Land of Ashes by Stacey Marie Brown

Author:Stacey Marie Brown [Brown, Stacey Marie & Brown, Stacey Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-24T18:30:00+00:00

A low firelamp flickered between us as we finished off the watery tripe soup and day-old bread. I wrapped a heavy, smelly blanket around my shoulders, the chill still finding its way into my bones, though it was ten times better than outside the storage room.

The village was small, and everything was closed. The only thing telling me people lived here was the flickers of light in the windows from their fireplaces.

Ash had stopped at a general store, noticing a light on in a flat above. He knocked on the door, a man’s face peering suspiciously from the blinds upstairs. Ash reached out, taking my hand and pulling me into him.

“What are you—?”

“Follow my lead.” He wrapped an arm around me as the door cracked, a chain opening just a few inches. A small dark-haired man with a mustache looked out, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.

“Buna ziua.” Hello. Ash spoke to him in Romanian. “We are traveling through and have nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat.”

“Nu problema mea.” Not my problem. He was about to shut the door when Ash’s voice rushed on.

“My mate is pregnant.” He touched my stomach, rubbing it tenderly as if a real baby was growing there. My muscles locked up. The heat and size of his palm caressing me, the possessive way he hovered over me. “Please. It’s freezing out here. I need to get her indoors and a little food for our baby.”

The man’s eyes moved over us, noting my shivering frame and exhaustion. Grumbling under his breath, he pointed to the back. “There is a storage room you can stay in for the night.”

The man was skeptical, which I understood, but he gave us blankets, soup, and bread, waving his hand when Ash said we could pay him a few coins.

“At least we have a roof overhead.” Ash dropped his spoon in the bowl, laying back on his blanket. The room held staples like huge sacks of wheat, corn, and oats, overwhelming my nose with the smell of grain.

Leaning against one of the sacks, I pulled my legs into me, setting my bowl to the side. I could still feel his hand imprinted on my flat stomach.

“Think he believed us?”

“Probably not.” Ash snorted, glancing at my body. “But at least enough to ignore it.”

“I could be.” I won’t ever be. “Just not showing yet.”

Ash didn’t reply, the firelight flickering off his eyes as he stared absently at the ceiling.

“Did you want kids?” The question blurted from me.

A scowl dug into the space between his brows. “No.”

“Why not? You’d make a good father.”

“Really?” He laughed, motioning around. “Yeah, great role model.” He stared off again, his arms folding behind his head. I didn’t expect him to continue on, startling me with his next statement. “I would never want a child to go through what I did.”

“Like what?”

He drew in a long, choppy breath, letting it out in the same way.

“Before I met the people I call family, I had run away from the people who gave me life, who were supposed to be my family.

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