Page 71 of Kingdom of Rot & Ruin
Frowning down at D, I jerked away, but he held on. I ignored him and kept nervous eyes on Shava, who was now more than halfway across. If she jumped, she might even make it one leap. The sure thing would be to keep inching forward, however.
“Shava is capable,” I muttered before I realized it. Perhaps I needed the reassurance, because I certainly wasn’t comforting the boy—what a ridiculous notion.
D cried out as Shava’s foot slipped, her weight shifting as her body fell. With a grunt and a scrape, her fingers clutched onto the ledge her feet had just been, and impossibly, she hung on.
I stopped breathing, every scenario whirling through my head, hundreds of possibilities and outcomes in the blink of an eye.
I saw my mother’s body in bed, motionless and dead.
I saw the lumps under sheets when I’d first passed through the bathing chamber with the other reaped boys all those years ago. Hindsight taught me they’d been bodies: dead mud girls who’d been tossed into the tubs and drowned.
It couldn’t happen again. Shava wasn’t just any mud girl, and I wouldn’t let her die. I wouldn’t lose one of the few girls I’d ever found tolerable and worth being around. I couldn’t lose another woman I cared about.
Damnit. Fuck. Shit.
I cared about her.
And just like when I risked myself to jump onto the dome to save her, I barely gave it a second thought as I inched out onto the ledge, D shouting at my back. But what could I do? She was halfway out on the ledge, clinging on for life. I’d never reach her in time, and even if I did, how would I be able to help her?
We needed a dragon. But how to call him?
Without warning, I turned on D and struck him across his face. His eyes went wide with fear and he crumpled to his knees, but silently.
That wouldn’t do.
I grabbed him and walked to the edge of the cliff, hands balled in his tunic, and held him out over the ledge.
He writhed and kicked. His face was white, and his mouth was frozen open with the rictus of terror.
And yet he didn’t scream.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” Shava screeched at me, predictably in an uproar over someone else, although she was one hangnail away from death herself.
I wasn’t proud of myself, but I didn’t see another way.
I dropped D, and he scuttled away, making a high-pitched whining sound.
“Get away from him! I’m going to rip out your spleen if you go near him!”
Her shouts echoed off the rocks, loud and erratic.
A good start, but I needed more.
“Climb back up and make me,” I taunted her. “Or can’t you see with all that mud in your eyes?”
It wasn’t the most clever insult, but effective.
Shava bellowed with rage, trying to lift herself, then swing her legs back over the ledge. All her efforts were in vain, as she only exhausted herself.
“Come here, D. I’ll throw you over to give her corpse some company.”
D yelped, but it was a quiet gasp as I took a fake step towards him. Shava, however, exploded. Her high-pitched scream rattled my eardrums as the cliff magnified it.
Perfect.
I turned towards the east, sweating and holding mybreath. I blocked out Shava’s tired grunts and D’s whimpers of fear.
“Come on. Comeon.”
