Page 3 of Donovan
“I’m hungry,” Donovan suddenly declared.
It should have annoyed me. After all, we were sitting in a graveyard, my parents' names etched in cold stone in front of us.
But somehow, I wasn’t even mad at the selfishness of his request. If anything, the absurdity of it pulled me out of my head for the first time since the funeral.
I turned to him, arching a brow. “Yeah?”
He grinned. “Yeah.”
There was a wake happening inside Guild Headquarters. One I was supposed to be at, pretending to be grateful for people’s condolences, pretending to care when I barely felt anything.
There was probably a spread of food, people gathering, whispering things about me when they thought I wasn’t listening.
I didn’t want to be there.
“I have a better idea,” I told Donovan, pushing to my feet.
He looked up at me, curious. “Yeah?”
“Why don’t we sneak down to the kitchens and see what they’ve got?”
His eyes widened. “You mean steal food?”
“I mean,” I said, “borrow food.”
He laughed at that, quick and bright, and I found myself not hating the sound. He scrambled up beside me, brushing dirt off his knees. “Alright, I’m in.”
Sneaking into the kitchens wasn’t exactly difficult. The Guild was full of hunters, not spies, and no one expected anyone to be up to no good during a wake.
We slipped through the back halls, avoiding the main gathering rooms, where the murmur of voices still carried.
The kitchen lights were dimmed for the night, but the scent of food still lingered in the air—bread, roasted meat, something sweet underneath it all.
I led the way, careful to step lightly across the old tile floor.
Donovan, to his credit, actually tried to be quiet, though the occasional shuffle of his sneakers made me shoot him a glare.
“Sorry,” he whispered, looking sheepish.
I rolled my eyes and pushed forward.
The kitchen was mostly empty, save for a few plates left out from the wake. And there it was. A half-eaten vanilla cake, sitting abandoned on the counter.
Jackpot.
I turned to Donovan. “Think anyone’s gonna miss this?” I asked him.
“Not if we eat it fast enough,” he whispered back.
I grabbed two forks from the drawer, slid the plate between us, and we dug in like we hadn’t eaten in days. The cake was slightly stale, but neither of us cared. It was ours now.
Donovan talked a lot, which was fine with me, because I didn’t have much to say. I’d always been quiet, more comfortable listening than speaking.
Most kids found that unnerving, like silence was something to be filled instead of just being. But Donovan didn’t seem to mind. If anything, he was immune to the awkwardness my quiet usually created.
The vanilla cake was gone in minutes. Donovan chattered as he rifled through cupboards and the icebox, pulling out more leftover cake, a hunk of cheese, and some bread like he’d done this a hundred times before.
I leaned against the counter, watching as he cut two uneven slices of cake.
