Page 9 of Humans Don’t Have Horns (A Crown of Blood and Magic #1)

Chapter Seven

Lian

“What do we have here?” the first soldier says. I cringe at his leering tone, and all the red apples drop to the ground. There are four of them. They all look unkempt, sweaty, and dirty. Very unlike the Aldonian soldiers I’ve seen in the past in Modos or at the wedding camp.

“Why, I swear it is the princess herself,” says a second soldier, happy as a raccoon that just found an egg nest.

“Can’t be. The princess would have been dead by now,” answers the first soldier. I can smell the alcohol on him from where I stand.

“But who else has white hair and eyes? No. It must be the princess,” insists the second soldier. “Is it you, Princess?” he slurs drunkenly, and not waiting for my answer, he continues, “Time to go back home, Your Majesty.”

The third soldier speaks with venom while toying with a knife, “She doesn’t look so majestic to me, covered with all that Cursed One’s shit. Fucking whore more like it.”

The first and second soldiers look at him and then at me as if seeing me for the first time.

And Daton’s story of Baghiva suddenly crashes into my mind.

Only I’m not a Cursed One, and I can straighten these men out if I can just stop this mutism that’s come over me.

Can’t I? But I can feel hands all over me, inside me and I can’t utter a word or move a muscle.

It’s as if I’m back in the tent the night before my wedding.

Suddenly, the fourth soldier lets out a scream at a surprisingly high pitch, and we all look at him. A sword protrudes from his gut.

Daton stands tall behind him, the promise of death in his obsidian-black eyes.

The third soldier tries to stab him, and he easily avoids his knife, grabs him by the back of his neck, and pulls his head until the sound of his spine breaking is loud for all of us to hear.

The speed and ease with which Daton kills them are unnatural.

It is as if he was born to kill. He was once a farmer, I tell myself.

Yet I can’t even imagine him doing anything but killing.

The first soldier decides that the best approach is putting a knife to my throat.

“Move, and she’s dead,” he says, and the pain hits me as the blade nicks my skin.

The soldier stinks of alcohol and sweat, and I curse myself again for my helplessness.

Daton stands still and raises his hands in submission, and I’m stunned by the gesture.

Again, I fail to understand why he keeps saving my life, time after time.

The first soldier shouts to the second, “Tie him down. Quick!”

But the second looks frantically between Daton and the first soldier and says, “You fucking tie him,” while raising his knife higher.

The first gets pissed off at that and starts yelling at the second about what a useless piece of shit he is.

This argument is a deadly mistake because they lose focus on Daton.

The first soldier’s words stop midsentence when Daton grabs his knife and sticks it in the soldier’s eye, all the way to the hilt.

He then grabs the second soldier by the throat while taking his knife from his hand, as one would take candy from a baby.

With Daton’s hand on his throat, the second soldier manages to plead: “Please don’t kill me, please.”

Daton’s dark eyes light up with disturbing glee. “I love it when you fuckers beg.” Then he pulls the soldier’s windpipe with his bare hand out of his throat.

Daton drops the body and turns to look at me.

“Did they hurt you?” His eyes move quickly over me from head to toe.

I’m too stunned to speak. From the terror of the soldiers, from the brutal violence he has just inflicted on them.

I can’t stop myself from retching on the spot, right there in front of him.

When I’m done, Daton hands me a waterskin full of fresh water, and I splash some on my face.

He carefully picks up the apples I dropped and hands them to me.

The stupid damn apples. He looks at me, and there is no hate in his eyes for the first time since I met him.

That’s because he pities you now instead.

He doesn’t say, “You should have stayed put like I told you. You should have done something once they came instead of just standing there like a useless statue. This is all your fault.”

He just stands there with the stupid apples in his hands.

And that makes me cry, and I realize why I’m crying.

But I don’t want to think of it. I don’t want to remember.

So I wipe my tears and tell him we should go.

I don’t take the apples from him. I don’t think I’ll eat an apple again as long as I live.

***

We do not speak during the days. We walk, barely stopping to drink, never stopping to eat or rest. But in the evenings, after the fire is set, we have conversations.

Daton is very curious about how I spoke to the direwolves.

