Chapter 13 #2
“I can explain that,” he said, but I raised my hand to stop him.
There was nothing I’d rather do than hash the whole thing out, but it was then I caught movement in the back of the small building.
We weren’t alone. The discovery that three much smaller Naga were huddled in the back was like good and bad news all at once.
These had to be Khawla’s younglings—the ones he’d come here to see because he had a bad feeling.
Clearly, he’d been right, or they wouldn’t be locked up in here with him. That was the bad part.
“Oooooh…” I said, and I stepped over Khawla’s coils, though he did not raise them to block my path.
My eyes roved over the three small ones with fascination.
The two in the front hovered protectively, one bigger than the other and clearly the boldest. That one had scales as matte and muted as his father’s, while the smaller one was a pretty blue but had bright amethyst eyes.
His sons: Rasho and Daois. Which made the smallest, huddled figure Nisha, the baby of the family.
When my eyes latched onto her, the boys shifted even more into my path, and their father said nothing behind me.
Either he was still stewing over the not-mate discussion or he’d taken a weird moment to actually listen to what I said.
Perhaps he was just waiting to see what I’d do.
They were used to obeying their females; maybe he didn’t know that he had every right to interfere if he wanted to.
Nisha had her father’s scales and her father’s eyes.
She looked more like him than either boy did, and that included the pronged horn on her tiny chin.
I’d already seen that every other Naga I’d encountered had only one, but Khawla had two, just like his baby girl.
And then I saw the bloody gash cutting into her cheek, and horror struck me.
“Oh, poor baby!” I exclaimed, forgetting for a moment that, even young, Khawla’s two sons could probably do serious harm to me if they wanted.
I rushed forward, caught their shoulders, and gently nudged them apart so that I could kneel down next to Nisha.
“Who did that to you, sweet one? Let me see, I’ll take care of you, darling.
” She blinked at me through her tears, and though I knew now that she likely couldn’t understand a word I said, she uncoiled to curl into my open arms. The tone of my voice had said enough, but I could hear Khawla murmur a translation for them behind me in a voice that sounded suspiciously choked.
She was so slight that it shocked me, her sinuous body trembling as I picked her up.
It wasn’t just her face that was scratched up, but all across the front of her body and her forearms—scratches and cuts marked her.
It was hard not to linger in the anger that filled me at the sight, but it would not help her right now.
So, I made my voice calm and gentle as I carried her closer to the hearth and asked Khawla if he had any medical supplies.
I kept telling the little one reassurances too, which didn’t need translating.
A leather satchel was set down next to me, and the boys brought me bowls of heated water and clean scraps of leather.
My tiny patient clung to me but did not make a sound as I checked each wound and cleaned it with the rudimentary supplies.
One or two cuts had already been covered with some kind of ointment.
Khawla held a jar of it out to me, and I sniffed at it suspiciously.
“What’s in it? Is it clean?” I didn’t want to rub anything into the wounds and risk an infection, but I also didn’t want to discard medication when it was a proven remedy.
He named things I did not know about, but then he said the magic words: it was made by Artek.
He touched the patch that hid his damaged eye and explained further.
“I was on death’s door, but the Shaman controls relics from the past and used those to heal me.
I do not even have scars on my chest from the damage—the ointment works.
” Then he pointed at one of a handful of glowing lights that sat around the small home.
Those were ‘relics,’ as he called them, but really, they were ancient technology.
I got the message: someone far more advanced than he had made this medicine. I made the choice to trust it.
By the time I was done checking every inch of the small girl, she’d given into exhaustion and fallen asleep against my shoulder.
Khawla had snuck the tip of his tail around my ankle, and his sigils glowed, lighting up the room more brightly than the fire and the little relic lamps did.
Now that my task was done, I had a moment to take a breath and look around.
It was obvious right away that this was a home—his home, probably.
There was a pile of furs in a round bowl against the back wall, beneath a small window.
That’s where I’d found Nisha, but it was clearly Khawla’s bed.
A ladder led to a small loft where the children probably slept.
Belongings were scattered about, too—bowls on a shelf, weapons in racks on the wall that nobody had apparently bothered to take, and baskets lining a wall with supplies.
There were also carved wooden toys, and one boy was holding a Naga-shaped rag doll nervously in his hands.
When my eyes landed on it, he held it out to me, his purple eyes glowing brightly. “Thank you,” I said politely.
“It’s for Nisha,” Khawla explained. “She’s technically too old to keep Vod, but…
” Too old? I looked from the small doll to the small girl and gently tucked it into her limp arms. It was harder to tell, because she was not of a species I knew much about, but to me she looked no older than four.
A four-year-old wasn’t too old for her doll, was she?
“Nonsense. I’m pretty sure I still have my dolls from when I was little.
Didn’t stop sleeping with them until I was well into my teens…
” I faltered then, because it wasn’t true—I didn’t have my dolls anymore.
They’d probably been tossed to the streets when I’d been arrested and “executed,” or scavenged and taken by the neighbors.
I didn’t own a single thing now, but still, that didn’t mean this girl couldn’t have her doll when she was hurt.
Khawla had translated that too, and his boys shared incredulous looks before they slid a little closer to me.
“I can have Vod?” Nisha whispered then, surprising me when she fluttered open her lashes and pierced me with her amethyst eyes in exactly the same way her father could.
When I hurried to nod, she squeezed the rag doll to her chest with a sigh and turned her face further into my chest. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, reminding me of the wards I’d cared for at the hospital, and the ones I’d visited at their homes in my spare time.
Having never found the right guy to settle down with, they had been my children.
It felt like a moment out of time when I sat there with a little girl in my arms. She’d perked up enough to begin telling stories, and her brothers would sidle closer and closer until they were right next to me, too, interjecting comments when their sister got it wrong or skipped a vital part.
It did not seem to matter that they couldn’t understand my words of encouragement, either.
I didn’t have the heart to put a stop to it, even if we probably had better things to do—like plan an escape.
Khawla paced, though the loop of his tail remained curled around my ankle so I could understand his younglings.
His oldest son, Rasho, would alternate between sitting with me and mirroring his dad.
I watched them from the corner of my eye when he did, my heart fluttering in my chest over how cute it looked.
Damn it, forget about being mad, this family had been through the wringer.
Khawla had every reason to want to protect them, and after just ten minutes, I already knew I wanted to do the same.
To do that, we had to escape. To do that, we needed a plan, and possibly help.
So I focused on the things I could control: making the kids happy for now, and helping them to bed when they began to flag.
Nisha didn’t want to let go of me, so I sat with her until she’d fallen asleep.
My skin broke out in goosebumps when I discovered that Rasho was still awake and staring at me with a sharp look in his eyes.
I went with my gut, leaning down to brush a kiss on his forehead, just like I’d done to his siblings.