Page 7 of Kingdom of Ashes & Bone
I blinked. “So, was it Zion or Zariah?”
Zephyr shrugged his shoulders. “He didn’t say, and I don’t know either of them well enough to venture a guess.”
Hmm. It seemed like the sort of thing Zion would want to do, but then again, Zariah was the one who actually had the balls to disobey his mother as much as he could and help others.
Which also meant Zion and Zariah knew about Zephyr this entire time and didn’t mention it to me once. My gut twisted just a little bit more.
“Anyhow, I dove into the tunnels and found this entire system that connects to the old mines and goes under most of the kingdom. It was a bit touch and go at first, but I learned how to steal food from the castle and other things I needed to survive.” Zephyr’s expression darkened. “Then about a year later, the Nobles started showing up in my tunnels. All starting from the same one the prince dropped me off at, the same one you came from.”
Shava took over, shooting a concerned glance at Zephyr. “We suspect the prince—one of them, or both—is trying to save the dying Nobles for a reason. Zephyr figured out the warning signs when a change is imminent, so we have a pretty accurate timeline of how long someone has before they’ll shift.”
“And then what?” I asked with horrified fascination. “You kill them?”
Oleria huffed, and Shava’s face pinched. “Well, no. Zephyr doesn’t think we should kill them. He thinks the princes want us to save them—otherwise why not just let the queen murder them as she has been?”
“The queen kills her own subjects?” I clarified, though it wasn’t hard for me to imagine.
“The queen makes the dragon kill them. Shoves them all up on top of the dome and roasts them down to ashes. It’s the only thing I know of that definitively kills them,” Zephyr said sadly.
Oh, no. Poor Zion. Poor Zariah.
“So, to honor the prince saving my life, I honor this unspoken request. I let them shift here in the safety of the stone tunnels, which are blocked off and can’t be accessed unless you know how to open the massive doors, which no one does other than myself.” He paused, grinning wryly. “I am a prince in a way, just like them: the bastard prince of the demons!”
Kinship with this mysterious bastard prince surged through me. He was just trying to look out for the condemned Nobles, just like I’d been trying to look out for the people of the mud quarter. Zephyr was more like me than Zion or Zariah ever would be!
That’s your anger talking, my inner voice chastised. I ignored it, forcing myself back to the conversation at hand.
The way he looked at Shava had me putting a few pieces together in my head. That and the way she blushed like mad, refusing to meet his eyes. Shava was never bashful.
His gaze turned to me, angry. “Which is why you endangered the entire kingdom when you opened the mineshaft last week. Thank the gods, the dragon closed it behind him, otherwise the terror and destruction that would have been unleashed would have been unimaginable.”
I held up a hand. “So you’re telling me you just let all the Nobles shift into ... those demon things we saw?”
That didn’t seem safe or responsible.
“Well, not all the Nobles. It’s complicated. Wives are taken from the other quarter, so they aren’t cursed. Any daughters born to those unions are still cursed, but it’s diluted. It makes them unfit to be mothers, so they become primas. The ones that escape are allowed to live here. We shove the demons down into the mines when they shift. We can’t endanger the others who live here, after all.”
My mouth gaped open. That seemed … I didn’t know which was worse: putting them out of their misery or assigning them to a cursed life underground. And only the males? Well, that … made sense. I remembered the large number of girls who had prepared with my friends and I, ready to be given over as the next crop of primas.
“So … where are the Noble women who were cursed?” I asked, unable to get past this gaping hole in his story. The fire pop and cracked, and I jumped. I wasn’t used to seeing any fire, letting alone the hisses and noises of the one right in front of me.
Zephyr frowned, picking up a long stick and prodding ashes in the pit to the side. He went to a small pile of wood and hefted a larger piece, throwing it onto the fire with a grunt. I jumped as sparks spit and fanned out from the fire, and pinned me with a look. “What do you think the queen would do with them?”
Oh, the demons. Right. Nothing good.
The smell of wood and ash filled the tiny tent, and Shava spoke up, continuing to stare into the growing flames. “We check about once a week for new people. The princes can’t save too many of them because of course the queen would be suspicious if she ran out of demon-Nobles to scorch.”
Which meant Zion and Zariah had to pick and choose who would live and who would die.
My hungry existence in the mud district suddenly didn’t seem quite as bad in comparison. I eyed this new ‘prince’ in a new light; he was a young man without any of the queen’s blood in him, a young man who deeply cared about helping those less fortunate than him.
Careful, flower.
I ignored the warning voices in my head. It wasn’t like that. You could admire someone without falling in love with them, and it was clear he belonged to Shava, anyway.
It was just nice to find someone with common goals and interests, someone who hadn’t grown up with a full belly and understood what it meant to suffer and starve.
Zephyr might be the key to all of this.
