Wyvern’s Gold (The Ruins Of Men Book 1)

Chapter 35

Thirty-Five

Kanik

S omehow, we got Adoet calmed down and headed on his way. Saveah wasn't as easy. Her boy had been talking about his new friend for a few days now, and since she was at Zasen's, Saveah hadn't worried at all. Now that she'd seen Ayla, she was livid.

"You allowed my child to talk to her!" she snapped.

Zasen sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Saveah..."

"No!" she snapped. "His father hasn't even been dead a month, and I'm barely holding it together. I thought I could trust you, Zasen!"

"It's not like that," I said, speaking up. "Saveah, she's been abused. The Mole men are cruel to their women. She's not here to hurt anyone. She's here to escape."

Saveah slowly turned her attention back to Zasen. "Oh? And how can you be so sure of that?"

Zasen just licked his lips, but the lashing of his tail behind him proved how annoyed he was with all of this. "She's malnourished, barely has the muscles to walk across the house, let alone Lorsa, and wants nothing more than to read." Then he bobbed his head. "And it could be an act."

"An act ?" She flailed her hands. "And you let her near Tamin?!"

"She's my friend, Mama," Tamin whined.

"She's dangerous, baby," Saveah explained. "She's the reason you have to come inside before the sun sets." Then Saveah looked up. "And speaking of that..."

Because the sky had darkened from gold to pink while we'd been talking. Now the purples and blues were starting to come out, and dusk wasn't far away.

"Don't you ever ," Saveah growled, "put my son at risk for your stupid ideas, Zasen. He is not a weapon for you to wield in your foolish crusade."

"No, he's not," Zasen agreed. "He's my friend's son. One I swore to protect with my life, and I will never forget that."

"Good!" Saveah snapped before catching Tamin's hand, shifting her infant daughter on her chest, and heading back for her house.

I just pushed out a heavy sigh. "So, that went well."

Zasen huffed once, the sound almost a laugh. "What was she doing by the street anyway?"

"Looking at the flowers," I explained. "I was watching her, Zasen. I was just looking towards town, not outside the walls."

"I know." He slapped my shoulder and the pair of us turned for the house. "What are the chances someone would return right when she's not only outside, but also unsupervised?"

"No shit," I agreed.

Then we headed inside. With the sun now well below the horizon, the house was dark, but Ayla was sitting in it. Her hands were in her lap, her back was straight, and she was looking down at her book, yet it was closed. I barely got the door closed behind us before she started to speak up.

"The compound has electricity," she said, speaking slowly and in Vestrian. "That's how the lights work, and they come on in the morning and go out when we should all be sleeping. We have a single lamp in our room that we can control if we need to be up once it's night. All rooms are lit like this, but I don't know how the electricity works."

"Okay?" Zasen asked.

I was making my way around the room, lighting the lanterns along the wall in their glass cases. As the room filled with the golden glow, I glanced back to check on Ayla, hoping she hadn't been hurt too badly. Instead, I saw tears streaming down her face.

"The electricity allows us to have refrigeration," she went on. "That's how we keep food good for longer. It makes the stoves run too. They have bars that get so hot they turn orange. Not all the lights are good, but when a bulb burns out, they take some from the unused parts. You see, there used to be more Righteous, but the Devil is winning, so many of us have died."

"Ayla?" Zasen asked.

She lifted her eyes, the blue color even brighter against the red-rimmed edges. "I'm trying to tell you everything I know," she explained. "I don't really want to die. I did. I mean, that's why I stabbed Mr. Saunders with a fork, because I thought it would be better to die up here than from his child killing me. And I wouldn't even know how long it would take! It could be the first, or the next, or the tenth! And the longer it took, the more time he'd have to torture me with breeding." Her eyes were streaming faster now. "And some men don't care if a woman should get nine months off while pregnant and six more for the baby!"

"Nine months off from what?" Zasen asked.

"From sex!" she whimpered.

"From rape," I grumbled, crossing the room to claim the spot on the couch beside her. "Ayla, it's okay."

"No, it's not!" she insisted. "Kanik, I don't know what he needs to know. I'm trying to help. I want to prove myself! I like that you don't punish me, and I really like reading. I want to do more, but I heard him! He only wants me here because of what I know, so I'm trying to tell him what I know!"

"Fuck," Zasen growled before turning away.

"Light the rest of the lamps," I told him as I twisted to see Ayla better. "Did you hear the part he said about what you know is worth its weight in gold?" I ducked my head, making her meet my eyes. "Gold, Ayla. He is the Wyvern, and they hoard gold, right?"

"In stupid fantasies," she mumbled.

"And in the real world, gold is still valuable. That makes you his gold. It makes you valuable."

"But I'm a Mole!"

"You were a Mole," I told her.

She just huffed, unimpressed. "I'm not a Dragon."

"No, you're not," I agreed. "Not yet, but what if you could become one?"

"Kanik!" Zasen snapped.

I turned to give him a warning look. "I think you've fucked this up enough. She's clearly not a spy or an assassin. She's just a young woman trying to survive, and she has done every single thing you've asked."

"Except tell me what I need!" Zasen roared.

Ayla flinched beside me, clenching her book tighter. What she didn't do was look at him. Her eyes were back on her lap, her head was down, and she looked like the most submissive thing I'd ever seen.

