Page 53 of The Catacomb King
“I don’t know. Some guy in a uniform.”
Uniform? We didn’t have uniforms in Limer. Hades had to be mistaken.
“By the time I found your mom’s house, your blond friend had converged on it with a bunch of men. You humans are the stupidest thing I ever saw. Imagine, a whole pack of grown adult men listening to a dumb kid.”
As if Hades wasn’t the twenty-six-year-old prince of a kingdom of centuries-old godlings. But all I said was, “Calix is good at getting people to do what he wants.”
“He sounds like a fun guy. Anyway, they chased me off. Your friend shot at me, but he only grazed me. I’m fine.”
“Calixshotyou?” My elation drained out of me. Because whatever blond mob-leader had chased Hades away from my mother’s house, it wasn’t Calix. Calix was a diplomat, not a soldier. He didn’t know how to fight. Not once, in our almost two decades of friendship, had I ever seen him so much as scuffle. And he definitely didn’t own a gun.
“Sure did. He makes a puny warrior, you know,” Hades said. “A real warrior would have used his bare hands. Or at least a sword. Something sporting.”
I didn’t bother to tell Hades he had his attacker wrong. Why would I? Why had I even thought he’d be able to recognize Calix? He’d only seen him once, from far away, when I was telling Calix about my idea for the reservoir.
Although… something was nagging at me. Two things.
The first was that I couldn’t figure out who Hadeshadseen. There weren’t that many young, yellow-haired men in the village. Josie had a cousin of about Calix’s build, but he was a redhead. But maybe that was who Hades had seen, and he had just looked blond in the dark.
And the second thing…
“What about the herbs? What did you do with them, if you couldn’t leave them with my mother?”
“I put them at the border. In your basket.”
I exhaled.
That was that, then. Hades had gone aboveground. He’d tried to give my mother the herbs, but someone — not Calix — had chased him away. But he’d still left the herbs at the border for Calix to find.
The question only remained whether Calixwouldfind them… and what he would do if he did.
In the meantime, I was still on my own.
But Hades had killed me this rabbit.
I took my foot off Hades’s face and looked at the rabbit. It was so… raw. Its body had been torn at the leg joint, and I could see the thin white sliver of fat against the red meat. My mouth watered. I hated myself for even asking, but… “Youpromiseit’s from the Lümerlund side?”
“I’m not answering that again. Don’t eat it if you don’t want it.”
Of course I wanted it. Now that we’d determined that Hades hadn’t run into Calix after all, I couldn’t think of anything else. “Do you have a knife?”
“Not for you.”
“Not tostabyou with. I can’t eat the rabbit raw. Humans don’t just tear into raw animals with their teeth. I have to skin it and take the organs out. And to do that, I need a knife.”
“Euch. You what? And you humans say the chaosgötten are cruel. What did that rabbit ever do to you?”
“It insulted my family,” I said dryly. “Just get me a knife and a stick, okay?”
Hades stood up and dusted himself off, looking doubtfully between me and the rabbit. Then he admitted, “I suppose you don’t have the proper teeth for rending meat,” as if it were an insult, and he went off and came back a little while later with Elke, while I sat there and smelled the animal’s blood and tried not to think about how hungry I was.
Elke carried a beaten metal knife and a sharp, pointed glass stick. She handed them to me. Hades hovered suspiciously like I was going to try to slice someone’s throat, but Elke didn’t seem fazed at all. She seemed… excited.
I rolled back the carpet and laid the rabbit on the stone floor. I wished I had also asked for disinfectant. My father had taught me how to skin and dress an animal, but I hadn’t done it since I was very young, and I was clumsy and nervous as I peeled the skin from the muscle, trying not to nick the intestines or bladder. When I was done, I spitted the rabbit in the giant fireplace.
They both watched curiously as I worked. I rotated the rabbit over the fire. The smell of charred, roasting meat filled the room at once. It was all I could do to keep cooking. The fat crackled and dripped. I actually whimpered out loud.
No one made fun of me.
