Soul of Ice

Chapter Twelve

Rianne had just thanked her when Aaro, seemingly finished with the bed sheets, turned toward her again. He nodded curtly at Astra, the kids, and the previous members of the group that had been playing cards. "Get out." The moment they were all outside the room, he moved to slam the door closed. Astra raised her eyebrows. Harsh.

She turned to look back at her companions. The males grimaced and gave her a half-hearted wave before they left down the hallway. Left in front of her was Rianne's and Myric's son, who had already sat down against the wall and was picking at his way too large gray shirt. Astra sat down criss-crossed across from him and tried to give him a reassuring smile.

"Well, I guess we're in for a long wait." The boy fidgeted with the loose seams at the edges of his shirt and then shrugged. Astra herself shifted, unsure what else to say, before she asked, "What's your name?"

There was a long, silent period of silence before the timid boy whispered, "Timothy." His voice was barely loud enough to carry to even Astra's enhanced ears. She ran a hand through her hair. The silence began again.

"Well, uh," she began, and then stopped. Timothy blinked at her. Damn, when was the last time she'd interacted with a child? She began again. "Well. My name is Astra." From his lap, his right hand came up halfway, before it shrank back down.

She asked, "Can I call you Timmy?" Timothy didn't react. Astra hadn't felt so self conscious in a while. "How old are you, Timmy?"

"Eight."

"Well Timmy, I'm seventeen." Timmy continued to blink his doe-like brown eyes at her. Astra couldn't restrain herself from glancing at the door behind her. How long did it take to birth a child?

When she had turned back around, Timmy had started fidgeting excessively again. The fabric thread he was twisting and untwisting was awfully long. It was frayed and looked like it had been there for a long time. No one had cut it, no doubt because there was nothing sharp in the army. Well, Astra thought with a wry smile to herself, nothing sharp except the sharp canines boasted by all wraiths.

"Are there really horses outside?"

She blinked in surprise at hearing the boy utter more than two words in a row. She refocused her eyes on Timothy's face instead of the gray thread he was still twirling in his hands.

"Outside? Probably in the stables."

"Stables?" he asked.

"You know, where the horses are kept." Timmy's blank expression had her reeling in confusion, and then, a second later, in suspicion. She asked, "Have you ever seen a horse before?"

Timothy twisted his hands, then said, "Mama always reads to me my favorite book. It has a lot of horses."

Astra hesitated, then ventured to ask, "Timmy, have you ever been outside of here?"

The boy shook his head. "Mama and Papa told me I was born here. In that room." He pointed at the room behind Astra. She stared at Timothy and did the math. And then she did the math again using her fingers so she could see the true magnitude.

"You've been here for eight years?" He shrugged. By the gods. That would mean... At least eight years. Timothy's parents had been enslaved here, underground, for at least eight years. And exactly how long had Auxerre been enslaving wraiths?

Astra closed her eyes so that she wouldn't have to see Timmy blinking his innocent brown eyes at her.

The better question was how Auxerre had managed to keep all of this secret in all these years.

She remembered the course of Iveian politics she'd been required to take during her training in Varaly. There had been nothing, absolutely nothing, mentioned of a slave army of any sort within Auxerre. Pelosia, yes, that she knew about firsthand. She could almost see the carnage and destruction and fire behind her closed lids. But not Auxerre. She almost chuckled out loud—there'd been nothing mentioned of the Wraith Ban in Auxerre either. So many questions, so few answers, and she knew the wise decision would be to ignore the urge to want to find the answers to those questions.