Page 15 of Kingdom of Ashes & Bone
I nodded, inwardly pleased to have some support. I gestured over my shoulder for the sick Nobles to follow me. Those that could, anyway.
We walked the short path back to where the women and children were. They either didn’t take me seriously or thought they’d had more time because no one had moved. Their terrified faces at seeing the sick Nobles behind me had them scurrying, though.
“What, do you think this is a game? Grab your shit and go, or I’m giving you to a Noble.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder for emphasis. A few of the children cried at seeing the gray, ashen skin of the Nobles, but I grit my teeth and ushered them forward.
The women rushed to tear down their own tents and gather supplies, making huge piles in the middle of the corridor.
“Thanks,” I said to no one in particular, though varying looks of anger were directed my way. Time to nip that in the bud.
“This whole arrangement is backward. The Nobles need to be closer to the door so they can be more safely contained and don’t have to pass through your camp once they change,” I patiently explained. The huffy looks lessened a bit after that.
It took an hour or so, but soon everyone had moved. The sick Nobles who were able helped Wisteria and me drag the unconscious to their new tents, and soon each Noble was situated next door to Zephyr, Shava, and me, with the women and children on the outside edges.
Now came the hard part, but the necessary part.
As soon as the last woman scampered away, I searched Zephyr’s tent and found the ridiculously long knife from last night. I would go tent to tent, finding any sick Noble who was conscious and sane. It wouldn’t be easy, but it needed to be done.
I steeled my nerves, and threw back the canvas flap of the first tent in the row. Inside was a young Noble. Too young. He was sitting up in his cot, staring out at nothing. His blonde hair was turning as gray as his skin, his face haunted and full of pain.
“I begged the bastard prince to do it,” he began, smiling when he saw the knife at my side. “He refused. I tried to attack his girlfriend, to goad them into thinking I was changing. It didn’t work. It just earned me a back so bloody I can’t even sleep now,” he complained bitterly, his blue eyes glowing against his ashen complexion. Scabs and scales started at his neck and covered him from wrists to ankles.
“I heard the girl screaming last night. I don’t want to do that to anybody,” he continued softly. “Will you do it?”
I glanced at the knife in my hands. “I want to grant your wish, but I’ve never done it before.”
He chuckled. “I don’t want it to be an agonizing mess either. Got any wine? I could get pissed off my ass. Shouldn’t hurt as much.”
The man tried to put on a brave face, but the fear was palpable in the way his hands shook around his ratty blanket.
“No wine. Sorry,” I muttered. What was I thinking? How could I do what needed to be done?
“Well … maybe just stab me in the heart, hard and fast. No regrets.” He threw his blanket off of him and rolled onto the dirty floor, so he wouldn’t bleed all over the blanket and ruin it.
The thoughtfulness he had about his own death left me paralyzed. This couldn’t be the right way. But what else could I do?
“All right. I’m sorry.”
He gave me a wistful smile. “Me too.”
I kneeled over him and raised the knife.
Only to have the air knocked out of me as I was bodily thrown away. The knife skittered across the stone floor noisily.
“What the actualfuck?” Zephyr roared at me, standing over me as pissed and angry as I’d ever seen his half-brothers. “I realized I forgot my knife, and I came back to chaos! You’ve upset everyone! The women are crying, the children are terrified, and there are Nobles crawling all around my tent!”
I shot to my feet, indignant. I understood his anger; he was just trying to protect his people. But he was blind to the damage it was doing to the others, who werealsohis responsibility. You couldn’t be blind to the torment of some and not others. This was how I’d prove my worth; this is how I’d be useful to the cause.
“Oleria died because you’re too much of a coward to do what needs to be done.” I gestured wildly at the man on the floor. “He begs for death. He wants it! Why won’t you give it to him? Why do you refuse death with dignity, and instead pass a sentence of long, painful suffering in the pit?”
The man gasped behind me, and I whirled around. “Oh? The bastard prince didn’t tell you? When you finally change, he’ll wrap you in chains and drag you into a dark pit with a hundred other savage demons down there. Didn’t he tell any of you that?”
Perhaps I was being a tad cruel, but the sick Nobles deserved a choice in their fates, and they deserved to have their choices honored. They should at least be able to choose if they wanted a quick death, or a slow, agonizing one in the darkness.
Zephyr ignored the speechless Noble as he grabbed me, dragging me out of the tent and slamming me up against the stone wall. His sudden anger and strength took me by surprise. Where was the gentle leader who had just played with children?
“You had no right to come here and disrupt everything. Get out!”
“You have no right to play god down here, like a prince of rats!” I spat back in his face, my knee going directly into his groin. He dropped me like a bad habit, and I jumped out of his reach. He stayed on the ground for a moment before collecting himself, pity and sadness in his eyes.
