ask and you shall receive

His fathers scraps. Ultyr's nose practically held a perpetual half snarl since he was relegated to his father's trash heap. How dare he consign the God Prince to this, marr his face in such a shameful manner? The half snarl was both his mood and his flinch of pain as the scrape over her nose and brow continued to heal.

Eyes of saffron watched the scrap of a thing pause in her pain on the beach. Had he been nothing but a whelp of his own father's slaves? Was the story of how the goddess birthed him simply a ruse? Ultyr had watched her in the dark, silent and observing, as she labored. The ocean sounds and rigging against the hull was the only backdrop to her agony. Tiny unfeatured underdeveloped vermin with a mix of his father's coat and hers were carefully given to the waves, unbeknownst to her witness in the shadows.

Now he coldly watched her writhe in the pains of her after birth. She was struggling to hide it. Moons ago he would have pressed her on and tossed her aside to stop her sniveling. But now... She was holding them up on their quest to find Abbadon. No wonder he found Aryn's favorite plaything among the trash, she had been too weak to carry his brood and he knew it.

Ultyr caught the scent of some island chicken. They came in flocks, so of course, if he found one, he could find others. The trip over water had been grueling and his stomach rumbled.

"Sit here." He commanded gruffly and without so much as offering her a questing glance to be sure she obeyed he started on his hunt. She was already well trained. She had no voice to ask for help, and she already knew what he had done to servants in the past who decided to move more than a foot in either direction from where he placed them.

He stalked forward into the underbrush, leaving her to bake in the high summer sun against the pale sand. A faint clucking could be heard just ahead.