Page 2 of Kingdom of Ashes & Bone
I tripped over an unseen root and fell hard on my face, cracking my nose. Pain exploded over me, quelling the dream theory. Shit.
“Careful. It’s rough down here.” Shava gave me her lantern and a rag from her pocket. I accepted both gratefully, holding the lantern low to the ground and pinching my nose with the rag to staunch the blood flow.
“Just follow, and we’ll start talking,” she said to me. As we made our way through the darkness, Shava spun her tale.
“I’m sure you’ve figured out quite a bit if you made it here, but I’ll start at the beginning so nothing gets left out.”
I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me since she was in front of me.
“Ok,” I said, my voice echoing off the rock walls surrounding us.
We walked. The stone underneath us sloped down in increments as Shava said,
“The year of the flux, they took everyone they could. I’m sure you remember. I was sick, but not badly enough so it didn’t stop them from bringing me to the palace. I was bathed, dressed, and fed, but it felt like I was being prepped for something … like a sacrifice, you know?”
I did know.
“There were so many girls that year. It was like they took everyone who wasn’t sick. Girls as young as ten, the normal sixteen year olds, and they also took older mothers. The Fireguards ripped children from their mothers’ arms and dragged them down the streets. You were sick and abed, so you missed it.” Shava paused. “Probably for the best. You must have been in really bad shape to be left alone.”
I had been. I’d almost died.
Probably for the best.
“Anyway, there were fifty girls and women all together. They took care to bathe us in these giants bathtubs. They gave us fine clothes, and then ... and then ...” Shava’s voice broke, and I feared what she would say next. Maybe she hadn’t had to watch as girls drowned like I had, but what other horrible terrors had she seen?
“They fed us!” she finished dramatically, her voice hushed in the cave.
Oleria snorted, but I understood Shava instantly. At least when Oleria and I had been taken, there’d been no qualms about this being a competition and that the Fireguards would happily weed out anyone not strong or smart enough to make it. But during Shava’s year, they had been desperate for girls.
So they’d fed them in order to gain their trust.
“And then?” I asked, feeling as though it were the only appropriate thing to say. The stone floor around us leveled out as we kept going.
“They lined us up like the reaping, but this time the Nobles all came in and looked us over like we were pieces of meat fresh off the food wagon,” she spat. “Every girl got picked by a Noble, and we were all wedded and bedded right there.”
No one could see the horror stretched across my face in the darkness.
“Right … there?!” I squeaked out, unable to imagine it. That many girls and that many Nobles …
“You see, they knew what they were doing. They knew we’d freak out and fight, so it was more secure to keep us all in one big room—those bathing chambers, and just guard the doors. It was smart, actually,” she added bitterly.
“Makes our time there sound a lot better. At least they pretended to treat us nicely,” Oleria quipped.
“And you—” I cut myself off, unable to articulate the full thought. I couldn’t verbalize the horror or even imagine it.
Shava huffed. “I did what I always do: use the chaos to my advantage. My Noble was older and blond. I let him lead me over to a corner. The Nobles all changed then—gray, flaking scaly skin underneath their fancy tunics, with hands cold as ice. They were the walking dead and needed us to make fresh, alive babies. The Nobles are all dying. They’re part of this curse just as much as the dragon overhead.”
I held my tongue on that. It wasn’t time yet. “The Nobles are all … what? These demon creatures?” I asked instead, wondering if they knew more than I did. It was one thing to think about it, and quite another to hear it confirmed. I thought of the snarling monsters Zariah and I had uncovered in the caves. It was all connected, wasn’t it? Zariah and Zion—the princes—were under a separate curse from the Nobles. Their dragon forms could attest to that.
“The Nobles are cursed as well. They’re all turning into demons,” I amended quickly.
Shava paused ahead of me along with Oleria, our torches throwing heavy shadows under
our faces.
“That’s why they want the uncursed girls from the other quarters. That’s especially why they want mud girls, and why the queen has a mud boy for her king,” Shava declared.
My brow furrowed. “They can’t have demon children; that would hardly go unnoticed unless they can’t have children at all. They’re using the uncursed girls to—”
