Page 4 of Humans Don’t Have Horns (A Crown of Blood and Magic #1)

Chapter Three

Lian

I wake with a start, not knowing where I am or how long I’ve been there.

I’m lying on a leathery pallet inside a small tent.

I’m clean and no longer in my bridal dress.

I’m wearing some kind of rough fabric in a brownish color, but I have no memory of washing or changing.

The stench of rotten eggs burns my nostrils.

My throat is bone dry and gritty, as if it’s filled with sand.

I try to lift my head to see my surroundings, but I can’t.

My arms and legs are also immovable. My organs feel heavy.

I take in my surroundings. The tent is small and shabby. The few rays of sun penetrating the tent emphasize its dilapidated condition. There is a small straw stool near the pallet I am on, and on the ground, a faded, dusty rug.

It is a far cry from my wedding tent, where I spent the last week before the Cursed Ones raided the camp.

The wedding tent had a large canopy bed, a vanity table with delicate carvings of peacocks, large, soft rugs that covered the ground completely, and a big golden mirror framed with patterns of Sun.

That tent was modest compared with my quarters in the palace.

That’s the thing with golden cages. They’re inherently beautiful and alluring.

The rancid smell of sulfur clings to me in the thick, moist air.

I wrestle simultaneously with profound fatigue and restlessness.

As I drift back to sleep, I see the corpses of my mother and sister.

Swollen from illness and tormented by the cure.

Their hands and faces covered with burns and cuts.

Their long blue hair cut so short that I can see sections of their scalps.

Still sleeping, I try to understand if this dream is a memory or another nightmare.

It’s been years since I thought of them, their memories evading me more the harder I tried to grab them.

When I try looking away from the rotting bodies, a man holds me forcefully against any such effort. His callous treatment overwhelms me, and I fall into an abyss made of my beloveds’ decomposing flesh.

I wake up again to the sounds of a conversation between a female and a male.

I open my eyes slightly so they won’t notice I am awake.

The female stands at an angle that enables me to see her round face and two horns.

Opposite her, standing with his back to me, is my captor.

I recognize him by his broken horn. I shut my eyes again, pretending to be asleep.

“You have done very well, Daton. If the marriage had been fulfilled, and the alliance between Aldon and Kozari had been forged, our people would have been the ones to pay the price.”

What in the name of Sun?! I understand the language of the Cursed Ones. How is that possible? Did my mother teach me when I was young and I forgot? I most certainly would not have been taught their language in my father’s palace.

“Will you sacrifice her to the Goddess?” My kidnapper’s broad back is straight. His hands are in his pockets. He looks like the manifestation of nonchalance as he inquires if I’ll be served as a human sacrifice.

“No. The Princess of Aldon still has a use in the land of the living. She will give birth to a Mongan child. Your child.” There is silence for a moment, and then she continues in an enthusiastic voice, “What better revenge can there be, Daton, than for the twenty-first prophet to be a grandfather to a Cursed One’s child?

” Her chortled laugh is chilling. “You, of all Mongans, deserve it. The Emancipator deserves to be the one to humiliate him so. ”

I swallow a scream. I must stay silent, but cold perspiration rushes over me. Why did I not kill myself in the tent? What possessed me to submit myself to the control of the Cursed Ones?

The female seems oblivious to his body’s response. The nonchalance is gone. His back muscles flex with tension. “No,” he says curtly. “I’ll kill her, and we’ll be done with this.”

“What do you mean, no?” She sounds shocked. Offended, even. “What could possibly cause you to refuse the Goddess’s oracle?” Her words carry malice and threat. “Are you not a true servant of the Goddess?”

He snorts at her words. “The Goddess has nothing to do with it, Minera. To force a female is the heretics’ way. Not ours. I will never adopt their ways. I will never do as was done to Baghiva.”

“You fool. I would never do to this heretic woman what they have done to Baghiva and you. How can you even compare? Can’t you see? If the heretic delivers a Cursed One’s child, it will not only humiliate Aldon. It will befoul them all as the prophets of their so-called True Religion.”

“I said no,” he growls, and I can’t help but admire her a little bit at that moment because she doesn’t even flinch at the danger in his voice. I’m certain most Puresoul men would have wet themselves.

She lifts her chin as if to gain some height in front of the much bigger male before her. “If you don’t do it, another Mongan will. It is the will of the Goddess.”

He leaves the tent without another word.

I keep my eyes shut even as I feel Minera’s eyes on me.

“Mentioning Baghiva to me,” she mumbles to herself angrily.

“Perhaps he forgets my loss was far greater than his.” She steps closer.

“Or maybe he is repulsed by your appearance? You are too old to be wed. Is it your hideous white hair? Perhaps it is your stink? For even washed, you reek of the withdrawal from Nimatek.” She lifts my right eyelid to check my pupil.

“It must be the eyes. They’re so repulsive.

What kind of Shavir has white eyes?” She sighs, “Perhaps it is time to nominate a new warlord.” With that, she leaves the tent.

Panic washes over me. That awful woman wants me to breed a Cursed One.

If I conceive a child with a Cursed One, my father will set the fire to burn me at the stake himself.

That will most likely be my fate regardless.

But the thought of another rape, this time by a Cursed One, and the violence of a forced pregnancy causes bile to rise to my throat.

I struggle to swallow it down as my mind races. I must escape.

I still can’t move anything but my fingers and my head, slightly. Why can’t I move? What’s wrong with me?

My racing thoughts give me a pounding headache.

What in Sun’s name is this Nimatek that I supposedly stink of?

What is the meaning of her other ramblings?

When did my mother teach me to speak the Cursed Ones’ language, and why?

