Page 12 of The Last Dragon King
Bring them both where?
Kendal and I?To Jade City?
Their hands fell away from me and I slunk over to stand with Kendal, wanting to get away from the sniffers’ flared nostrils.
My gaze went to my mother, who was watching the sniffers coldly, and I observed her put the hunting knife back into my pack.
Relief rushed through me.
“Would the families of the two chosen girls please come up to the front to speak to me?” Regina called out loudly. “Everyone else may leave.”
No one moved. It seemed they didn’t want the show to end. “Out!” Regina bellowed, and that got everyone to shake out of their trance. Funnels of people headed for the doors as Kendal’s mother and father warily stepped closer to Regina. I watched as my mother shouldered my heavy pack and followed them to stand before the leader of the Royal Guard.
The sniffers started to shuffle out of the room, but halfway through the space they stopped and both turned over their shoulder to look at me. Inhaling again, one of them actually moaned, and then they left.
“Creepy,” Kendal whispered, but I found that I wasn’t fully in agreement. Itwascreepy, but they also fascinated me. The way they walked, with no canes, it was almost as if they could sense the chairs and people in their way and moved to avoid them. If anything creeped me out, it was their sheer power, which I simultaneously respected.
Regina pulled out a piece of parchment and faced Kendal and I. “Have you both started your monthly bleeding cycles?” she asked flatly.
My eyes widened at the direction of her questioning. She gave me an apologetic look and I nodded. Kendal’s cheeks burned as she looked at her father, who cleared his throat, but she nodded as well. Talking about the monthly bleeding in front of men wasn’t done in Cinder Village. We kept that private among women only.
Regina seemed to pick up on that and muttered an apology to Kendal.
“Have either of you ever been pregnant before?” she asked us, and we both shook our heads in unison.
I didn’t know how they did things in Jade City, but here the young women kept their purity until marriage. Sure, some of the girls bedded the men in secret but it wasn’t spoken about or aspired to. If a rumor spread about your purity being taken before marriage, no respectable man would have you.
She checked something off on the parchment and then asked our full names. After writing them down, she faced our parents.
“Kendal and Arwen will be taken by the protection of the Drayken Elite Royal Guard into Jade City to live until the king makes his choice for next wife—” Kendal squealed in excitement and Regina paused. “For each moon that they are away, you will be paid five hundred jade coins.”
Kendal’s mother and father gasped in shock, but my mother stayed quiet, her eyes narrowing at Regina.
“And what if I don’t want to sell my daughter to the king?” my mother asked boldly.
I went rigid. A look of shock crossed Regina’s face. “Ma’am, no one said anything aboutsellingthem. You will be fairly compensated for their temporary absence—”
“I can’t eat jade coins. My daughter is a hunter, and without her we don’t have food and neither does a small percentage of this town,” my mother said with venom in her voice.
What she said was partly true. I had become a prominent hunter in the village, and what meat we didn’t eat, we sold or bartered to others, but after the cougarin I caught today we would have food for at least two moons. The jade coins would be good for other things, and she could barter them for food with the neighboring townspeople of Gypsy Rock if need be.
Regina nodded to my mother. “If you would let me finish what I have to say, you will find that the compensation package also includes meat, dried fruits, yeasted bread, and chocolates, delivered every fortnight.”
“Chocolate?” Kendal’s mother perked up.
My mother fell silent. There was nothing else left to argue about without looking suspicious.
“Your daughters will be treated as highborns, with a maid staff and private quarters in Jade Castle,” Regina went on, and I could see the defeat fall over my mother’s face.
“Because we do not wish to bring them away from their culture and the comforts of home, they may each bring one maidservant from their home city if desired,” Regina said, and I perked up. I met my mother’s gaze and wondered if Adaline was too young to bring. Probably. She still needed to be sung to sleep at night by our mother. My mom shook her head slightly as if reading my mind, and I nodded.
I’d go alone, then. It was better that way. Maidservants weren’t a thing in Cinder Village, so I doubted Kendal would bring anyone either.
“In the event of a marriage proposal, a new compensation package will be presented to you at that time. If you agree, please sign here, and know that you are doing the entire kingdom a great service.” She pulled two smaller parchments from her satchel.
I expected her to hand them to our parents, but she handed them to us, each with a pen.
Kendal went beet red as she held the pen and I knew why. She had never learned to read. As a seamstress, she really had no need for it. I only learned because I’d started out with an apprenticeship with the town scribe until my father’s death, when a year of crop blight on Mother’s potatoes forced me into hunting so that we could survive.
