Ash Princess (The Deviant Future #6) - Eve Langlais Page 0,17

take it that means you think we should help. I don’t even know where to start. If he can even be saved.” She sighed. Trying was the right thing to do in a world with too many wrongs.

“Coo. Squeak.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t. Just that it will be almost impossible.” But she had to try.

She eyed Gellie then the man. They might not be able to carry the stranger, but her pet could take a message.

“Fetch Gorri.” She tapped her lower lip and frowned. “On second thought, better make sure Milo and Lila come, too.”

Gellie cocked his head and trilled. Definitely smarter than most people expected. At least with her. Funny how no one else seemed able to understand his quirky noises and mannerisms.

As Gellie scampered off, she stared down at the stranger. “I guess that’s it then. I’m going to help you. That is if you don’t die before they arrive.”

She did her best to bind his wounds using strips ripped from her already ragged cloak. She could use a new one, or at least one in less disrepair; however, new clothes seemed unlikely to ever happen. Those trapped in the Diamond Kingdom didn’t have stores to buy things. Nor tailors to make garments. They didn’t even have cloth, just whatever animal skin they managed to preserve, which proved scarce. The bigger predators tended to not share with the measly humans that remained.

When Kayda was done binding the wounds, she did what she’d come for, scavenging the mushrooms that grew near the river, their flesh pale, their taste bitter, but food was food. She stuffed them into her bag and had pretty much filled it by the time Gellie returned with her three friends.

By some miracle, the man was still alive. His breathing was just as ragged, but the cloth she’d bound him with showed no signs of bleeding.

It was Gorri, only an inch taller than her, his body stout and arms thick with muscle who first said, “You had Gellie fetch us for a dead man? I thought we weren’t supposed to eat humans.”

A rule she’d insisted on in the little group that remained surviving in the mountains. They might be desperate, but they weren’t monsters. Not yet. But at times, when their bellies gnawed, she understood the temptation. How long would they listen? Hungry people did desperate things.

“We aren’t going to eat him,” she huffed. “We’re going to help.”

“Help him what?” Lila asked. “Die more comfortably?” The petite woman, who barely reached Kayda’s shoulder, spoke quite seriously.

“He’s not dead yet,” Kayda couldn’t help sounding defensive.

“Key word being yet,” Gorri muttered.

“Don’t see why you want us to waste our time.” Lila tossed her head, which drew attention to the piercings lining the curve of her ear. She’d recently hacked her curls in favor of a shorter cut that now showed off the pointed tips of her ears. A trait that all those who survived the tainted air had.

Milo, kneeling beside the man with his fingers on the pulse at his neck, frowned. “Actually, despite his appearance, his heart rate is pretty steady. Strong, too. How long has he been like this?”

Kayda shrugged. “I found him not long ago. I don’t know where he’s from. When I asked, all he said was he fell.”

“You spoke to him?” Lila exclaimed.

“Only briefly. I didn’t learn much before he passed out.” Learned nothing really except his belief that he was dreaming and belonged nowhere. Better nowhere than here was her thought.

Gorri pointed to the stranger’s outfit. “He’s not from around here, that’s for sure. Look at the shiny shit he’s wearing.”

Kneeling by the man’s side, Milo fingered the material. “I haven’t seen this kind of sealed suit since the last excursion party left us.”

Milo’s father had been with them. They never returned.

“Not so sealed anymore,” Lila muttered.

“I’ll bet it used to have matching gloves and a helmet. He must have lost them either in the attack or the fall.” Milo was fascinated more by the equipment than the man himself.

“Doesn’t really matter where he lost them. I’m more interested in where he came from. Which kingdom does he hail from?” Gorri proved more practical. There was no insignia or Enclave colors.

“Maybe he’s a treasure hunter,” Lila observed.

The scouting parties used to come across the remains of those adventurers in the early years when they still dared venture from the safety of the tunnels. They used to bring back the things they’d stripped from the stupid people who came into a place of