Bound Together

Prologue

Two eight year old boys and a seven year old girl ran around the streets of Ketterdam laughing happily as they chased each other.

"Kaz! Kasper! Hurry up!" the girl yelled

"Lanying, stop running so fast!" Kasper called

Lanying just turned around and gave Kasper a bright smile.

Those were the carefree days of old. Before Kaz and Kasper became known as dirtyhands and the strategist, the twin bastards of the barrel. Before they embarked on their quest for revenge to take down the man that left them to die on the streets penniless and sick with the Queen Lady's Plague, to be borne away on the dark waters by the reaper's barge.

Those were also the days before Lanying was forced to go back to Shu Han, her parents summoned by the call of a Queen, and discovering that she was the very thing her parents had been ordered to study. So, she ran, over the Sikurzoi and into Ravka, ending up first in Sikursk, then in the little palace, and all the while, yearning for the dark streets of her childhood, and plotting for the day she would return back to the Island of Kerch, back to Ketterdam and to Kasper.

When she returned six long years after that fateful night of the Queen's summon, of all the places she could have ended up, she ended up in the Menagerie as the Shu Serpent. Bound to a lifetime of debt. Her saviour came in the form of a shadow, a wraith, a girl not much older than her.

Lanying had saved the girl's life in an alley and when the girl received word that a new Serpent had been acquired, she snuck in to investigate and found Lanying. Three weeks later, a Mister Crimson, who turned out to be her childhood best friend struck up a bargain with Tante Heleen and allowing her step foot outside of the tiered cage that had almost been her home. Her home was now with the Kaz, Kasper, Jesper, and Inej, the crows; and together they would fight alongside one another and watch each other's backs.

Of course, from time to time, Lanying was summoned back to the Menagerie to heal the girls after their shifts and to dance outside the parlour of the Menagerie in an effort to draw in more patrons and entice the pigeons looking for fun to step foot into the Menagerie, thus bringing in more profit for Tante Heleen.

Freedom, that was all Lanying longed for. But she knew that she would never buy her way out of the Menagerie. Her so called contract had said she could earn her freedom, but Tante Heleen, much like everyone who had indentures in the barrel ensured that these only grew and never diminished. Lanying was charged for everything from her jewellery, clothes and her room and board.

At least, she had hope. Hope that someday, she would be free of that place and free of Tante Heleen.