Angel's Abdication: A Splitting Worlds Novella (The Splitting Worlds Series) by Katherine D. Graham

Author:Katherine D. Graham [Graham, Katherine D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Starry Ink Press, LLC
Published: 2022-04-08T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Not even my darkest imaginings of Tartarus and the Underworld could have prepared me for the abomination that is Demon King Draco's kingdom.

Nearly skeletal arms and hands grope at me from cages—not prison cells, cages—built into the walls on either side of the hallway just outside my room. At least two Humans are packed into each one, crouching in confined spaces that don't even reach my waist in height.

Haggard bodies in scraps of clothing stare at me through sunken eyes. While no excrement is visible in the cages, the occupants reek of it. Muffled cries and choked-off wails as Draco passes by make me almost regret regaining my hearing.

Rage rises within me, quickly reaching a boiling point. Dorathea and I have trod many battlefields with damned soldiers, such as Vampires breaking the Treaties and kidnapping or killing Humans outside the 17th of the month. When Dorathea's blade swings on my behalf, justice is served. Their deaths add power to her Blood Diamond, which strengthens her hand and magic for future battles.

"Don't worry, Princess," Draco says, no sign of fear or defensiveness in his voice, "your sister can stay her blade in my walls. These fine people were legally acquired on the seventeenth, just two nights ago, in fact."

My rage simmers, nearly blinding my sense of duty, my knowledge that darkness exists for just as much of a reason as the light I—and my people—protect. Bile rises in my throat, and I struggle to calm my sloshing stomach.

While this is just as brutal, this isn't a battlefield. Despite the atrocities around me, Draco is right, my hands are tied. I cannot condemn a staple of the Demon and Devil life that even the gods, in their undying wisdom, make permissions for.

As we turn out of one corridor and into another, minotaurs pull two young women from their cells and strip them of their remaining clothes. The creatures shove the women into washbasins overflowing with water that is nearly black from dirt and blood. These are no bubble-baths, like mine. And the bright-green sludge being forced into the mouths of newly-cleaned and naked bodies shivering further down the hall outside of empty cages is not the tasteless mush I've been fed.

My heart breaks when we pass a little old woman hugging a younger woman who must be barely in her twenties. Stopping of their own accord, my feet feel as though they have been cemented to the ground.

Keep going, I tell myself, there's nothing I can do.

"Why?"

The single word gives Draco pause, and he turns to me with an amused smirk and raised eyebrow.

"Why what?" he asks, and at his words every eye in the hall turns to him.

The silence is smothering, as though all air has been sucked from the room. Squaring my shoulders in the new sleeveless crimson satin dress Draco had gifted me after my bath, I compose myself as the Queen-to-Be that I've nearly forgotten in the past two weeks. Narrowing my eyes pointedly at the cages and people around me, I hope he catches my meaning without me having to say something aloud.

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