Page 54 of The Catacomb King
I couldn’t help it. Far too soon, I ripped the rabbit off the skewer and started cramming fistfuls of almost-raw meat into my mouth. Blood dripped down my chin. I could have sobbed.
“I thought you couldn’t eat it raw,” Hades said rudely, but he was prodding at the rabbit.
Elke asked tentatively, “Is it… good?”
Probably it wasn’t good. It wasn’t seasoned at all, and I had barely cooked it. But I nodded furiously anyway.
“Can I… have some?”
I blinked at Elke. Both my hands were busy shoving food into my mouth, but I nudged the carcass toward her with my toe and shrugged.
With a dexterity I would not have believed possible from a creature that didn’t have hands, she peeled off two thin slivers of meat and gave one to Hades. Hades put his in his mouth, chewed once, made a face, and spat it out.
“Hand it here if you’re not going to eat it,” I said. Hades’s expression of disgust deepened, but he placed his chewed-up bit of meat delicately into my palm. I put it in my mouth. It was damp. I could feel the dents of Hades’s teeth-marks with my tongue. I swallowed.
I looked up. Hades’s expression of disgust had shifted to one of fascination.
“Shut up,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
I looked to Elke for backup. But Elke was ignoring both of us. She was chewing the meat almost studiously, a queer look on her face. After far too long, she swallowed it.
And then the rabbit was gone.
I stood up. My hands and face were covered in animal fat. All at once I was paralyzed by humiliation. How could I have eaten like that, like a wild beast, in front of the Prince and Elke? I was disgusting. No wonder no one back home (like Calix…) had wanted me.
But Hades just said, casually, “Give the lady a napkin, Elke. We wouldn’t want to ruin that nice outfit of hers.”
I was still wearing the white negligée.
I stuck my tongue out at him. Elke, discreetly, offered me a square of fabric. Hades watched me as I wiped my face.
It occurred to me that I reallyshouldthank him. But I couldn’t, somehow. His gaze was too intense, too hot, for me to be able to form the sentence.
“What are you looking at?” I snapped at him instead.
“You,” Hades said.
Elke coughed. I reddened. “Well, cut it out, and get out of here so I can get dressed.”
“Okay,goddess.”
“This is the third day!” I screeched.
Oh, gods, itwasthe third day.
One day left to get water in that reservoir. One day until I was rent by the Monarch’s teeth the way my own teeth had torn that rabbit.
Now that I was no longer starving, the fear of hunger in my body was replaced by a different fear.
“This is the third day,” I repeated. “We have to get to work.”
The Third Day
If possible, work on the reservoir proceeded even worse than before.
While I supervised the diggers, Hades and his team brought over the pipes they’d fabricated. Of course, the pipes werenotuniform. And Mackr had apparently been so obnoxious on the pipe-team that Hades was reassigning him to me — “Thanks a lot,” I snarled at Hades, and Hades chirped, “You’re welcome!” — and now, instead of working, Mackr had apparently decided to sit in front of the pipe-shaft and whinge at everybody.
