Deliciously Deadly: a Red Riding Hood retelling

Chapter 8

It wasn't just a stroke of bad luck that saw the plague come along soon after the famine began.

As hungry civilians everywhere resorted to the consumption of rotten meats and wild rats to stay alive, disease took hold in the weakened bodies of those who already suffered from a lack of food and nutrition.

All you needed was one hungry person to devour a bad, undercooked bat— I mean rat.

Unlike Cain, who had decided to stay home to protect his farm and wife, most of the villagers of Wilkin continued to frequent the town, hoping to sell their wares for decent silvers with which they could purchase the barest morsels of food. Back and forth they went, bringing a new sickness back to the village.

That day, when the villagers had gathered to conspire against the Uglies, some were already sick. The cobbler had coughed his spittle into the air they shared, and neglected to mention that he had also vomited the evening before.

Then that night, when the angry villagers stormed the farm, several of them had been suffering sweats and fevers, but still they went. It was the spirit of a village community: you stuck together until you didn't.

And when they yelled their rage, they also sputtered droplets of their saliva, to be carried on the wintry night breeze into the systems of the plague's new hosts.

One might think that was how karma worked, that the villagers who burned down someone else's home deserved to fall victim to the plague. The plague, however, was a little less discriminatory than that. It was well on its way to Tom and Adam and Willa and Drea and, of course, the loud-mouthed Penny.

But it also found in Lottie a weakened body from months of malnutrition and there, it took its hold.

Come morning in the little hut, Lottie was sweating, shuddering and muttering nonsense about Daisy the cow and Tulip the chicken.

"Lottie?" Cain shook her gently, then withdrew his hand immediately. She was burning up. "Lottie!" he called again. She did not respond.

In the hours that followed, he brought back a bucket of fresh water from a nearby stream and pressed a damp strip of cloth to her forehead. He wiped away every bit of sweat and soot that had clung to her skin from the fire. Her eyes moved behind her eyelids and her lips quivered as she continued to rattle nonsense, but she did not wake.

He could hide the mare and cart. He could mark an abandoned hut in the woods in case the need ever arose for alternative shelter, as it did now. But he knew nothing about caring for the sick because he'd never been sick himself and he'd never cared for anyone before Lottie.

Helpless, Cain picked up a plank of wood from a corner of the hut and broke it into a smaller chunk over his leg. He had stashed away a pile of wood on his previous visits to this hut for the purposes of building a fire, but he didn't think that Lottie would much enjoy seeing the fire so soon after what happened. Even he...

A threatening growl escaped his throat even though there was no one for him to threaten in the hut. It took immense effort to suppress the urge to sprint back to Wilkin and slaughter every last one of them who had a hand in destroying the only place he'd ever called home. But his gaze flicked back to Lottie.

Perfectly adjusted to the dark, his eyes trailed the sharp points of her chin and shoulders, the delicate bones of her clavicle and the sallowness of her cheeks. After all these months of food rationing, she looked so fragile, as if he might accidentally break her if he wasn't careful.

Her brittle softness pulled him close with an invisible string, until he hovered over her face. Unable to resist, he pressed a kiss to her forehead.

No killing. He was here to protect her.