Page 2 of Dragon Eternal (Dragon Kings 4)
“The poor always do,” the other muttered.
Nia was embarrassed by their words. She didn’t smell anything, but she did feel hunger, and so did her brother and sister. She tried to elbow the man holding her. “Let me go.”
He sighed loudly, her hit glancing off his armor and hurting her more than it did him. But she wasn’t going to give up. She kept struggling, all the while watching the other soldier walking to where eight men with bulging muscles stood holding a covered litter. The curtains didn’t part, but she saw the soldier’s mouth move and then his head nod. He turned to her and the brute holding her and motioned them toward the litter.
“No!” Nia screamed. “I need to get to my sister and brother! They need me!”
The man unceremoniously dumped her to the ground, then pointed a gloved finger at her and stated, “Stay.”
Nia shivered on the cold stone, her heart hammering in her chest. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to find a way to escape. The two soldiers walked down the alley where she had been, then went up the stairs. She waited breathlessly for them to return. What were they doing with her siblings? She wouldn’t let the men hurt them.
Before she could even dare to grab one of the soldier’s weapons, the men returned, carrying her siblings. Nia got to her feet. She was ready to rush to them when she heard the soldiers’ whispered words.
“The wee one has been dead a few hours.”
“More kids left to starve to death.”
Nia shook her head. No. They had to be wrong. Chanler had been sleeping when she left. Myria had been hungry, yes, but she had been alive. Tears welled in Nia’s eyes. She hadn’t been gone that long. The men were wrong. They had to be.
“No,” she whispered when they handed her siblings off to someone else. “Myria! Chanler!” she shouted, but neither of them woke, neither of them cried for her.
Nia had seen a lot of death in her young years. She knew what it looked like. And she knew her sister and brother were gone.
All the fight left her. She wondered what she was going to say to her mother. How would she explain that she had let her down? Nia wrapped her arms around herself once more, but nothing could make her warm again. She didn’t want to tell her mom about her siblings. That meant she had failed in the one directive her mother had given.
Nia barely realized she had been lifted off her feet. Only when they dropped her into a cart full of other children who looked as hungry, dirty, and scared as she did, did she begin to comprehend that life—at least as she knew it—was over.
She whipped her head around and put the area to memory. She would return one day and let her mother know that she was alive.
