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He bit off a piece of apple and tossed it in the dust. New flesh formed on the apple, building its core, the seeds, until it became a whole, new piece of fruit.
Wow.I stared in wide-eyed amazement. Legend spoke of the Fae powder’s healing properties, but I’d never seen it in action. The dwarves kept the mine’s location a closely guarded secret. Every treasure hunter in the land had gone in search of it. None had found even a trace of the place. And the Fae, well, they locked up their stashes, too, and refused to teach anyone the ways of using their sacred magic.
“Oh, you must be so hungry, dear,” Mama Jo said, offering me the whole bowl of fruit.
Yep. Definitely the mothering type.
At that moment, my stomach answered for me, rumbling louder than a hound’s growl. Unable to resist, I took a small bite, and the tart and sweet juice filled my mouth. Oh, how I’d missed these. It had been so long since I’d eaten anything that tasted so good. The dungeon master had fed me slop. Literally. Probably flour mixed with water. No taste whatsoever. I took a small bite of the apple, savoring the sweet and sour taste on my tongue. It reminded me of home, filling me with a deep longing to return there, to go back to a time when I’d been surrounded by my faithful servants, my father, and everything I held dear.
Hundreds of questions brewed in my head, many of which spilled out once I finished my mouthful. “Why did you bring me here? What is the resistance’s purpose? Which enemy do you fight?”
Furrows formed in Grimm’s high forehead. “Come. Let me show you.”
“Oh, honey, no,” Mama Jo said. “Let her eat first before taking her there.”
“Where?” I asked, curiosity spiking in my veins.
Grimm moved to the door with a sway of his hips and a hobble in his bowed legs. He opened the door to the next room and gestured for me to follow him. Taking slow, hesitant steps, I trailed after him, down a long corridor with many doors leading off it. Teeny and Mama Jo took the rear.
Every wall consisted of bare earth, bumpy and rough, but dry, as if it had been fired in a kiln. Some of the rock faces were decorated with chipped tiles and stone. Wooden beams and columns supported the walls in certain spots. Bricks lined the floor, a row of rectangular ones in the center surrounded by rounded ones on the outside. It all looked very old, as if the place had long been abandoned and resettled only recently. Crystals sitting in little dishes jammed into cracks in the wall provided a soft glow. The place smelled stale, of clay and soil that had never encountered fresh air.
“This is the sleeping quarters,” the dwarf explained. “Where we house all the displaced shifters.”
Long rooms extended off the corridors, filled with rows of beds. A mother fed her infant in a rocking chair in the first room. In the next, four children slapped each other with their pillows, their giggles carrying down the hallway. A woman helped an elderly man sit down on a bed in another room.
Who were all these people? Rescued shifters? The mother was a wolf, I could tell by the sharp eyes she’d turned on me as we’d walked by. And the old man, with his very large hands, had to be a lion shifter…those long, thick fingers would turn into huge, deadly paws. But why were they here?
“Displaced?” I echoed Grimm.
“Oh, dear,” Mama Jo said, linking hands with mine. “There’s so much you’ve missed.”
I jerked from her grasp. What had happened while I’d been in prison? My chest tightened at the thought that I wasn’t the only one who had suffered greatly.
“Lands confiscated,” Grimm continued. “Houses and villages burned to the ground to make way for farming crops.”
Horror spread like jitters through me. “How many people did you save?”
“Hundreds,” Mama Jo said. “And the numbers jump daily.”
Exiting the sleeping quarters, we turned right then left, coming to the end of a passage, where Grimm opened a door. “This is the council’s meeting chambers. Here, we discuss rescue operations and strategy.”
A rectangular table occupied the center of the room an was covered in maps of Haven, some curled up, some spread out. Small fences stood over some regions of Wildfire, and carved figures that reminded me of chess pieces crowded inside the fences. Were these the kidnapped shifters? A casket of some kind of drink and a bookshelf nestled in the corner farthest from the fireplace. Pretty cozy, if you asked me.
The dwarves and I continued into a long hall filled with rows of benches and refectory tables. Several men and women cleared the plates from the tables and took them into the kitchen.
“You missed lunch,” announced Teeny. “But once the tour’s done, I’ll cook you up something that’ll make your hair curl.”
Instinctively, I smoothed my hair. Nothing had ever made my straight hair curl. But I was so hungry, I’d give Teeny’s cooking a try. Anything had to taste better than the flour and water slop I’d been fed in prison.
“Through here,” Grimm said, crossing the room to the opposite side and another door, which led to another hallway. We left the dining room and walked down the corridor, coming to a stop outside yet another door at the end.
I took a hesitant breath, preparing for what awaited me on the other side.
Grimm swung open the door, revealing row upon row of beds filled with shifters, some with lacerations or burns and covered in bandages. Many looked as if they’d been starved and were as thin as I was. Healers tended to the injured, dabbing at their wounds with moistened cloths, cleansing them. Bloodied bandages piled up on bedside tables. Buckets of red-tinged water sat here and there on the floor. Other healers administered drops of herbs, fed patients sips of soup, and stitched up nasty-looking cuts with a sprinkle of fae dust.
My throat felt like it had been set on fire. Tears stung my eyes. “What happened here?”
“These are the shifters we managed to rescue from the slave camps,” Grimm replied.
