Page 29 of Humans Don’t Have Horns (A Crown of Blood and Magic #1)

The crowd cracks up, laughing. It was funny but not that funny. I assume the laughter plays a big part in the need to release the tension.

Minera starts protesting again, but another woman speaks now.

Her hair is all white, and she is hunched and missing her teeth.

The reverence for her is evident as they all go quiet.

There are not many Mongans who get to such an age.

She must be nearly three hundred to look so old.

“She who is not followed cannot call herself a leader. The congregation has spoken. You are not the oracle any longer. Emek is the new oracle.”

Mirth pervades the crowd at the old woman’s announcement, and Emek is nearly trampled as people approach to greet her. I stand and watch them as my mind struggles to comprehend what happened in merely several minutes.

Daton quickly grabs my hand and drags me away from the tent. He keeps pulling me until we are out of the central circle, away from everyone. It is night already, and the air of the swamps is less suffocating. But the stench of rotten eggs is the same.

“That was a foolish thing to do,” he growls at me.

His hand doesn’t let go of mine. And he is so close to me despite how much space is around us.

His scent penetrates the stench of the swamps.

And I want nothing more than to nuzzle his neck, that soft spot where his scent is the thickest. Damn him. I need to get over him.

“Seriously?” I snap, pulling my hand away. The anger from needing him stirs in me. “A simple thanks would be just fine.”

“You were very close to getting yourself hanged in the entrance,” he hisses and nods in the direction of the hanging corpses, and I shiver. What I just saw in the central tent doesn’t coincide with those bodies. The children were running around, the men and women arguing and laughing.

“Well, it was very stupid of you to get captured by them,” I tell him.

“They didn’t capture me,” he snorts. “I came to warn them about the demichads.” So he willingly got himself into a death trial. What was he thinking?

“And how did that work out for you?” I say with derisiveness.

Daton chuckles at that. “You got me there.” I hate it when he smiles. All those creases around his eyes make me all supple inside. He needs to stop smiling .

As if he read my mind, the smile dies on his face. He buries his hands in his pockets. “I don’t deserve you coming here to save me.”

No shit . “Did I say I came here to save you? Or that I came to end the demichads?”

He nods. “Still, I want—”

But the last thing I need is for him to explain or apologize. So I cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it. I didn’t come here for you.”

“Right.” He looks a bit taken aback by my sharpness. Maybe it’s hurt in his eyes. Maybe it’s my imagination.

“So, how are you going to stop the demichads exactly?” asks a familiar voice.

I turn to find Emek looking at us both with her mouth in a smirk.

***

Emek takes me to a tent in her family’s circle.

There are seven tents spread around the fire.

Clothes hang out to dry on one side of the circle, and there is kitchenware on the other side.

Several wooden logs surround the fire pit.

Some Mongans sit on those logs, including one man holding a baby while talking to another man, and two women sitting together. Their eyes go wide as they notice us.

“Kala, help Lian settle in. She’ll stay in our circle for now,” Emek says to one of the women.

Kala’s black hair is up in a bun. She wears black eyeliner, and her lips are painted blood red.

The woman sitting beside her resembles her so much that I assume they are twins.

The second woman has beautiful curly black hair that reaches her waist. As she stands up, I notice her wooden necklace and the Mongan dress she managed to turn into a flattering outfit.

“I’m Shana,” she says with a smile. “Oh, you are so pretty.” And to my shock, she twirls a strand of my hair with her fingers. “Kala, her hair is so soft,” Shana cries to her twin, and Emek smacks Shana’s hand away.

“For fuck’s sake. She’s our guest, not your doll, so behave yourself,” she mutters.

“Yes, Mother,” they both say at the same time. Mother? They look the same age as her. Maybe a few years younger but certainly not enough to be her children.

“You really can’t swear anymore, though, now that you’re the oracle,” Shana squeaks, and they both burst out laughing.

Emek snorts and rolls her eyes. But I swear there’s a smirk there for a second before she scolds them again.

“Have you seen Daton?” She dragged me away from him to show me the camp and apparently lost him in the process.

