“That’s insane!” Lena hisses, her features twisted in outrage.
The goat struggles, kicking and bleating as the human clutches it to his chest. The man then lifts its chin and bares its throat as he retrieves a dagger from his waistband. Watching this, Lena is all but shaking in aggravation, pacing back and forth as she chews a hole through her bottom lip. Until the man raises the dagger above his head and Lena suddenly lunges forward, grabbing his wrist and halting the blade's descent.
“Please don't,” Lena pleads.
He sneers at her. “This is no business of yours.” He weakly shoves her back and I reach for her, preparing to drag her away. Until she snaps her hard gaze to mine, warning me not to intervene.
“No, it's not, but…” Lena snatches the knife from his hand and crouches before him, shoving the goat closer into his chest “The gods won’t help you. Take him home and eat.”
The man curls into himself, his features slipping into one of hopelessness. “Don’t you think I want to? I have no other choice. We have no food, no coin, I can't find work, and my family is slowly dying. Uriella is our only hope.”
“Any god that requires your last meal while starving doesn't deserve your loyalty.” Lena flicks the wooden medallion on his bracelet. “Put your trust in someone worthy of it.” She unclasps a bulging pouch from her waist, her gaze drilling into his as she places it on his open palm and curls his fingers around it. “Take your goat, your family, and go home.”
The man pulls from her grasp, eyeing the pouch warily as he begins slowly unlacing it. Curious as to what its contents are, I take a few steps closer, listening to the sounds of clinking metal as I watch him widen the opening of the pouch. I suck in a breath when he reveals the solid gold coins nestled within.
“I'll be robbed for sure!” he gasps.
“You won't.” Smiling softly, she re-laces the pouch within his trembling palm. “Go home and feed your family. After you've had a nice, hot meal, you and your son head down to the bakery in the nobility district. Tell Vasha you're in need of work. She’ll help you.”
The man hesitates, watching her with rounded eyes as if he can’t believe she just handed a stranger a full bag of gold. As if this is a cruel trick and he’s preparing himself for her to snatch it away. But then she smiles at him. Eyes softening and cheeks widening, she flashes him that brilliant smile that always manages, without fail, to charm even the surliest of persons. And this human is no exception.
“Thank you.” Eyes brimming with tears, he returns her smile with one of his own. Rising with the pouch clutched tight to his chest, he hands the goat's roped leash to the boy. Kissing his son’s forehead, he wraps one arm around his scrawny shoulders and the other around his wife and walks away.
Moving to her side, I peer down at her and offer my hand. “That was kind of you.”
Lena shrugs, clasping her hand with mine as she rises from her crouch. “It's what anyone would have done.”
“Lena,” I enunciate slowly. “No one would have done that.”
She frowns. “Then maybe they should,” she says.
As if it's so simple. As if kindness is a common expectation and not the rarity it is.
Searching her face, I try to puzzle out this woman. This compassionate yet ruthless, funny yet solemn, broken yet whole, Gods Blessed woman. Completely flummoxed on how she came to be this flawless creature.
Unaware of the thoughts whirling in my mind, Lena watches the human family slip beneath a stone arch with a frown on her face.
“Is that …” she squints her eyes, “the human district?”
“Yes,” I reply reluctantly, wishing I had been paying more attention to where we were going than to her. “There's not much else left to see here. Let's head on back.” Clasping her hand with mine, I tug her towards me, but she rips free from my grasp and storms towards the arch.
Muttering a curse, I follow behind, my view of the human district sharpening with each step I take, along with my sense of dread.
Chapter 23Darius
If someone was to venture into the human district after visiting the rest of Seboia, they would think they had left the capital altogether and entered a completely different kingdom. In a sense, they’d be correct. Neither are even remotely similar. The human district’s smell alone would have some finding the Cursed Woods more favorable. My stomach’s already roiling from the scent of human waste and despair, and I've yet to leave the Gods Garden.
Sectioned off to the eastern side of the city, the human district is a small, narrow stretch of land that extends from the edge of the market district all the way down to the eastern gate. There’s no bakery or healer. No seamstress or tavern. No butcher or apothecary. The only business that can be found is the brothel, crammed between hundreds of homes lining the pitted dirt road. If one could call them homes. They’re more like hovels; small structures with dirt-packed floors, mud hardened walls, and straw thatched roofs, sheltering only a single room for an entire family to eat, sleep, and wash in. Sometimes two or three families, for the most unfortunate. The more well-to-do humans have windows with wood shutters or a flimsy door, but most only have a tattered cloth to block out the elements. Or in some cases, nothing at all. And that's it. That’s all there is. Nothing else besides desolate stares and an overwhelming air of hopelessness.
“How inviting,” Lena says dryly, leaning against the Gods Garden stone entrance as she looks out over the human district. She scans her gaze across Seboia’s slums, seeing the true depth of our darkness for the first time.
Blowing out a breath through my nostrils, I face Lena and press my back against the archway. The stone bites into my back and foliage tickles my neck as I ignore all else but her reaction to Seboia’s shame.
“It’s baffling,” she says. “I could carve out one of the jewels in that garish street of yours and it would provide enough coin for these people to live comfortably for decades.” She flicks her hand. “Yet they live like this.”
Lena turns away from me, not even looking in my direction, but I know by the anger trembling through our bond that she expects a response. But there's nothing I can say. She’s not wrong and I knew she would react this way, which is why I never intended on bringing her here. At first it was because I didn’t trust her not to use it against me. Lena insinuated before that Cascadonia had a darkness to it. I vehemently denied it, of course, unwilling to admit our faults to someone I considered at the time to be an outsider. But seeing her lip curl in disgust as she listens to the cries and screams from the ramshackle brothel, I feel like I should have at least prepared her.
Folding her arms over her chest, she turns only her head to meet my gaze. “If you hadn't been the son of a queen, would you have grown up here?”
I scowl down at her, a last-ditch effort in avoiding this topic, but Lena’s gaze is unwavering, refusing to submit.
“Yes,” I hiss through gritted teeth.
“Doesn't that bother you?”
“Of course, it does,” I reply, feeling my ire rise beneath her righteous stare. “But there's nothing I can do about it.”
She tosses her head back and scoffs, “That’s horseshit. You're the Captain of the Guards, for godssakes. You could've done something.”
“I’ve tried.” Several times, in fact, but my mother put a stop to all my efforts before any of them came to fruition.
“Not hard enough,” she bites back, jabbing her finger towards me. “That could've been you offering up your last goat. You watching your wife and son wither away to nothing.” She pushes off the wall and stalks towards me with a palm above her breast. “If you could feel what they feel, could feel their suffering and pain, you would have done more.”
“You mean if I were an empath like you?” Fuck it! If she can push, I can, too. I haven't prodded her about her Gift. I’ve tried to be respectful of the pain she's experienced from revealing such secrets, but with the way she’s practically admitting to it and her assumptions that I voluntarily stand by and do nothing while something like this happens within my own kingdom, I no longer give a shit.
“You don’t need my Gifts to see their misery,” Lena says without pause, not even attempting to deny her power. “Nor to see how scorned humans are. Gods,” she breathes, squeezing her eyes shut. “The looks your people give me. So much hate and disgust. I can hardly walk down the street without choking on it.” She clutches her neck, swallowing thickly. “There's a poison within your lands, Darius, infecting every crevice of this stone cage.”
“And what do you expect me to do about it?”
