A/N: This first chapter will have no sex, but it'll be coming~
Please let me know what you think.
*****
I was working in the kitchen the day the Erken first invaded. That was the day my whole peaceful, family-based life was torn apart, replaced with slavery, pain, and horrors I never could have even dreamt up before that moment. They came in hundreds, heavy leather boots shaking the cobblestone streets in their practiced march.
Before I could see what the previously dormant nation wanted, my father's thin hand encircled my upper arm, urgently pulling me and my mother to the back storage of our small bakery. Dark and dusty, a lingering childhood fear of the dark and slight allergy to dust meant that I avoided the storage as much as was permitted. Yet here I found myself being shoved down the back stairs and into the even darker and dustier basement full of broken ovens and old cooking supplies. My mother pulled me into her arms, smelling like flour and vanilla as she always seemed to. I miss that smell.
Then we watched in wide-eyed silence as my father barricaded the three of us into the back room, just as the first knocks sounded on the friendly green-painted front door, soon to be followed by wood-splintering kicks.
That was the end and the beginning of two different mes. One, eighteen and naive, with love, a family, friends, and food. The next, nineteen and a lie, disguised, orphaned, and utterly alone.
~*~
Unfamiliar. That's the one word I can use to describe my current situation. My name had been Zina Bizurki before the invasion, and now I've taken the name Kain Seeker, after an old delivery boy that had worked for my family's bakery. He's surely dead, joining my mother, father, and many others in a place I'm not willing to venture to just yet. The common house-hold scent of fresh bread, replaced by the rich soil of the farms. Instead of the long silver braid I'd always kept my hair in, I've chopped it short, coming to just above the name of my neck in scraggly layers. The only way for me to survive, is to hide in plain sight, as a male gardener.
I'm Kolken. Peaceful, agriculture-based people, with typically small and thin figures, pale skin, and light hair. Our pale skin makes us sought-after in the slave trade all around the world, and so there was only one way for us to stay protected from being completely taken over and sold for profit. A treaty. The Kolken and Erken nations had an age-old treaty keeping both races satisfied. Food for protection, for safety. The treaty ruled that we'd provide our produce for their people as long as they didn't attack us or let the other nations steal away our people. The Erken are militia-based, strong and tanned. Large bodies and even larger egos, typically dark-skinned with black or brown hair. While the Kolken do not practice in the slave trade, finding it a disgusting idea, the Erken even sell their own people to slavers. All women are forced into servitude at birth, separated from the males in their birthing facilities. Children are raised in a special child care building, and taught how to submit to orders at a very young age. At eighteen, they're sold to the high-ranking officials first, perhaps even offered into the royal harems if they're beautiful or exceptional enough. The leftover women are released once more to the military, made into strong fighters. But no laws protect them, and so it's a free-for-all when the soldiers aren't training.
It's disgusting, horrific to us Kolkens who have lived in peace, harmony, and equality all our lives. But we needed their protection, and since they didn't force us to follow the same path, we didn't complain.
Yet something had gone wrong with the treaty a month ago, and their army had swept in and taken over within a mere day. All the women that resisted or were older than forty were shot on sight during the invasion, and the men who fought back or were deemed too old to work the farms were murdered as well. The women were carted off to the slavers, anyone who didn't manage to hide or escape, and the men coerced into continuing our gardens to sustain both ourselves and the Erken.
I'm one of the fortunate females. As the soldiers killed my parents for trying to bash their skulls in with an old cooking pot, I'd taken the chance to try and run during the confusion.
I'd escaped, at the price of my parents' death.
However, I soon discovered that the only way to get food was to work, and the only way to work without being caught was to be a male. And therefore, I took the name Kain, and luckily enough with some grime on my face and baggy clothes, I can pass for a man.
I wipe the sweat from my eyes with a dirty forearm, bare up to my elbow where I'd rolled my white shirt sleeve up to. My face is already caked with dirt from being up to my shoulders in the potato beds all morning, but I make no move to clean it up. My hands return to the soil, the gloves a few sizes too big doing little to protect them from the splinters and bugs. I scoop out yet another potato and dump it into my half-full basket. Across from me works Jamie Sprott, a young man with blonde hair and light blue eyes, a foot taller than my five feet flat height. He's tall for a Kolken, while I'm a pretty typical height. Jamie leans over slightly, keeping an eye on the large guard with his imposing gun a few meters away.
"Kain, did you hear?" He asks under his breath, digging for another potato as he speaks. I raise one eyebrow, for how am I to know if I've heard what secret tidbit of information the gossip has if he doesn't tell me what he's talking about? He doesn't seem to mind, and continues talking. "The militia has sent out a new wave of specially trained guards, searching for the little mice hiding out." 'Little Mouse' is a term for the Kolken females that had managed to hide.
I feel a little seed of fear blooming in my gut, settling with an ache I've been ignoring since yesterday. "Do you know wny?" The question is nearly swept up in the slight breeze, helping cool my sweaty body.
Jamie blinks at me, glancing at our guard again to check if we're still clear of being beat for chatting on duty. "I heard that the Kolkens in the royal harems got killed by the jealous Erken females, and that it was too late to replace them, because the rest had gotten shipped out. Now the five princes are disputing for the few surviving girls, even while they're healing in the hospitals. The king ordered a renewed search f-" A heavy black boot rams into Jamie's side, sending the thin boy sprawling and coughing. I shade my eyes, glaring up at the guard with the strong jaw and black locks. He's wearing the same dark jacket and pants as all the other militia members; how they wear that in this weather baffles me.
"Don't talk." The guard snaps, before stalking off. He'd gone easy on us. I quickly get up, brushing off my brown pants, and offer a gloved hand to Jamie. He takes it and rolls to his feet with a wince, before we immediately get back to work, knowing better than to test our luck.
I feel the guard's brown eyes on my back as I work, and his newfound interest brings great unrest. A throbbing headache presses in my temples, and my tongue lies swollen in my mouth as the sun beats down on me. However, I know the rules as well as any other. Water is only given after we finish working, which is at sunset.
I double over, a sudden sharp pain needling in my gut, and let out a low groan of pain. My arms wrap around my midsection, whimpers escaping my lips as I'm lifted from the dirt by two strong arms. The guard. However, not even that seems to matter as the nausea and pain only grows.
