’t help her short bark of laughter.

The Colonel’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror before he took the shadow poodle into his palm, and carefully closed his fingers over it. When he opened his hand again, the dog was gone, and in its stead lay the wide-open blossom of a Steinfurth rose.

“Impressive,” Katharina remarked more earnestly than she had intended.

The Colonel chuckled, and the interpreter translated for him. “I had plenty of time to study your flowers when you made me wait on the doorstep.”

Katharina gave him a smug glare. He leaned over to her, and her heart skipped a beat. Roses, and poodles, and hummingbirds or not—this man was a massive, muscled killing machine, and her flight reflex took over as soon as he entered her personal bubble.

He brushed his fingers over the air just above her temple, an unfulfilled promise of a touch. She grew entirely still, and when he drew back again, his hand was empty.

Katharina frowned, covering her discomposure under a mask of annoyance, and he made an inviting gesture toward the rearview mirror, very clearly satisfied with himself.

Her gaze followed, and she couldn’t help a smile: the bloom was attached to her hair, giving her the appearance of some kind of nightmarish flamenco dancer, pale-faced and grim. She rolled her eyes at him yet still ran her fingers over her severely pulled-back hair.

He laughed and bent in again, and this time she didn’t flinch. But before she could think of a way to inconspicuously reach for his pocket, he grasped her braid and tugged on it.

“What is this?” he growled in English. “Are you a man?”

Katharina took his hand between her thumb and index finger. Outwardly calm, she removed it from her hair and dropped it back onto his lap as if it were a used tissue.

Inwardly, her thoughts screamed alarm at her. He was flirting with her—or whatever the Veril equivalent of flirting was. She assessed her situation. A woman alone in a car with soldiers of an enemy army was in a precarious situation as it was. But thanks to the Treaty, she, as a German woman, was infinitely more vulnerable.

She felt his presence even more acutely than before. Pressing into the skin of her arm, into her entire left side, her waist, her butt, her thighs. She forced down the question of how he would feel on top of her, holding her down. How completely useless her ridiculous little self-defense classes would be against his inhuman strength.

She ignored the nausea churning her empty stomach and closed her eyes. Stay focused. She opened them again and she fixed her gaze on the black swirl of shadows beyond the windshield. Calmly, she placed her right hand, the one with the ring, onto the dashboard.

When she spoke, her tone was even.

“I’m married.”

→ Masterpost

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Thank you so much for reading! ❤️

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