"It's okay," I promised. "I won't let him hit you."

"But I made a mistake," she whispered. "I know I did, because that man was so mad." Her eyes flicked to me, then back down quickly. "Was it the book? I know you said I could read it, but if I'm not supposed to, I understand. I don't want you to break the rules either."

"It wasn't the book," I promised. "It was your hair."

"My hair?"

"And skin," Zasen said from the kitchen where he was lighting the lamps. "Orin-colored."

"Mole-colored," I clarified. "And Moles are our enemies."

"Why?" she breathed.

Yeah, that was not a subject I was willing to tackle yet, so I gave her a half-assed answer. "Because they made sure of it." Then I rubbed her arm, aware she flinched first, then tensed against my touch. "The cruel things your men do? They don't just do them to you. The difference is that we don't lower our eyes and take it. We fight back, Ayla."

"When I tried, I got chained to a tree," she reminded me.

"And now you're here," I said gently. "Now you have the chance to help us stop them from hurting more people."

"Like Meri and Callah?" she asked hopefully, daring to lift her head just a bit.

I caught her chin, encouraging her to actually look up. "Which ones are they again?" I couldn't keep track of the Mole names she tossed out so easily.

"Her friends," Zasen said. "The only ones she had, and they weren't even supposed to be friends."

Letting go of Ayla's chin, I twisted to see him. "And you fucking thought she was a damned threat? Did you shove your tail up your ass, or just your head?"

He stormed out of the kitchen to glare at me. Once again, Ayla pulled into herself, and I was done with this. Shoving to my feet, I crossed the room to stand before him.

"Do you fucking see what you're doing to her?"

"Did you hear Saveah?" Zasen shot back. "She's pissed. I tried to be nice to the girl, and now I might not get to see my godson because of it!"

"Like she'd stop you," I countered. "She just doesn't want Tamin around her!"

"And?" Zasen thrust out both hands in Ayla's direction. "That's my fucking point. I have to watch her. I have to make sure she doesn't wander out and get into another stupid mess because that girl is so damned naive about everything! She doesn't even know what a fucking sunset is!"

"Which is why we're showing - " I stopped as the door opened.

"Everything okay?" Rymar asked as he slowly made his way in. Seeing us, he looked over at Ayla, then back. "What happened?"

"Adoet," I explained. "He came in from trapping when she was in the yard."

"Alone," Zasen growled.

"I didn't mean to," Ayla breathed. "I just wanted to see the flowers. I'm sorry. I'll never do it again."

"Uh-huh." Rymar started walking again, heading for the kitchen with a bag slung over his shoulder. "Well, I brought home dinner from the cafe. I got a few selections because I wasn't sure what Ayla would like, but since you said she needs red meat, I went with venison and fish." I heard him set that down, and then he was back. "And Adoet's an asshole."

"Mhm," I agreed.

Zasen just sighed, but in a way that was much too close to a growl.

"I can figure out how many people there are," Ayla offered into the silence that followed. "I just have to remember which halls have rooms filled, and then I could add it up. And there are places to store weapons too, just like your closet, but bigger."

"You know about the weapons in the closet?" I asked.

She grimaced, getting even smaller. "I looked. That first day, I was scared, so I wanted to know where things were. The next morning, I was all alone and hungry, so I looked behind all the doors. I didn't touch them, though. I promise! I didn't want to mess anything up."

"Uh-huh..." Rymar said yet again.

"What?" Zasen snapped at him.

"So, the assassin found your poorly-concealed weapons stash, didn't try to take any of them, and hasn't made an attempt on your life in the middle of the night." He thrust out his lower lip and nodded his head a few times. "I see."

"He said he'll kill me if I can't help," Ayla mumbled. "So I'm trying to help."

Rymar just groaned. "Zasen..."

"That's not what I said," Zasen insisted.

"It kinda is," I countered.

"It's not what I meant!" he insisted.

"So what did you mean?" Rymar asked.

"That if she's a threat, I'll deal with her," Zasen said.

Rymar flung both of his brow ridges up as high as he could and gestured at Ayla. "Her? A threat? Fucking how?"

"I don't know what that word means," Ayla said softly.

"Which?" I asked, turning back to her.

"Fucking."

"Yeah, it's profanity," I explained. "We'll cover that later."

Rymar huffed at that. "She doesn't even know how to curse. She's not a threat, Zasen. She's not going to hurt anyone. She just wants to learn a few things and have men stop hitting her!"

"We get water from a pipe that runs to the surface," Ayla said. "I know where it is. I wasn't supposed to go down that hall, because the lights had been used elsewhere, but I could follow it with my hand in the dark."

"And she's helping," I told Zasen. "She's trying as hard as she can to help you. How about you stop being a dipshit and maybe try to help her back?"

His blue tail snapped once behind him, then stilled. "Yeah. Okay."

"And," Rymar said, "I'm going to tell Jeera about this."

Which made me chuckle, but Zasen turned and headed into the kitchen with a groan. Sadly, Ayla still hadn't stopped crying, but I'd handle that. The odd thing was I didn't even mind.

This girl was sweet. She was trying harder than anyone I'd ever met before. And, even with her sunburned skin starting to peel, I couldn't miss the fact that she might even be beautiful. I simply wouldn't tell my friends that part.