Feel the Burn (Dragon Kin #8)(14)

“Should we?” Kachka glanced around. “I’m quite comfortable.”

“And it’s not like we asked her here,” Marina tossed in. “She invited herself.”

“Cousin . . .”

“Fine!” Kachka stood. “We will follow the great beast.”

And they did. It wasn’t as if they had to try hard. Zoya moved through the trees like a herd of elephants.

“Excellent!” Zoya cheered when they reached the other party. “Slavers! With boys!”

“We really don’t have time for this, Zoya,” Kachka called out to her.

“Oh, come now!” Zoya cheered, making the slavers wince at the sound. They’d probably heard little but the sobs of the newer slaves for many days. “There are a few here who could be quite worthy of my daughters.”

“Doesn’t your human queen have problems with slavers?” Marina asked.

“Large problems.”

Ivan stood beside Kachka, looking over the slavers.

“You’re not going to let that boar burn, are you?” She was starving.

“No, no. It’s fine.” He seemed to be studying the group.

“What?” Kachka asked him.

“Seems an awful lot of armed protection for such weak-looking slaves, Kachka Shestakova.”

Putting her ravenous hunger aside, Kachka now studied the group herself.

And Ivan was right.

“You and your sister circle around,” she told Ivan softly while Zoya examined the wares and commented on them . . . loudly.

The Khoruzhaya siblings eased back into the surrounding trees as the rest of them moved closer to the slavers. Kachka just wanted to make sure there was nothing to worry about. She didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night, fighting for her life against slavers who thought the small group could be added to their purchases.

What Kachka noticed right away was that the slavers became more tense, hands straying to the hilts of their weapons, as her group approached.

“And look at this one!” Zoya went on in the common tongue, oblivious as always. “Why did you have to beat him so?”

Zoya was right. The boy was young and could easily be managed without beating him to a pulp, but men . . . they weren’t really thinkers, were they? Always basing their actions on emotion and their own delicate egos.

“Cousin?” Tatyana said softly as she pointed out some random slave that Kachka knew for a fact her cousin would have no interest in.

“Yes?”

“The slave wearing the full cloak, to the far left?”

Kachka glanced over, then away, but saw nothing of interest. “What about him?”

“The boots he wears. Those are the boots of the Praetorian Guard.”

“So?”

“The Praetorian Guard provides personal protection for the royal family of the Quintilian Provinces. If my information is correct,” and they both knew it was, “your Southlander queen has a very strong and fruitful alliance with the king of that region. I’m sure it would not hurt if you looked into the capture of one of the king’s personal guards.”

“Look into the capture of a guard so weak he is captured by slavers?”

Ignoring Marina’s smirk and soft laugh, Tatyana moved closer and said, “Do you really think a king’s personal guard would be so easy to capture?”

Kachka finally looked at her cousin and Tatyana lifted her brows.

“Watch my back,” Kachka told Marina, not really trusting her cousin to be able to do it, and slowly made her way down the line of slaves.

“Do not try to overcharge me, worthless male,” Zoya argued, her big hands on the shoulders of two boys who looked like they wanted anyone else in the world but this woman to take them.

Kachka moved toward the hooded man with the Praetorian Guard boots. He was sitting now, his hands shackled in front of him, his head bowed so that he was completely covered by the cloak he wore.

The guards near him grew tense, though none tried to stop her. But their grips did tighten on the hilt of their weapons.

She moved past them casually, her hands near none of her own weapons. Finally she stood in front of the male and, slowly, dropped to a crouch in front of him.

“How much for this one?” she asked.

“Sorry, Rider. That one has already been sold.”

“Ahh. I see. Can I look at him?”

“If you’d like, but we can’t sell him to you.”

“I might have a better offer,” Kachka said as she reached over and gently pulled the hood back.

“There is no offer you can make, Rider. But we greatly apologize.”

“You’re right, there is no offer I can make,” Kachka agreed upon seeing the face of the “slave” for the first time.

The man looked at her through the single steel-colored eye in his head and with a voice exhausted and raw, he said, “Kachka Shestakova. I see death has found you well.”

“Can’t say the same for you though, lizard.”

“No,” he replied with a weak but relieved smile, steel-colored hair falling into his face. “I guess you can’t.”

Kachka, sensing movement behind her, reached for the sword at her side, but it was too late. The man moving up behind her was now in the grip of Zoya Kolesova. An angry Zoya Kolesova.