He has never heard of anyone who could talk to direwolves or even regular wolves.

He has also never heard of a Puresoul who can speak Mongan.

He seems to believe me now that I have no answers, that it is a puzzle to me as well as to him.

“Perhaps it has something to do with the Nimatek,” he ponders while his fingers run over the beads of his prayer beads.

“What’s Nimatek?” I ask him. Minera had said something about it in the swamps. Said I stank of it.

“You don’t know? But you had to use it so much for such violent withdrawal,” he answers, sounding baffled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I look at him blankly but uneasiness spreads through my body.

“Nimatek is an odorless and tasteless drug the Aldonians use. It numbs everything – taste, smell, feelings, desires. It damages memories, and it is highly addictive. It’s odorless while consumed, but while the body goes through withdrawal, it reeks.

They used to give it to enslaved Mongans.

They could have given it to you in your food or beverages. ”

“My morning tea!” I gasp in shock, as the reality of it all hits me. My guardian had given me tea every day since I was brought to the palace nine years ago. I always preferred coffee but she insisted on a cup of tea in the morning.

“You begged me to kill you when you withdrew,” he said, his eyes are on the beads.

“I thought that was just a dream,” I said, almost to myself.

What else wasn’t a dream? Maybe that day, when I clung to my mother as life finally left her body, wasn’t a dream at all.

It had taken seven days of torment, and her body finally gave.

She looked nothing like the vibrant and regal queen she was just a week before.

Her body was covered in blisters, burns, and pus-filled lesions caused by the Aldonian healers’ insistence on using leeches and controlled burns as treatment.

I would have said the treatment was worse than the illness, but the illness was brutal.

My mother’s and sister’s bodies twitched and seized, and they screamed and sobbed like tormented animals as pain sliced through them over and over.

And through it all, my father refused to let any Renyan healer near them, or any Renyan at all.

In a way, I was relieved for them both as death finally claimed them.

But the deep belief that their pain and eventual, anguished deaths could have been prevented made me feral.

There were no thoughts, no real consciousness as I clung to the only two people who ever loved me, to the two people I had let down by my incompetence to help them, to get help to them.

I was only thirteen at the time, but I could have done more for them. I should have done more for them.

So when they came to retrieve their bodies, I refused to let go. My mother would have wanted a Renyan burial. She deserved as much. The soldiers were a blur. The blood I drew in my frantic attempt to push them away was also a blur. I’m not even sure whose blood it was. Most likely my own .

I then woke up at the palace, in my new room, and felt and remembered nothing at all.

***

There are figs and olive trees now. The air is sweeter, and its scent reminds me of my mother.

I feel light-headed at the thought of finding a home like I had as a child.

My mother managed to create a small Renyan heaven on my father’s land.

She always spoke of Renya with great love and longing.

Once, I was happy, and now that I remember those days again, I realize what darkness I was in.

Now that I remember all that was lost to me, I understand why they had me forget it.

Daton appears more at ease near me since we encountered the soldiers. Is it because I was such a damsel in distress? Is it because I retched and cried? He still avoids looking at me when we speak, and he often grips his beads so hard I can see his knuckles whitening.

The night before our arrival at the River of Tears, I ask, “Why did you save me from the wolves?”

“We’ve already been through this,” he answers, his eyes on the beads.

“No. You told me why you wouldn’t have them breed me. But saving me from the wolves. It has nothing to do with Baghiva.”

He doesn’t answer, his face reticent.

“If Minera would have ordered you to kill instead of force me, would you have done it?” I asked

His eyes meet mine. “Yes.” And I realize it’s such a fluke that I’m still alive because he would have killed me, and there is nothing I could have done to stop him.

I can’t stop myself from asking him, “Then why didn’t you just kill me? No one can breed a dead woman.”

He grimaces. “I was trying to make a point, to draw a line. And killing you would be a cowardly way to go at it.”

“But you don’t see a need to draw a line in taking a woman’s life?” Only Sun knows what possesses me to poke him with these questions.

“Why would I?” He frowns at me as if the mere idea of that being a problem is strange to him.

“Because you’re so much stronger.”