Shuna’s heart hamred against her ribs. She grabbed Gin’s arm, her grip frantic. Her voice shaking as she whispered,
"Gin, please... She is right. We cannot draw attention. Not now. Not yet. Let’s just go."
Gin’s eyes flared with a predatory gold light. For a second, it looked like she would lung across the table and rip the silk from the woman’s throat. Her muscles coiled... but she felt Shuna’s trembling hand and rembered the cage.
"Fine!"
Gin spat. She stood up, towering over the noblewoman. She grabbed the entire boar thigh from her plate and took a massive, defiant bite.
"Enjoy your ’High Table.’ It’s a very pretty place to rot."
Gin turned and walked away, her footsteps heavy. Shuna scurried behind her, head bowed, clutching her half empty tray.
As they sat down in the "low born" section on hard wooden benches, the sll of grease and sweat replaced the scent of incense. Gin stabbed her at with a wooden knife, her jaw tight.
"F*CK those nobles! They treat anyone they see as beneath them like animals! And she... she even dared to make the knight execute us just for sitting at the wrong table?!"
Shuna reached over, placing a gentle hand on Gin’s arm.
"Calm down, Gin... yelling won’t change anything. We need to stay alive, and a full stomach helps with that... We will get them, don’t worry but not now."
Gin huffed, glaring toward the noble tables, but Shuna’s touch grounded her just enough that she sank her teeth into her at instead of snapping at anyone nearby.
"Right... we will."
Gin stabbed her wooden knife into the bench, the grain of the wood cracking under her grip. Her gold eyes tracking the white-armored guards.
"The knights are just as bad. They don’t protect. They just wait for a reason to kill."
"Keep your voice down... if I were you."
A soft, tired voice drifted from across the table. Both Gin and Shuna blinked and looked up. Sitting across from them was a woman with red hair. She wore no makeup. Her face was pale and bare, but she was still beautiful in a ghostly way. Her stomach was not large, yet she rested her hands on it as if it were made of thin glass.
"This is normal..."
The woman said, her hollow eyes looking at the noble tables.
"In the first week, ten won died in this hall. One touched a noble’s sleeve by accident. Another ate a grape from the ’High Table.’ One breathed too loud near a Duchess. The knights don’t ask questions. They just swing their black blades."
Gin slamd her fist on the wood.
"And you all just sit here? You let them treat you like dirt while they breed you like hounds?"
Shuna grabbed Gin’s fist, pulling it back down.
"Gin, please! Quiet!"
She turned to the red haired woman, her voice softening.
"I am Shuna. This is Prin- I an... Gin. Hehe! We just arrived from the outer woods."
The woman gave a weak, sad smile.
"I am Sarah... or, to the King, I am known as Mother 1273. I am... a bit slow to speak. I will be delivering my second child tomorrow. The weight makes it hard to breathe."
"To-tomorrow!? Congratulations, Ms Sarah!"
Shuna chirped, trying to bring so light to the table.
"Your second? So your first is already a Dragonborn?"
"My first... a girl. She did not survive the Dragonrite. She was born strong, but the Dragon blood does not seek rely strong or healthy children... She burned. Most of the mothers you see crying... their children ended in ash."
Shuna’s hand flew to her mouth. Gin’s gold eyes narrowed until they were just slits.
"If they kill the children, why stay? Why not walk out the gates and never look back? You have legs. You have a will!"
Sarah looked up, a single tear carving a path through the dust on her cheek.
"Lowborns like us... we have no choice, Miss Gin. The war with the demigods devoured the world. Outside these walls, the fields lie in ashes. There is no grain. No salt. Mothers in the villages watch their children starve in the mud. If I leave, I starve. If I stay... I eat."
She gestured to the overflowing trays of at before them.
"Here, we eat. Here, we are warm. We give our bodies to the kingdom to restore the numbers of the Dragonborn because it is the only way to save our families from hunger and to save the kingdom from perishing. I would rather see my child burn in a holy fire than watch them rot in silence."
Her gaze drifted, distant, almost reverent.
"And bearing a white-blooded child... that is the highest offering I can give to our Dragon God, Tiamat. To dream that this child may beco a Dragonborn? That is the pinnacle of what we can offer this kingdom..."
Shuna looked down at the turkey leg in her hand. Suddenly, it didn’t look like food anymore. It looked like a bribe. She saw a mother at the next table over, too weak to even lift her spoon, her eyes staring at nothing. Shuna stood up, moving to help her, but her movents were slow, her spirit crushed by the truth.
"Shortage of food... starvation... The King is using the aftermath of war to draw these poor won here... They aren’t feeding us out of kindness. They feed us because, as that servant said... a thin womb is a useless womb. We are valued only for our... wombs."
Gin felt every fiber of her body ignite.
"This is wrong. They manipulate these mothers, pretending to save them, but in truth... they exploit them. They use their power to create life and never care for what cos of it."
Her hands clenched around the wooden knife.
"What about the babies... the ones who aren’t White Blooded? What happens to them?"
Sarah didn’t answer with words. She simply lifted her hand, pointing toward a woman seated nearby, her body slumped, her face pale, lips silent forever.
Gin followed the gesture, horror flooding her face as the grim truth settled in. She didn’t need words—the answer was right there.
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