None of it makes sense. And he refused her request. Why?

My colors are strange but not enough to divert wanting males.

Sadly. But it doesn’t matter why. She said she would find another male to do it.

I suddenly feel so tired. I struggle to stay awake, let alone come up with some kind of plan. I quickly fall asleep and into the same nightmare of the dying mother and sister, and the vicious, malevolent man.

***

A Cursed One enters the tent, carrying a clay bowl.

Perhaps she is a servant sent to care for me.

Was she the one who changed my clothes? I watch her gingerly as she approaches.

I still can barely move, and this helplessness is ridiculous.

Her long black hair is braided, accentuating her horns, her face at once firm and delicate.

The female sits on the small stool near me, looking down at me as I lie on the pallet.

“I bring food to you,” she says in heavily accented Aldonian.

I wonder who taught her our language. The Cursed Ones are not allowed in any school in Amada.

While I struggle to arrange my thoughts, my emotions are very much clear. Anger and frustration at my own helplessness in this tent at this unknown place, unable to move. I look at her with unhidden miff, and she smirks at my useless rage .

“You’ve had no food for a week. You need to eat if you want to stay alive.” That must be a vast exaggeration. I’m not even hungry. The stench of the place repulses any appetite.

I glower at her. “Why should I remain alive? Your plans for me will lead me to a death more violent than starvation” I croak. She eyes me pensively.

It dawns on me that she is likely not a servant. Something about her tells me she is someone of authority. Although, I could be wrong. I know nothing of the ways of the Cursed Ones.

“As long as there is life, the path can keep changing.” She puts the bowl near me. “Are you not hungry?”

“This place stinks so much I can barely breathe, let alone eat,” I say. It’s rude, but it’s true. We are beyond cordiality anyway.

“The smell of the swamps takes time to get used to. Hungry or not, you cannot survive much longer without food. But I’m not going to force food down your throat, so it’s up to you, really.” She shrugs.

“Who are you? Are you Baghiva?” The name from earlier jumps to my mind as I try to make any sense of this situation.

The woman’s eyes widen in surprise. “How do you know that name?” Perhaps it was a mistake to ask.

She can’t know that I understand their language.

It’s best for them to speak freely in my presence.

I remain silent as she looks at me closely.

After what feels like a long time, she says “I’m Emek.

” She lifts the bowl slightly as if her name is enough to persuade me to eat.

“Why are you the one treating me? What is your role in this kidnapping?”

She loses her patience. “Enough with the questions. Eat now.” My eyes sting from tears of frustration. “I can’t move.”

Emek rolls her eyes and murmurs to herself inaudibly. “I’ll feed you,” she says, sounding as enthusiastic about the idea as I feel. She takes a cushion, seats me so I lean on it, and brings a spoon full of porridge to my mouth. It’s humiliating to be so helpless.

I spit it out. “Oh, it’s vile.”

Emek’s eyes harden. “We live on what we can, Princess, since Aldon forbade us from working the land,” she says scathingly. “Eat now or die, for I care less and less with every moment.”

Like all Aldonians, I went to the chapel daily from the age of three. I knelt for two hours every day, begging for forgiveness for my sins so Sun would not strike me. I know nothing of the Cursed Ones but what I was told in the chapel – that they have malicious and violent natures.

Yet it is obvious I have just insulted her. Can monsters even get offended?

“I’ll eat.” I let Emek feed me. I must eat if I have any hope of escape.

***

I dream of my mother, her blue eyes smiling at me.

locks of blue hair dancing in the light.

“Can you keep a secret, Lian?” She stands in front of an altar for Sun, a large gold panel with Sun’s imprint on it.

My mother presses it, the panel moves, and I see another altar.

A silver altar, and at the center is the moon.

Around it is text in Renyan: Forever we are children of the moon.

“The Goddess is a secret, Lian. Father can never know.”

Again I wake up confused and disoriented.

Was it a dream or a memory? Since my arrival in this place, my mother’s image haunts me.

An image I hadn’t managed to form in years.

But over the past few days, I have been flooded with memories.

Is it the danger of my situation, or perhaps the boredom from being too weak to move.

But it’s not just the memories. Everything is sharper—smells, sounds, flavors.

As if I have been underwater for years and am now at the surface.

The pain is sharper too. So sharp I can barely breathe. Like my world came to an end just now and not nine years ago, when my mother and sister died. I had remained at my father's mercy ever since. Much like I am at the mercy of this Cursed One now.

Sitting on the mattress alone in the tent, I can hear the Cursed Ones outside. The random exchanges of words passing by the tent, a baby crying. There is no guard outside. Probably because trying to leave would be a deranged idea.

Emek said we’re in the swamps. The Swamps of Death, as they call them in Aldon.

No Puresoul dares go in the swamps. Predators lurk everywhere.

There are stories of trolls, swamp lions, and giant spiders who can eat a grown man whole.

Being in the swamps explains the stench.

The air itself is full of poison. Only evil and cursed things live in the swamps.

What’s more, I am surrounded by Cursed Ones, who are known to take pleasure in drinking the blood of Puresouls.

Especially the Butcher, who favors the blood of Puresoul babies.

And most of all, I can barely even stand.

I don’t know what they’ve done to me that makes me so weak.

I think of my guardian—Ms. Ektra – who was with me for the past nine years.

Ever since I was moved to the palace. Ms. Ektra is now dead.

I’m disturbed by the mildness of the emotions her death produces in me.

Why is there no pain or grief? Is it because of her role in the events of that night before the wedding?

She served as a maternal figure to me after my own mother died.

Should I not be haunted by the sight of her corpse outside the wedding tent?

I fall asleep with these disturbing thoughts.