It had been a week since Evie had been named by her Master. A week of travel with a woman trying to outrun a shame that followed on her heels, a week of being that shame.

  Evie had learned much about her Master. Her appearance was remarkable, as could be expected of the Champion of Amarat. Well over a head taller than Evie, standing at a height of five-foot-ten inches, she was amongst the tallest humans Evie had ever seen, yet she insisted that in her home world, though she was somewhat tall, her height was not so spectacurly exceptional. She also said that her appearance had been deeply altered by Amarat, and that she was once not nearly so beautiful. Now, however, she had silky bck hair that rolled in shining waves down to her shoulder bdes, highlighting a face of pristine, cssical beauty, putting to shame the finest of sculptures. She was muscur, as expected of a Champion, yet she was not overly defined, sporting a warrior's build. Her breasts were still rge and soft, her hips wide, and all the strength afforded to her served only to provide a sturdy foundation for the rest of her beauty to be built upon.

  Her personality, too, was strange. For one, she was courteous to a fault, at least when it came to Evie. It was a strange thing, that sense of deference, because it seemed that the goddess-touched woman showed no one else alive simir respect. Not her one-time party members, who were turned away as brusquely as an unwanted solicitor now that her mission was done, nor the royal envoys inviting her Master to dinner with the new Mayor, whom Master seemed to take a smug pleasure in rejecting.

  No, the averted eyes and bashful humility were reserved for Evie and Evie alone. Master had fled the city only two days after she had come into possession of Evie, taking but a few scant hours in the early morning to skitter along the rooftops and discreetly gather supplies. Evie had stayed in the room, of course, because Master had feared for her safety no matter how much she insisted she was capable.

  And still on the road did Master maintain the civility between them. She had stolen for Evie fine dresses and expertly fit jewelry, a full set of stylized outfits that all came with a choker or other accoutrement that hid Evie's sve colr should she so desire. Sensing her Master's own wish for the colr to be covered, Evie had done so.

  She'd liked to have said that the airy ambivalence with which Evie was facing her current circumstances was a product of the colr's enchantments, but she couldn't cim so truthfully. Ever since her mother had been dragged before the court, perhaps even before, as it had all started to fall apart, Evie had lived in a half-way world. Her skin never quite reached what it touched, nor did her eyes come into full focus, nor did she even hear and understand others as clearly as she once had. She'd floated along, disbelieving and ashamed.

  Until the colr. As it had been pced upon her neck, white-robed priests chanting around her, she'd felt cold for the first time in who knows how long. The metal had made her shiver in a way the royal dungeons hadn't, made her uncomfortable like the shackles couldn't. It had been the first proof she was still alive.

  And then she'd seen Master. She'd heard her voice ringing in her ears, heard her defending, without prompting, Evie's crimes. A part of her, warring with another, tugged against her restraints to draw nearer to the woman who had absolved her of her old life, who had melted all the guilt within Evie and cast it into cool iron.

  Dressed in a flowing dress that did not fit the base indignation on her face, she'd looked at Evie and saw a person. Not the mayor's daughter, not a feline, not a marriage opportunity, or a traitor, or a student, or a failure or anything else, but a person. Her Master, the woman who owned her, had seen her as anything but a sve.

  And then she'd watched Master's eyes roll down. She'd watched Master's breath quicken as her attention roved over Evie's ears, eyes, lips, breasts, and tail, especially her tail, and she'd felt through the colr's tug exactly what Evie's body did to the goddess-touched woman.

  It was funny, thinking about it now. She could remember how silly she'd been, facing Master in that moment. She could remember a small part of her feeling angry at the woman who'd stolen her freedom from her. Even if the priest's orders had forbidden her from expressing it, she could remember the indignation at her state of undress, and her treatment, all simmering beneath the patina of exhaustion. It was such a foreign memory now, that anger, and she didn't like to think about it.

  Thankfully, it had ended quickly. On her knees before Master, slumped and exhausted, she'd been given her name. Like lightning had Master's first order rolled through her, penetrative and complete and filling. And of course, seeing how it affected her, Master had tried to tell her to stay true to herself, as moral as Master always was, and Evie had embraced the command with great pleasure.

  It didn't matter that Master thought she'd told her to stay true to that old, spoiled girl she'd once been. It didn't matter that Master thought that the girl following her every footstep was the same one she'd watched, that lesser one, that foreign person with some meaningless name and life that had lived in a mansion and jealously scorned the world she couldn't explore and hadn't seen.

  Evie knew her Master wanted her to be the same. She knew that she was supposed to still be that woman Master had watched through the windows night after night, but she just wasn't. Oh, most of her was, and when discrepancies arose she could imitate her old self near perfectly. But she didn't want to be that spoiled child who'd never known what it was like to Obey.

  Because now Evie was less. So much less, and so much better for it, because she was Master's sve. Mind, soul, and body, bound to Master by choice and magic alike.

  As she walked on the trail behind Master, some forest road she couldn't recall the name of, she allowed herself a pleasant smile as she touched a finger to her chest. There, beneath her fingertip and clothes and skin, she imagined a brand embedded into her very being. Master's. She was one thing, forever. She was her's.

  Her owner.

  Her lover.

  Her Master.