Her Cinder Throne (Completed)

Chapter 2

Instead of heading to the communal water cistern down by the inn district, Cole instead bent her steps back toward the main streets where the vendors still hawked their fragrant wares. She picked her position carefully as she approached a stall selling salted pork, making sure she was mostly hidden by a large rack of ribs swaying in the hot summer air.

From this position, she had a shot at some of the pig hearts sitting in a barrel covered in flies. No one bought them from this stall, where the sun beat down on them all day, and she knew that the stall vendor was less likely to be keeping an eye on the barrel. She leaned against the rack of ribs, stretching her arm over the boxes of salted pork slices and into the barrel. Her hand closed around a clump of warm and sticky hearts, and she pulled them back as the flies burst up at her disturbance of their food.

As she pulled back her handful of hearts, the stall vendor whipped around at the sound of the flies and knocked the ribs with a stick to reveal Cole staring at him with large eyes.

"Thief!" he shouted, pointing at her with the stick as the ribs swung to block her from his view for a brief moment. She took those precious seconds and spun on her heel, racing through the crowds and back to her street.

She burst onto the trash-filled road she lived on, only a few seconds ahead of the stall vendor, and saw that her home was too far away to reach before the vendor rounded the corner and saw her. She had to get out of sight before he saw which direction she'd taken.

Banking a hard right, she ducked down a small alley between two buildings and slid on her knees to a halt in front of a board of wood that leaned up against the back wall. Behind it, a dirty cloth hung from two rusty nails, but once Cole swept it out of the way a warm draft blew against her skin from a hole in the wall to the building beyond.

Crawling through the hole, she crouched on the other end and carefully replaced the rag over the entrance and waited with held breath. The board hiding the entrance usually was enough to keep the entrance secret from passersby, but if the stall vendor had happened to see her entering the alley, he wouldn't give up without looking around closely.

With each second that passed, it felt like an eternity. Cole's muscles tensed and she dug her fingers deep into the dirt floor, waiting and waiting to hear the board being wrenched away and the sound of the vendor yelling for the palace guards to come rid the streets of one more thief. But it never came, and after a minute, Cole finally relaxed and let out a breath in a rush of relief.

As she patted her chest to sooth her rushing heart, she turned to face the room beyond her. It was small and close, once a supply room for a tannery that had since gone out of business and been divided into cramped living quarters for those who could not afford their own shack. The supply room, too small to be of any use, had been closed off and forgotten. That is, until Cole had discovered the loose paneling in the alley, and pulled them away to find herself in a room that she could escape to when the world became too much.

With the pig hearts in hand, she took the three steps to the other side of the room and squatted down around a nest made of moldy straw and ripped up pieces of cloth. Empty shells of seeds and wheat lay scattered in the dirt, and as she pulled away a corner of the straw, a burst of high pitched squeaking filled the air.

"All right, stop whining," Cole laughed, running a finger over the nest of half-naked baby rats that lay curled in the straw. "I've brought some food."

She clicked her tongue to draw out the mother rat, who appeared from another corner of the room. It limped toward Cole on its remaining three legs, and grabbed the offered pig's heart from her hand with its teeth. As the mother crawled into the nest with its young, Cole got a look at the broken tail and wound, which had been the reason she'd rescued the family from a back alley in the city. She had no idea what had caused the injuries, but the mother rat had been near death a few days ago. Now the injuries seemed to be healing at least a little bit. Cole was just happy that she was moving around and interested in feeding her young once again.

By that time, the rest of the animals that called the room their home appeared from their nests of straw and rags, and approached Cole to receive their share of the hearts. Thankfully, most of her animals had healed and moved on, and it was down to just the rats, a lizard that she'd rescued from dehydration out in the fields, and a cat that had been burned badly by Sparkstone dust at the mines.

As her animals ate, she ran her fingers over their spines and muttered some comforting words to them. She had no medicine to offer them, and her words were as good as she could do. But she hoped they'd help, in some strange way.

Leaning her head back, she rested against the wall of the room and closed her eyes. Her stomach pinched with pain from hunger, and her muscles felt as heavy as lead from the long nights in the mines. She was still covered in the black dust and sweat, and she wondered if the nobles in the palace ever wondered how their constant supply of the miracle stone was kept up. Did they ever think of the men and women selling their lives for a few coins? Did they ever wondered what the mines were like? How the workers suffocated in stale air and the earth's heat, and dreamed of cool breezes instead of silk dresses and banquets?

She rubbed her eyes as her mind turned to the memory of Prince Bastian's eyes on her as he passed by in his palanquin. He had seemed so cool and clean, like a fresh roll of linen being carried back home after the laundry. Of course, he was handsome and young and oh-so-healthy. His hooded eyes made him seem as if he was perpetually at ease, and the natural olive undertone of his skin made it look as if he was kissed by the sun without having to actually stand in the rays. But all those blessings for his face and strong form meant nothing to Cole when she thought of him. He'd seen her, but she was sure he hadn't seen anything more than a dirty slave. A subject that his family could use to keep the country running smoothly.

Cole sighed and opened her eyes to the dingy room. It was hot and dark, but compared to the mines it felt like heaven. And there was no Helene or Drew or screaming or plates being launched at her head. She was blessedly alone with her animals.

Scratching the cat under its ears as it rubbed against her legs, she rested her chin on her knees and frowned. "You're lucky that after you heal you can run away," she whispered. "No debts to repay to horrible stepmothers because your father thought marrying for money was a good idea." She bit her lip as she thought of her father's easy smile and the way he'd given her sweet buns to keep her from telling Helene of the money he'd taken and spent in only a few hours at the gambling halls.

She pulled the cat into her lap. "Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one who looks like a heaping pile of horse dung." She grinned tersley to herself as she gently stroked the cat's singed fur and then her own shaved scalp. "I hope Prince Bastian felt sick after seeing my ugly mug. Right, Cat? Our purpose can be to put those simpering nobles off their lunches for one day." She laughed and sat the cat back on its feet, ready to head back home.

But as she turned to make her way back to the entrance, she saw that it was blocked by a form silhouetted in the setting summer sun coming through the rag curtain. She hadn't heard anyone enter, and she hadn't seen any movement out of the corner of her eye the entire time she'd been in the room. Yet, here was a man stepping forward in the dim lighting, looking down at her with impossibly aqua eyes.

"Cole Glassad," he said, his voice tinged with an accent Cole had never heard before. "I've been looking for you."

Before she could do or say anything, he reached out and placed a hand on her arm. She gasped, trying to yank back and tell him off, but a strong shock ran through her body, locking it in place as the lights around her burst like sparks and her vision rocked as if she was stuck in a runaway carriage. Everything tilted and a rushing noise filled her ears, spinning with the colors of everything around her as they all mixed into a strange blur across her eyes.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped. Gentle moonlight spilled down on Cole's skin from a velvety night sky. She gasped for breath next to the man in a lush field of midnight blue grass, across from a mirror-glass lake, in a place that did not exist anywhere that Cole knew of.

--

A/N: Thanks for the patience with this update! My laptop broke and a bunch of other stuff I wasn't expecting happened in March, which kept me extremely busy. However, my laptop is now fixed and I'm out of the thick of all the adulting stuff that demanded my time this month. The updates from now on shouldn't be as far apart from each other as these two were.