Ash Princess (The Deviant Future #6) - Eve Langlais Page 0,30

of his shoulders.

Which reminded Kayda of what she’d seen, or more like not seen, in the cloth she’d taken with his clothes. The one he’d hacked into. It didn’t have blood as expected. More like a gray sludge, as if he’d expelled the poison in his lungs.

Was that even possible?

She stepped in before Gorri could. “I want to go back to your mission. You said you came here to cease the spread of the poison to the Marshlands. Now that you know it’s a volcano causing it, how are you planning to stop it?”

“If I still had Burton, then the lovely stash of explosives I brought would have come in handy.” He sounded sad about losing his equipment.

“And now that you don’t have any bombs?”

He rolled his upper body in a way that drew her gaze and warmed her. He really should put on a shirt. “No bombs means I’ll have to figure something else out. I’ll have a better plan once I see what I’m dealing with.”

“See it?” Gorri snorted. “The man’s obviously mentally touched. No one goes to the volcano.”

“Why not?” Cam asked.

“Because no one ever returns,” Kayda said softly. Many of their parents had gone with the best intentions, leaving them orphaned.

“Who’s in charge here?” he asked suddenly. “Where are your elders, or king?”

“All gone,” Kayda stated. She’d expected this question, but the reply wasn’t easy.

“All of them?” Cam gaped for a moment before recovering. “But surely you have a leader. Someone in the thirty left to make decisions.”

“Our princess is the one who leads us,” Lila said, lifting her chin.

“Princess?” Cam eyed Kayda and sighed. “Of course you are. Surely there’s someone older than you guys, someone who can tell me more about how things started and what’s been tried.”

In other words, he wanted an adult. Not her. “I’m afraid we’re all you’ve got.”

“Don’t get that insulted tone with me. You said it yourself. You were kids when it all began. Kids don’t notice some of the finer details. Talking to someone who remembers it all from the beginning would be useful.”

“There is Zee,” Gorri mentioned with a straight face.

Lila was the one to smack him. “Leave Zee alone. You know he hasn’t been right since that drake ate his daughter right in front of him.”

The poor man had been out with a hunting group that included his daughter when it happened. Even worse, he got to hear Pelana screaming and begging her father to kill her as the dragon ate her slowly.

Maddened with grief, the only one to survive that day, Zee was never the same after. He was also the only one who’d been a part of the repelling force in the early days.

“Can I talk to this Zee person?” Cam asked.

Kayda shrugged. “You could try. But first we’d have to find him. He tends to go missing a lot.” A man with a death wish who wandered the tunnels, looking to be punished.

“Anyone else?”

“Ain’t no one else. We’re all you got so take it or fuck off,” Gorri exclaimed.

“Don’t get so defensive. I’m just trying to understand the situation and see what I can do to go about fixing it.”

“Even if you had bombs, you wouldn’t make it to the volcano overland,” Lila said softly. “The area around is supposedly the most populous for dragons. There are no hiding spots for humans. You’d never make it alive.”

“And you know this how?” he asked.

Kayda answered for Lila. “Because her dad died there. Of the thirty people who went, only two made it back alive.” Both died not long after of their wounds.

“How is it if they hunt so hard, I wasn’t bothered by them until I crossed the crevice?”

“Why don’t you go ask them?” Gorri suggested.

“I just might,” Cam snapped. “You’re not being very helpful.”

“I’m not here to fucking help you,” Gorri growled, not backing down from the bigger man.

“Do you have a map of your tunnels? Actually, any kind of map?” Cam asked rather than reply to the aggression being displayed.

“There are no maps, and even if there were, you wouldn’t find anything. There are no tunnels going from here to the volcano.” Lila stated firmly.

“That you know of.” He pinched his chin.

“Let’s say there are. How exactly does that help you?” Kayda asked.

“It might not help me, but it will help you.” He paused and eyed them all before adding, “If we could find some of those ancient tunnels and you head south through them, you might find a passage through to