I really need to remember how easy I’ve had it. And I had no fucking clue, either.
As he studied her, the girl fumbled and Slay lunged, pulling her hand free before the needle stabbed through her palm. She cried out, eyes wide, but before the guards came, the bell tolled signaling the meal break.
“You okay?” he asked.
Silent and scared, she nodded. “I already have a protector. Please don’t hurt me.”
Fuck, what does that mean? Surely not what that other prisoner had mentioned before when he was praising Rowena for hooking up with Slay. This girl couldn’t be implying that, right? Please, no. Not at her age.
Rowena knelt to inspect the child’s hand. No damage. “Who’s that?”
“My older brother looks after me. But he works somewhere else, and I’m just trying to stay out of trouble.”
“We won’t bother you,” Ro promised.
The girl relaxed at hearing Rowena speak for Slay. He backed off and let them talk, instead joining the line to get his portion of gritty brown bread and beer.
This kind of life makes you wish for death.
Without Rowena, he might not be coping so well. Before they met, despair had been chewing away at him, like a mouse working a wheel of cheese. Allying with her gave him some hope that they could turn the tide—that this wasn’t forever.
After work, they cruised past the comfort house and Rowena’s scent brightened with excitement. He didn’t understand the reason for it because everything looked the same to him. Then she leaned close to say softly, “There’s a yellow ribbon tied around the pillar. That’s the signal. Hettie must have gotten Chantisse on board.”
“We heading in then?”
She shook her head. “We can’t use the comfort house as our HQ. Tonight, as we walk around, I’ll check a few of the old drop sites. There should be a message telling us where the first assembly will be held.”
A chill went through him. This was major, and here he was in the thick of it. He didn’t have roots in Golgerra, so there was no way in hell he could’ve accomplished anything without her. But supporting Rowena, doing whatever the hell she needed him to? That he could do.
Slay put his face next to hers. The gesture would look intimate, but this was about preventing spies from eavesdropping. “We talked about taking Golgerra,” he said. “But we didn’t think it would be possible from the outside. All our best strategists said it would cost too many lives, and even then they didn’t project a high probability of success.”
“That’s why it’ll be an inside job,” Rowena said. “And I don’t care about the odds. All reasonable projections suggest I’d be dead by now, but I’m not. And I’ll fight with every breath in my body. Until we get this done or I’m done in.”
“No. Not on my watch. You need somebody to guard your back. That’s where I’ll stand, until they pull me away in pieces. I got you, Ro.”
Her eyes welled up with tears, and they slid down her cheeks in delicate trickles. Defiantly, she stared up at him, as if challenging him to comment on the fact that he’d made her cry. She didn’t wipe the marks away and he didn’t either.
She swallowed hard before she could get the words out. “We don’t really have religion in the undercity. Because any god or goddess that would let us live like this? I don’t owe them any worship. But I’m starting to think you were sent, Slay. There’s no other explanation for me winding up beside somebody as amazing as you.”
Fuck. Kissing her would have been perfect, but he’d promised to be patient. Not to push. So he pressed his lips to his palm instead and then blew. Bright-eyed, she snatched the kiss out of the air and made an adorable show of stashing it in her tunic for later.
“Your kisses are high octane, I’m fired up now,” she said cheerfully. “Let’s go exploring. I want to show you my childhood.” Her eyes said that was the cover for checking the drop sites.
Slay hoped he’d still learn more about Rowena because apparently this hunger was bottomless, and if he couldn’t have her, he’d devour her words instead.
9.
“Children too young to work live here.” Rowena paused outside the largest of the dormitories. “Sometimes they’re lucky enough to stay with their parents but not always, and often parents die before the child joins the labor pool.”
She wondered if her dispassionate recitation covered how much she missed her mother, even now. For children who were handed over to assigned caregivers, the future was bleaker than usual. Slay took in the facilities and then he seemed to read her expression.
“I guess I won’t be hearing any happy stories,” he said.
She managed a smile. “It’s not that sort of a tour.”
“There must’ve been some bright moments, though, right? Or maybe I just want to believe that because otherwise…” He sighed and rubbed his chest.
Rowena dug deep. “When my mother was alive, she told me about her life before she was captured. She described birds in the sky and flowers growing wild on the hillside, a riot of purple. She told me a lot about what it was like growing up in Eldritch lands. She mentioned her home village, Kelnora.” With a wry smile, she added, “Most of it sounded made up to me, but when I left Golgerra with Prince Alastor, I was stunned at how much bigger the world is than I ever imagined.”
“I would like to give it to you,” Slay said.
“The world?”
Oddly, it didn’t seem like he was joking. He’d mentioned a broken heart when they first met, so maybe flirting with Rowena was helping him forget about that for a while? Unexpectedly it gave her a pang to recall that he loved someone else. But she could live with being a distraction, a bright spot to help keep him sane in a terrible situation.
“Yeah. You deserve so much better than this,” he said.
“Everyone does. That’s the whole point of our…endeavor.”
Slay nodded as a woman came out of the creche with a group of five children, none older than four. To Rowena’s eyes, she was exhausted and none too gentle. For her, this was probably work, and she had little kindness to give.
“Let’s move on,” she said softly.
There was a drop point nearby and Slay kept watch while she moved the stone. Nothing. There were fifty different sites scattered around the undercity, and they would visit them all before the curfew bell rang. She punctuated the tour with interesting stories, as many as she could remember, but so many of them ended badly. There were no happy endings down here, unless you counted the sweet release of death. And in that case, it always ended on that note, sooner or later.
“What’s your happiest memory?” Slay asked, seeming to sense that this walk down memory lane was destroying her mood.
“The first time I changed,” Rowena answered without hesitation.
She’d noticed the guards following them a while ago, but she didn’t think they’d seen her check the last drop. Her heart raced, and she tried to calm down, willing herself not to panic.
“Will you tell me about it?” He leaned close as if soliciting an intimate confidence, then he whispered, “I’m sure you clocked them but we’ve attracted some fans.”