After Transmigrating, My Husband Is an Octopus novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Foot-Choice
Morwenna wakes in a pen at the Pet Fair, reads a 98% number over the cloaked outcast prince nobody will bid on, and steps across the chalk toward him. The Regent's summons arrives before they reach the gate.
The auctioneer lifted my chin with the end of a wooden pointer and told a crowd of strangers I had good teeth.
I was standing on a crate in a market square, in the clothes I had worn to my night shift at the aquarium.
There was a numbered tag tied to my wrist.
The last thing I remembered was falling asleep at the tide-pool tank with my head on my arms.
Now there was salt wind, a harbour full of masts, and a hundred people looking me over, a few of them at my teeth.
"Human female, tidefall, no scars, no bites," the auctioneer called. "Pets, ladies and gentlemen, or snacks for those who prefer them fresh."
Some of the crowd laughed.
A woman near the front had a bird's sharp face and ruffled grey feathers at her collar.
She was not wearing a costume.
A man beside her licked his lips, and his tongue was forked.
I looked down.
A chalk line was drawn across the stones at my feet, and beyond it the buyers stood in a loose half circle.
"Foot-choice," the auctioneer said, and tapped the line. "Our tradition, my lords. The pet steps toward the buyer she likes best. If she chooses, the law binds them as hearth and house."
A tall man with black hair and gold eyes stepped out of the crowd and held out his coat.
"You're shaking," he said gently. "Take it, please."
I took it.
It smelled of cedar and it was warm.
"I'm Lord Tristram Verrin," he said. "Nobody here will hurt you while I'm standing close. I'll bid whatever it takes."
"Thank you. I'm Morwenna Harlowe," I said.
I meant the thanks.
I was too frightened to mean anything else.
That was when the numbers started.
They had always done this.
Since I was a child, a small white number had floated in the air between two people when they were close, and it always meant the same thing.
How well they fit.
I had seen forty over a couple fighting in a grocery line and ninety over two strangers waiting for the same bus.
I once told my sister the bus pair were ninety.
They were engaged by the spring.
I had never found out what to do with the gift, so I mostly kept my mouth shut.
Now the number hung between me and Lord Tristram.
It said six.
The crowd murmured behind him, and I turned toward the noise.
At the very back of the square, a man in a grey hooded cloak stood with his arms folded inside his sleeves.
People had left an empty space around him.
"That's the Monster," someone whispered.
"Why would a prince come to a pet fair?" said another voice. "To feed?"
Somebody laughed, and somebody spat on the stones.
The man in the cloak did not move.
Between him and me, in the air above the cobbles, a number glowed.
Ninety-eight.
I had never seen one above ninety-one.
"Ninety-eight," I said out loud.
I did not mean to.
The cloaked man heard it across the whole square.
His head came up.
I saw pink-violet hair under the hood and a long, pale, exhausted face, and grey-violet eyes.
He stepped forward through the crowd, and the crowd drew back from him.
He stopped at the chalk line and reached out his hand toward me.
I thought it was to push me away.
The fingers curled toward my shoulder, and his jaw was clenched hard.
I said it again, quietly this time.
"Ninety-eight."
His hand changed direction.
It turned, and opened, and closed around mine.
His skin was cool and dry and not at all what I had braced for.
"I'm not going to eat you," he said, low and quick, so only I could hear. "I'm not buying you for anything. I'm buying you so nobody else can. Step over the line, and I'll explain after."
"Seven hundred," Lord Tristram said smoothly from behind me. "For the pet, and for the lady's comfort."
"She steps first," the auctioneer reminded him. "Foot-choice. That is the law."
Lord Tristram smiled at me.
"If he frightens you," he murmured, "come to me. Any hour."
The cloaked man was still holding my hand.
I did not know where I was, or who these people were, or what the bird-faced woman wanted with my teeth.
I did know the one person in the square who had pushed through a crowd to stand in front of me and told me the truth first.
So I stepped across the chalk.
The whole crowd gasped.
"Hearth-bound," the auctioneer said flatly. "Lorcan Brae and the human, husband and pet, by the Fair's law. May the Monster enjoy his wife."
The bird-faced woman laughed until she coughed.
Lorcan Brae drew his cloak around my shoulders and walked me out through the laughing, spitting crowd without looking at any of them.
At the gate, his arm under the cloak moved.
Something long and cool and not a hand slid out of his sleeve and wrapped once around my wrist.
It was the exact colour of a pink coral.
It tightened, and then it let go, and he looked as startled as I was.
"Don't scream," he said.
I didn't.
A courier in a sea-green coat was waiting at the gate.
He bowed to Lorcan with his chin tucked and held out a folded letter sealed with a shark's tooth.
"From the Regent, Your Highness," he said. "Your wife is summoned to Pearl Hall for examination at the new moon. Seven days."
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