Ash Princess (The Deviant Future #6) - Eve Langlais Page 0,42
one is the truth.”
“This Road of Pilgrimage. How long does it take to run it to the capital?”
“You can’t seriously be thinking we should return there. Even at night the route is still dangerous.”
He had one word for her. “Ghouls.”
“So you’d have me trade one death for another? I might have been only seventeen years old when my father finally admitted defeat and let the dragons have the capital, but I remember we were starving. We can’t return. We’ll die.”
“I wasn’t talking about going to the city, but past it toward the border.”
“It will take us days on foot,” she exclaimed. “We’ll be dead before we make it, killed with the first sunrise.”
“We’d travel at night.”
“And do what during the day?”
“Hide. There are abandoned towns along the way.”
“Spaced close enough for even the smallest legs to walk it in a single night?” she argued. He meant well. He just didn’t see the impossibility. “How will we eat? Drink?”
“We’ll have to carry as much as we can.”
She shook her head. “It won’t be enough. We are talking about children for the most part, and an arduous journey in the open.”
He appeared pensive. “Unless we found the ancient tunnels.”
Rather than mock him this time, she queried, “Do you really think there are some under Diamond?”
“I think we really should try and find out.”
“Not tonight we’re not. To bed with you.” She’d finished wiping him down and binding the wound.
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to sleep knowing there’s ghouls under us,” he grumbled, lying down. On her bed.
She blinked. “Um, when I said sleep, I didn’t mean in here.”
He rolled to his side and grinned at her. “Guess it is a bit tight. If we snuggle and I hold onto you, we should be all right.”
The very idea! It made her cheeks flush. “How about you sleep in your own bed?”
“Is this where you put me in a cell in case I’m dangerous?”
She shook her head. “I think you’ve proven you’re not here to harm us.”
“You sure you don’t want me to stay?” he offered with a teasing smile.
She almost said yes.
Chapter 9
Cam wasn’t a man prone to flirting, yet he just kept tossing out comments to make Kayda blush. What could he say? He enjoyed it when she turned pink. It made a man wonder where else she flushed with color.
She offered him an empty crypt to call his own, not far from the staircase they’d blocked. He figured they had a few days at least before the ghouls found a way through the rubble.
But he could be wrong. The ghouls were adapting. Could be traces of their humanity, their intelligence, making a difference. Which wasn’t good for the humans they liked to hunt.
Worry wasn’t the only reason he didn’t sleep well, nor was it the hard stone slab that the blanket did little to hide. Kayda was at the forefront of his mind. She needed him.
And he struggled with that. He’d just left the Marshland because his sister rejected him. Told him it was past time he stood on his own and let her lead her own life, which he was doing, and that meant not latching onto the first set of big eyes that had a problem.
But it wasn’t just Kayda that looked to him for help. Miriam’s outburst had shown all of the kids did. They thought he knew the way out, which he didn’t, but more than ever, they needed to try.
The question being, where should they start? When he’d begun his journey, he assumed he’d find answers in the capital. Yet Kayda said her people had left, implying there was no escape to be found there. If that were true, then he had no idea where to go next.
The following day, he noticed the kids bustling around.
“How long until they’re ready to leave?” he asked.
“Tomorrow maybe. More likely the day after.”
He frowned. “Why that long?”
“Because we can’t leave under prepared. We have no water containers, meaning we’re repurposing what we can to make leak-proof flasks we can carry. Not to mention, many of the little ones don’t have shoes.”
“They also need weapons,” he added.
“Everyone already has something they can use.”
“We don’t have time to waste.” It was as if he could feel the ticking of an invisible clock.
“I’m aware,” was her terse reply. “But leaving too quickly is just as dangerous.”
“I know this is hard,” he said softly.
“Hard?” Her laughter emerged bitter. “Almost my entire life has been hard. Maybe it would just be better to