Page 47 of Bonded Ever After

“Give them more goldarium,” I tell Callum softly.

When the creatures look in my direction, I bow, not looking them in the eyes. I do my best to convey to them that I’m not a threat, and that Callum isn’t trying to screw them over.

Callum slowly pulls more of the goldarium from the crystal chest and reforms the ball so that it’s bigger. The swords drop. The tension decreases, and Callum bows again.

Holding my breath, I watch to see what will happen next. They put all the food and water in a backpack for Callum, hand it over to him, and then he hands them the goldarium. All of them surround it, chittering in voices similar to those of small animals. Callum re-secures the backpack and goldarium, then puts the one with food and water in it on his front, before heading back to the path.

There are no waves goodbye. No acknowledgement at all. They just leave back the way they came, and Callum takes my hand. It’s sweaty.

“Are you okay?” I whisper.

He nods. “Let’s just get a little distance and then get something to eat and drink.”

I release a slow breath. “Okay.”

As much as the food and drink we traded for didn’t look great, it’s still something to eat and drink. I just hope it’s enough to allow us to survive here.

NINETEEN

Elora

Hunger burns through me, a painful pit in my stomach. We’d been in this hellish place for eleven fucking days, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. Callum and I have already made the hard decision that we would need to hunt and live off the land to survive now that we’d gone through everything we got from trading, but it’s proving more difficult than it sounds.

The lava spider skitters past me as I strike out with my sword, but I narrowly miss it.Again. Callum is poised to strike just a few feet away, but he’s gotten better, having struck too early the last two times we’d tried, and failed, to get something to eat. He waits. And waits. Then he strikes.

His sword tip goes through the center of the spider, and it makes a terrible crunching sound. The legs continue flailing around for several long minutes before it finally stops moving.

Callum lifts the sword that the spider is impaled on and does a little dance. “We got it! We got it!”

I laugh. “I just hope this is better than the snails.”

The snails were hard to find, usually living in the brown bushes, but easy to catch. Unfortunately, eating them was like eating a giant booger that tastes like ash. I’d hurled after our lasttwo meals, so Callum is desperate to catch something I can keep down.

We return to the path, then stare at each other.

“There’s no way to cook it,” Callum says.

I nod. Even the brown trees can’t be burned here. We’d tried.

“So… we just… eat it?” he asks.

My stomach growls and rolls at the same time. If the baby didn’t want snails, the baby sure as hell doesn’t want spider guts, but we have to eat or die.

No one ever said being a Gold Keeper was easy. Or that being a mom who is trying to do everything to care for her baby is fun.

“I guess so.”

“Do you want a leg?” he asks and shudders.

I reluctantly nod.

He reaches forward and takes a leg, twisting it until it snaps off the body. Then he hands it to me. I stare at whatever is dripping out of the leg, then the hard surface.

“It’s crab,” I say. “Just a crab leg.”

Callum twists off his own leg, then offers it to me. We clink them together like champagne glasses before moving them to our mouths and beginning to suck the ends.

My stomach doesn’t immediately revolt against the taste. It’s like a mixture of ground beef and crab. It’s not entirely appetizing but better than the ashy booger. I definitely don’t want to eat this every day, but I think I can keep it down.

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