Page 58 of Kingdom of Rot & Ruin
Shava laughed. And laughed. “Our queen? You mean the queen of ice and bitchiness? Are you serious right now?”
She wiped a tear from her eye.
Despite being laughed at, a part of me was thrilled at being the one to put that smile on her face, radiant as she flashed her white teeth at me.
“Fair point,” I conceded, brows furrowed.
Further socio-economic discussions were interrupted by the sight of Zariah on the horizon, with someone squirming in his claws.
“Incoming,” I said unnecessarily, since Shava had eyes just the same as me, frowning as she stared at the dragon on the horizon.
Zariah swooped down towards us, flaring his wings at the last moment and hovering for just a moment as he dropped his prize.
When he said he’d bring us a prisoner slated for execution, that last person I expected him to bring was … a child.
“Gods,” Shava breathed out, rushing forward to check on him.
He was a mud boy from his dark hair, already reaped if his palace-issued Fireguard apprentice tunic had any say in it.
He tumbled head over ass as Zariah dropped him and wheeled away back towards the kingdom without pausing. Probably for the best, as the boy crumpled into a tangle of limbs and went completely still, comatose if he wasn’t already dead.
“He isn’t …” I began.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Shava hissed at me, gently turning the boy over. She put a finger to his neck.
“He’s alive.”
She put him on his back, gently poking and prodding. Frowning, she pinched his eyelids open.
The boy whimpered and tried to scoot away, curling into a ball.
“It’s all right. The dragon is gone. We won’t hurt you,” Shava tried, but the boy had gone limp again.
“Do we have any meat leftover from last night?” she said sharply to me.
We did. I went to the small pot in the corner of the cave where we kept leftovers, so the bugs and hot desert air wouldn’t reach them.
“Here.”
I handed her a scrap of meat, which she held out towards the boy.
“Would you like some food?”
The boy tensed, fingers scraping into the sandy rock.
“I’ll just leave it here. You have it if you like.”
Shava put it on the dirty ground. My mouth opened to protest, but she already had her hand out towards me again, fingers curling in the universal gesture for ‘more.’
Fine.
I fetched her more, and she lined a trail between the boy and us, with five scraps of meat in between.
It seemed an utter waste of perfectly good food, but I pushed down my annoyance. Though I had observed mud boys most of my life and shared a dormitory with them, Shava had lived among them in a way I never had. I had to concede that she knew more about them.
Hopefully.
As we backed away to the cave’s mouth, the boy straightened and snatched his hand out for the first scrap of meat. He had to have swallowed it whole with how fast it disappeared, his big eyes and sharp cheekbones a stark contrast to the Noble boys I knew the same age. He looked far worse than the mud boys who’d been reaped with me.
