Title: Snake Singer

Authors Notes: Thank you so much to TallemeraRane who helped with the editing of this chapter.

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, but the plot belongs to me.

I dared not breathe as I pulled the covers back, my fingers clutching to the threads of the thick blanket that covered me. Vasili, from what I could tell, continued to sleep soundly, and as far as I saw he was not aware that I had moved. When I was out of the bed I crouched down, my eyes barely over the side of the mattress. I watched, and I waited. I studied Vasili's every breath, every slight movement, hoping to uncover any sign that he knew what I was doing. After several minutes of this I lowered myself, crawling on hands and feet toward the door.

Meekly I turned the doorknob, barely breathing as it turned. Before I opened the door I quickly looked back to Vasili, but he remained unmoved, unshaken, as if he truly still trusted that I wouldn't leave. Without another thought I crawled into the hallway.

The hallway was cold; a chilling draft passed through my skin and iced my bones. Once I was far enough away from the door I lifted myself up from the floor, my legs stiff. As soon as I was standing I waited, pushing my back against the wall as hard as I could, attempting to blend into the dark shadows of the night. My eyes narrowed, my senses outstretched. I listened and saw everything that went on around me. But I saw nothing, and after taking one long, deep breath I ran. My feet hit the floor lightly as I flew across the hallways. Without thinking my path became familiar, I don't know how, but I was going to the garden that Zane had taken me to. I remembered every twist and turn, and every narrow corridor until I got to the door.

Once the old, and creaky wooden door was before me I stopped. My chest rising and falling so violently that I begged myself to fall to the ground, to rest and catch my breath. Part of me was afraid to go through the door, unaware if I was ready or strong enough to do everything that I needed to do to save Zane and myself. But then the image of Zane in that horrible place, beaten and starved, , became lodged in my head. He looked more like the skeletal remains of the man that I love, not my husband. The image was so powerful that without my realizing it my hands rose up from my sides and pushed the door open with all of my strength.

There I stood, half way out in the night and halfway inside the Mistari palace. My bare toes could feel the cool night air and the light shower of tiny raindrops as they hit and then dripped off of my skin. The hem of my nightgown curled above the tall strands of green grass as it danced with the pattern of the wind's movements.

I took a deep breath, knowing that the only way that I would ever be free again would be to take this step. To leave all that I had known all my life behind, including Vasili, with his thoughts of marriage and a stable life with no war amongst our people. Once, long ago, that had been my dream, to live my life with Vasili and bring peace to both sides of this bloody conflict. But so much had changed, and I had changed with them. That idea was not mine anymore, and I realized in that moment that the only people who could end these wars and stop all of the hatred were the people who fought them, and the people who spent their lives hating. It was the people who reared their children up, hawk and snake alike to hate the other that fueled the fires of death, and it was only these people who could end it. For so long I had thought that I alone could save everyone and everything from all things evil and destructible, but I alone cannot do this, I alone do not have the strength to change all of this. Until my people, and all people can learn to live without the idea of destruction against someone or something else, then war will never end.

I took the final step out of the door, I was free from that place, and in the harmony and tranquility of the old garden. I closed my eyes and made peace with my destiny. I burrowed my human self deep within the inner core of my body and began to feel my form change. I knew that the only way to leave these lands safely was to transform into my Hawk counterpart and fly from these walls. I opened my eyes to see that my body was beginning to change. The light, pale hue of my skin was now morphing into a golden sheen, and the smoothness of my flesh was tarnished, and rough to the touch until it became the uneven scale of feathers. I closed my eyes again and let the transformation take over me. I could feel my body shake and shrink until my human shell was almost the shell of a hawk...

Suddenly I felt the change stop, I was disoriented, nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I tried to open my eyes but they were half way through the changing process, not entirely human eyes and not entirely hawk eyes. I could move nothing that was connected to me, not hands or feet. I couldn't see and I could barley hear. I began to change back immediately, pushing with all of my might for the human part of me to come back to the surface. It took a few moments but before long I could feel my true form again, and I began to feel what was happening to me.

I felt strong hands around my neck, fingers clamping down against skin and bone so hard that it was choking me. Finely I opened my eyes and I could see the blurred outline of Vasili standing over me. I tried to force him off but my full strength had not yet returned and I was left defenseless against him.

Vasili clamped down harder against my neck and before long my eyes closed...

When my eyes opened again I was back in our room, a host of candles lined every tabletop and some were even scattered on the floor. The flames were maddening through my blurred vision. I tried to move but like before I felt something around my neck. It was not fingers but tight, cold metal. I reached my hand up and realized that it was a thick bar placed all the way around my neck and tethered on a chain against the wall. The chain was short and would probably only allow me a few feet moving room. I sighed, angry and frustrated at the situation.

"Well, my sneaky little bird has finally decided to grace us with her loving presence!" I heard, recognizing Vasili's voice long before he had finished.

"What is this?" I demanded my voice flat and even; I wanted to give no emotion to him.

"I didn't want it to come to this Danica," he said, approaching me, his bare chest glistening with a thin layer of sweat as he made his way through candlelit shadows. Once he was near to me he knelt down and stroked my cheek with his hand. I wanted to turn away, to get as far away from him as possible, but at the same time I didn't want to anger him. "Why did you do that?" He asked, his voice almost childlike, in that he truly didn't understand why I would want to leave. "For him!" He continued, his voice getting colder and crueler. "To find him. That monster, does he truly control you that much, that he can reach his hand from so far away and drag you to hell with him?"

"I would go to hell, if it meant that I could be with him," I said, my voice still even and emotionless.

I could see Vasili's lips tighten, and his face quiver slightly as if he were about to strike me, and I welcomed the violence. Any hit against me would only make me hate him all the more, and give more of a reason and more strength to escape him.

Vasili did nothing. He stood up again and slowly walked about the room, making sure that my eyes were on him every second. With his fingers he extinguished each and every flame on every candle that he had lit, going around the room in a circle until he reached the last one. The last candle was on the table closest to the bed, and before snuffing it out he looked at me. His eyes low and cruel, and with a whisper, his voice as deadly and even as mine had been he said: "Goodnight Danica!" And the room went into darkness.