I love you. I’m here. You’re not alone.
“Fuirten looik-whíle hov.”
I will survive.
I look down at the food scattered across the ground, my stomach clamping painfully.
Guess it’s time, dammit.
“Oh, would you look at that!” I shuffle forward to inspect my gritty offerings blooming with a few extra patches of mold this dae. “A freshly bakedbanquet! Where do I even start?” I pick up the hard lump of dough that could probably wound someone if I tossed it hard enough.“Luith loaf? With”—I crack it open, revealing more green mold veined through—“bits of nui fruit baked in! What a treat. And some sugar-roast canit roots on the side?” I say, waving a stick of something that actually looks a little like a finger that’s been boiledalmostbeyond recognition. “My favorite.”
As always, Nee ignores me while I play this game of “trick myself into thinking I’m not about to eat something rancid.” I don’t blame her. Secondhand embarrassment can really weigh you down.
I’ve almost coaxed myself into salivation by the time I reach for a piece of floor meat—
I pause, gaze caught on the shard of bone poking free from the gray flesh.
A laugh bursts past my lips, though I’m swift to clap my hand over my mouth to smother the sound.
I should’ve thanked the fool who tossed my meal at me with much more gusto.
I snatch it off the ground and rip some of the meat free with my teeth, chewing through the gamey taste and forcing it down with a gut-churning swallow. Certain Pah would be mortified if he saw the way I’m consuming this, with all the decorum of a feral animal.
There was a time I would’ve quivered at the thought, but now? It spurs me with a ravenous punch.
If he does exercise his overcontrolling nature and somehow work out where I am—send an army in to rescue me—I take sour satisfaction in the thought that he might see me like this:
Messy. Beastly.Veryun-princess-like.
A savage blight to the Vaegor name.
I clear the final scraps from the bone with long scrapes of my teeth while Nee flutters around my head like she’s etching the shape of a crown. “This is going to get us out of here, Nee.” I hold up my scavenged treasure—a touch longer than my thumb, a hole through the middlefilledwith marrow.
Perfect.
I pinch it between my lips and suck the insides free while sweeping stalks of straw aside, crawling across the ground, hunting for—
There.
I run my finger across the thin tag of stone I cut my foot on a while back, then set the bone atop it—parallel.
Nee dives, swoops onto her back, and floats to the ground with her belly bared as I bring my shackled leg forward. “Promise I’ll read you in just a moment,” I murmur, lifting my foot until the shackle is directly above the bit of bone. Then I bring it down.
Hard.
Nee bursts into a frantic flutter, like she just got the fright of her existence.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper-laugh as she nuzzles my neck, like she’s seeking comfort.
I pause to sweep her closer, listening for any footsteps. For any sign that someone heard and is now coming to inspect.
Nothing.
I release her, draw a steadying breath, and lift the shackle. Blow a sigh of relief at the sight of the bone now split right down the middle.
Two halves. Long.
Perfect.
