Page 3 of Kingdom of Ashes & Bone
“Try and lessen the curse with each next generation, hoping that eventually they weaken it to the point where they can stop changing and beat the curse.”
Nausea swirled in my stomach as Hyacinth’s desperate pleas from the closet rang in my ears. “Can’t have babies. Cursed. That’s why they need us. That’s why all their girls are primas. Help me get away. We need to get away!”
I swallowed back the bile that threatened to come up my throat. “Is it … working?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Oleria laughed, a bit hysterically. Shava’s head shook back and forth. “Come and see.”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me through the darkness. My thoughts kept going back to what she’d said about her reaping … wedding and bedding.
“Shava, I’m sorry, but what happened—”
“I killed my husband, that’s what happened,” she snapped back, not bothering to look back at me. “Before his cold, dead hands could put his cold, dead dick inside of me I ripped it off like the rotten bit of sausage it was. There was so much screaming and crying and running that the Fireguards had their hands full. Remember the large windows in the bathing house?”
Not really, but I’d been understandably focused on other things at the time. Such as the murdering and the drowning. But I remembered how airy and bright the bathhouses were—that meant there had to have been large windows.
“I dove straight out. Didn’t even look at what was below. Figured even death was better than whatever that was. I got lucky; I landed on a passing Fireguard who promised not to tell anyone I’d escaped and actually led me to the same passage you found. I followed it and found the others.”
A sympathetic Fireguard? There was no such thing. Unless … that didn’t make any sense. They were my age, weren’t they? A Fireguard had to be a man, not a teenager. Shava had been reaped five years before me. None of the numbers made sense. Had it been Ell?
“The others?” I asked instead, wanting desperately for something I could wrap my brain around.
Shava grinned, but it lacked any true mirth. “You’ll see.”
A roaring sound reached us from up ahead, growing louder as we approached. It couldn’t be a dragon, could it? No, that was all wrong. Shava held my hand so tightly I was unable to pull away.
Dim torches caught my eye as we came out in a narrow hallway lined with stone. The roaring sound was below me and to the sides, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, a narrower stone walkway stretched out before us.
“Be careful!” Oleria yelled over the roar. “If the current gets you, it’ll whip you to the next kingdom before you blink!”
Current? Next kingdom?
“Watch your step!” Shava yelled back as the path narrowed, pointing down. The gleam off the wet stones was the only thing I could see—and I realized it was from water. The stones were wet and slick because an entire goddamn river rushed on either side of us. The sound was deafening.
I clutched Shava’s hand, terrified. After the bathhouse when I’d almost drowned, I hated water and everything to do with it. Shava patted my hand once, then pulled me after her without an ounce of sympathy. Oleria followed behind as she extinguished our torches and forced us to rely on the small ones dotting the stone walls on either side of us.
A large iron gate ahead seemed to be our destination. What was only a few hundred paces felt like miles. Too scared to properly pick my feet up, I did an awkward shuffle to make sure I always had contact with the slick rocks underneath me. Shava gripped me tightly, but didn’t complain about my pace. Neither did Oleria behind me.
I was afraid of falling and dying, but I was more afraid of never finding answers.
I kept moving.
Once I was close enough, I fell at the foot of the iron gate, wrapping my hands and fingers around the cold, wet iron as if I could anchor myself there forever.
“Mari, gonna have to let go or they can’t let us in,” Shava chortled. Oleria pulled me back as the iron gate rose up, disappearing into a crack in the stone above us.
“Let’s go.”
The moment Oleria cleared the gate behind me, it slammed back down so hard my ears rung and the breeze lifted the edges of my hair.
“Can’t be too careful. If the queen finds out, she’d torch the place.”
I let the comment slide. I could absolutely see her using Zariah or Zion (even both) to turn all of her enemies to ash. Again.
Beyond the gate lay darkness. Our footsteps echoed around the stone walls and floor, and opened up into an underground cavern that was narrow but with a much calmer stream of water running down two sides.
“Over the years, they managed to divert and dam a good portion of it to make it safe and usable for everyone here,” Shava lectured. Rows of tents and makeshift forts made of scrap fabric and blankets lined the path ahead of us. Bits of tied string nailed or shoved into crevices and cracks in the stone walls and mortar held up the fabric. My home in the mud quarter had been nothing to brag about, but it hadn’t been this bad.
Bodies lay inside of the tents, most of them with feet sticking out of the ends. Pale, grey skin met my eyes. Some figures huddled outside the tents with little fires, trying desperately to shake off the chill that hung in the moist air. No one would meet my gaze. The air was filled with the moans and groans of dozens of people.
