Page 42 of Kingdom of Tomorrow
A breakfast staple pre-Fall, or so I’d been told. “I had one when I was a little girl and I remember loving it.” Wait. Clutching his arm, I jumped up and down. “We’re eating a doughnut?” Already my mouth watered. Except. “How much are they?”
“Free.” He flashed a smile, and a little more of his sparkle returned. “I won a coupon.”
I thrilled with every step closer to our destination. Oh! I hadn’t told him my news about the Dolions or lemonade. “Guess what? I met King Dolion. Turns out he asked his son to look out for me because—”
Shiloh whipped to face me, anger radiating from him. “Did he threaten you too?”
“The king threatened you?” My brow wrinkled. “How? Why?”
He looked about, tightened his grip on my fingers, and ushered me into an alley, where fewer people collected. As we crossed to the other end, he quietly said, “The king pulled me aside to ask about a correlation I found between eating pieces of the Rock and drinking the liquid inside it, with recovery from the Madness.” He pursed hislips. “I can’t be the first to notice. The pattern is so obvious, there’s no getting around it.”
“There are no pieces of the Rock. No way to tap into its interior.” To my knowledge, no section of the otherworldly structure had ever even cracked, no matter the methods employed against it. It never even acquired a layer of dust!
“There are ways. At least, that’s what glowers demonstrated. I’ve watched videos. They fed multiple maddened both the stone that isn’t stone and the liquid, whatever it is. No matter the severity of the illness, the sick recovered instantaneously. Worms died and sloughed off.”
Anxiety pricked my nape. Like Shiloh, I looked about. “I’m sure they manipulated the camera feed somehow. But I don’t think we should discuss this.” I decided to save the description of lemonade for another day and let the subject of the Dolions drop completely.
“That’s the problem. No one wants to talk about the Rock. Not what it is or how it works. We’re told it’s the source of the Madness, but how can we be sure when we can’t study it? What if the Rock is truly the cure and that’s the reason feeders react to it the way they do? What if, deep down, they sense their only source of hope?”
Dread slithered over me. This was Soalian talk, and if anyone overheard it, we’d both end up in a treatment facility. “Shiloh.”
“The only way to find out is to run tests,” he continued, his frustration amplifying. “But how can we run tests whenCuredforbids it?”
“Shiloh,” I repeated. “You need to stop.”
“I’m not infected,” he rushed to inform me. “The king ordered a daily test. When I came up negative this morning, he told me that my so-called evidence verged on extreme Soalian-speak, on par with John Victors, and recommended I switch my field of study. He also threatened to boot me from the program if I discussed the reason for the change with anyone.”
I opened and closed my mouth, no sound escaping. What should I say? What should Ithink? On one hand, I hated that someone aswonderful as Shiloh was going through this. I hadn’t forgotten his passion for curing the Madness, or why. On the other hand, I understood the king’s reasoning. Messing with the Rock could unleash consequences the world wasn’t prepared to combat. The results of Shiloh’s research must be a mistake. He’d messed up somewhere. Or, as I’d said, the glowers had tricked him.
“What’s happening to you is terrible,” I rasped, deciding to empathize with what I understood. The delay of a dream. I wrapped my arm around his waist as we snaked around a corner. “What are you going to do?”
“Figure it out or pick a new field of study.” His posture stiffened with determination. “There’s nothing else Icando.”
He must be gutted. “I wish I could wave a magic wand and, poof, fix this for you.”
“Come play with me.” A woman dressed as a lizard beckoned from the shadows of a statue of a half man, half lizard. “The things I can do to you...” She unrolled a forked tongue and flicked it in our direction.
We ignored her. “While I’m without a wand,” I told Shiloh, “Icanbalance the scale between us.”
His brows winged up. “Okay, I’m intrigued. How is the scale unbalanced?”
“Well, just before we met, I learned I’d achieved my lifelong dream of being accepted into the Center for Agriculture and Life Sciences. But. To free my mom from the shackles of debt, I agreed to spend three years at Fort Bala Royal Academy. I was a mess. Then this charming guy showed up and made me forget my troubles. Suddenly I had a reason to smile. Now I owe him a day of fun and adventure.”
We stopped at the end of a long line. He gazed down at me, the full megawatt sparkle reignited in his eyes. There was no mistaking it. His irises were a festival of lights.
“Balanced scalesareimportant,” he said.
“I concur.” I straightened the already-straight neckline of his shirt. “Have I told you how handsome you look today?” He wore jeans anda comfortable tee with the wordsTrust Me I’m Almost a Doctorscripted across the chest.
“So I’m charmingandhandsome.” He teasingly puffed out his chest. “Good to know.”
I chuckled as we moved up the line. “The most charmingest and handsomest in all the land.”
He chuckled, too, but quickly got serious. “I think you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Dazed, I peered up at him. “Thank you.”
He peered down at me, and a thread of longing uncoiled between us. The air thickened.
