A Shade of Kiev 2 by Bella Forrest Read Free Book Online

panting. But the minute I had climbed out of the water, my migraine disappeared just as suddenly as it had arrived.
    What in the world…
    I stood up and stared at the ground, frowning.
    Can this really be a coincidence?

Chapter 8: Mona
    I spent the night curled up in the tiny cupboard Mogda had given me to sleep in—just a few meters away from the royal siblings’ chambers—listening to Elsbeth sob herself to sleep.
    I breathed out in relief when there was a knock at the door the next day. As soon as Mogda opened the door, I walked out of the room before she could step in.
    “I need to speak with you,” I whispered.
    She looked at me curiously.
    “I can’t do this,” I said. “I can’t sit in there and watch the way that monster is treating his sister. I don’t know what he’s doing to her, but if I stay up here, I’m going to interfere. Do you know what is going on with him?”
    She looked scared and shook her head. “You want me to give you a different job?”
    I nodded. “Please.”
    She scowled. “You were only just given this job.”
    “Please.” I clutched her heavy arm and shook it.
    She shrugged me off and sighed. “All right. I’ll find you something to do. Come with me.”
    I followed her down several staircases and along dozens of dark corridors. We didn’t stop until we had arrived back in the same hall that contained the entrance to the dungeon I’d been thrown in when I first arrived on the island. But rather than descending back down into that dungeon, Mogda opened a door on the opposite side of the room. It led to a narrow set of stairs. We descended and reached yet another door at the bottom. She creaked the door open.
    I gasped and clasped a hand to my mouth.
    The brightly lit room contained rows and rows of human infants spread out on wide, long wooden tables. Each lay in its own straw cot and was wrapped up in a blanket—many of them crying, while others slept.
    Ogres ran in and out through another door at the other end of the chamber, grabbing several baskets of babies at a time and running back out into the room next door.
    “It’s almost breakfast time for the royals,” she grumbled. She breathed in deeply, her face twisting into a scowl. “The rest of us are stuck with animal meat.”
    For the royals.
    “No,” I gasped, stumbling out of the room and leaning against the wall in the staircase outside. “Give me something other than this. Anything other than this.”
    She rolled her eyes again and stomped her foot. “Listen to me, little girl. If you’re going to live here, you’re going to have to get used to how we live. How do you expect to stay here if you are so squeamish about everything?”
    “Just… just give me something else,” I stammered, placing a palm over my forehead, trying to ease the queasiness bubbling in my stomach.
    “One last duty I’ll offer you. If you reject that too, I give up. I’ll go to the king and explain that you’re too much trouble and are interfering with my own duties.”
    “All right.” Nothing else she could offer me would be as horrific as what I’d just witnessed.
    We climbed the stairs and returned to the dark hall. This time, she unlocked the door to the dungeon where all the women were kept. Several women looked up as we entered, scurrying to the back of their cells and whimpering. Many of them looked up at me with desperate eyes as we walked.
    It’s a wonder any of them survive until childbirth in these conditions.
    We reached a door at the other end of the cavernous chamber and entered though it. In this room were more humans—this time, all of them male. There were far fewer men than women in the room we’d just left.
    She stopped once we reached the opposite wall of this chamber and entered a smaller connected room that contained a large metal container and other cleaning equipment.
    “Your job is to clean this dungeon and also the one next door,” she said. “You don’t need to clean inside the cells—I