“Last seen avoiding a number of shameless women,” Shana says and giggles. Giggles! How old is she, for Goddess’s sake? I stiffen and can’t help the possessive anger that stirs in me. I can feel Emek’s eyes on me, one of her eyebrows rising. Damn it. The woman is perceptive.

Emek sighs, “And where is your father?”

“Last seen with two bottles of bree,” Kala drawls.

“For fuck’s sake,” Emek grunts in frustration and walks away without another word.

“Come, Lian. You can take Anasosh’s tent.

She just passed her maturity test and got a tent with all the singles,” Kala says and leads me inside a tent similar to the one I stayed in on my last visit to the swamps.

If you can call being a captive a visit.

Shana joins us in the tent with a bucket of water.

“Oh, a bath would be great, thank you,” I say to her.

But they glance at each other and shake their heads. “Fresh water is scarce in the swamps, but you can wash your face, armpits, and privates,” Kala explains and hands me a clean cloth. Heat rises to my cheeks. I never seem to manage to avoid the privileged princess act in the swamps.

“How often do you bathe in Modos?” Shana asks.

“Once every three days mostly. But in Renya, they bathe every day. They have water coming out of the wall. No need to go to the waterhole,” I explain.

“Water out of the wall. Imagine that!” Shana exclaims.

“A bath every day, what a dream,” Kala groans. “Well, we’ll find you some clean clothes”, Kala says, gesturing with a frown at my Aldonian army uniform. “I can do your makeup if you want. Niska brought new stuff for us from—”

“Kala, the baby is hungry,” a man’s voice calls outside the tent.

“Oh, you must be hungry too.” she says to me.

“We have a goat stew left from Anasosh’s maturity party.

It’s very rare that we get to eat meat, so it’s quite a treat.

” Shana smiles at me. While the goat stew doesn’t sound highly appetizing, I am famished, and it sounds better than roram.

Besides, Daton mentioned that not accepting food from your host is considered a great insult.

I tremble at the memory of Emek’s face as I spat my food when she first fed me.

I’m pretty sure she was restraining herself from murdering me then.

I follow them outside, and Shana fixes me a bowl of stew while Kala sits on a wood log, and the man hands her a baby. He has a full head of dark hair, but I don’t see any horns. I only now realize that the children I’ve seen didn’t have horns either. “He doesn’t have any horns,” I wonder out loud.

“We’re not born with horns. The horns only start to grow at ten, which is the most lethal age for Mongans, since the horns emerge but the strength to defend from hunters still doesn’t.

When Mongans reach the age of twenty, they already have their full-grown horns.

We can tell a Mongan age by facial features, but it would be easier, probably through the horns, for you.

At the age of twenty, the horns are still soft and flexible.

At that point, the Mongan looks like a twenty-year-old Shavir in every aspect and will remain this way until the age of one hundred.

The horns harden entirely at that time—once the Mongan reaches one hundred, the Mongan will appear as a thirty-year-old Shavir.

At two hundred, the horns darken, and the Mongan starts looking like a forty-year-old Shavir.

But in their last century, the aging accelerates, and they appear older and older every decade.

The Mongan who declared Emek as the new oracle is two hundred and ninety-seven years old, and she is the oldest Mongan alive.

Once the horns start to grow, Mongans can’t survive without them.

Daton is the only Mongan to survive without a piece of his horn.

And some believe it has actually made him stronger than all the other Mongans. ”

The baby gets impatient with Kala’s explanation, and she exposes her breast. I can’t help but stare as the baby feeds on her.

“What?” She looks at me and raises her eyebrows.

“I’ve just never seen a woman breastfeed before.” My cheeks heat up in embarrassment. “Not even your mother?” Kala frowns.

“Royals don’t breastfeed. They hire a wet nurse to do that, and the wet nurse makes certain never to be seen,” I explain, and I hide my shudder at the mere thought of the consequences of a woman exposing her breast in public in Aldon.

“To let another feed your own child. How strange the heretics are,” Kala marvels.

“Strange indeed,” Shana agrees. “You must tell us of all their strange ways. We’ve never met a live heretic before, only saw their corpses hanging.

You are the only heretic to ever meet the Emancipator and remain alive.

” I cringe at her words, for I believe they are true and that he has killed so many.

But not me and not my sister, on my behalf.