Harwal, book 3

Chapter 9

There's an eerie silence after Harwal's words. How could he even suggest that I want to see my son suffer?

Grandma suddenly screeches and starts smacking Harwal with her frail hands. "You son of a bitch! Don't say such things to my daughter! You don't know anything! You should burn in hell for spouting such shit"

I'm frozen, staring wide-eyed as my suicidal grandma smacks Harwal, who looks equally shocked.

"You don't know anything!" Grandma yells and points her finger at Harwal's face, but it only reaches up to his chest. "You and your kind are full of demons! Who the hell are you to meddle in our family business?"

"Am I wrong?" Harwal asks, tilting his head. Anything that grandma does doesn't phase him.

Grandma gasps loudly and rumbles in anger. She lifts up her foot and takes her dirty sandal and smacks Harwal's chest with it, not quite reaching his face. The sound echoes in the room and it feels like time stopped.

I'm conflicted. I don't want gran to put herself in danger, but I also want to slap Harwal with his comment. We also need his help if he can save Dante.

Greece seems to snap out of it first and she rises to wrap her arm around my grandma. "He's a bit… dense, so please calm down, grandmother."

"Who the hell are you?" Grandma shakes Greece off and looks at me with a huff. "You should be the one beating the shit out of this asshole. He insulted you when this was all my fault."

I bat my eyes at her and slowly shake my head. "Don't… don't blame yourself," I whisper hoarsely and get up on my wobbly legs. I can't deal with this shit right now. What's important, is Dante.

I don't care if the man dooms me to hell if he can help. "Will giving blood save my son? Is that all he has to get? Don't we need medicine or… anything else?"

Harwal crosses his arms and shakes his head. "Zohra do not need medicine, everything we need is in our blood."

I want to smack him for giving such cryptic messages. "But he's half human."

"That is exactly why he needs Zohra blood."

Grandma smacks her sandal on Harwal's arm, her face is completely red and she's shaking from fury. "We don't need this rude bastard, we can buy blood from the black market."

Harwal bats his eyes at her, clearly confused. "She would refuse blood from this Harwal? Even if it would save the Kit?"

"I don't want your shitty blood tainting him!" Grandma shouts and I grab her arm before she slaps Harwal again.

"Stop it gran." I forcefully lead her to the armchair in the corner of the room. "We need his help right now. Let him say whatever he wants," I whisper.

"What he said is unforgivable," she says loudly, peering angrily at Harwal.

I frown at her, grab her sandal and put it back on her tiny foot. "Gran, we need to help Dante as soon as we can. There's no guarantee we can find any blood from the market. Why would they even sell that?"

"There are many reasons to sell Zohra blood," Mateo says as he shuts the door. "What I'm curious about is why it helps Dante? Is there a reason this is happening to the boy?"

"He's struggling with the weak human blood inside his veins. The Zohra blood he has is from a weak bloodline, it isn't strong enough to get rid of it. All he needs is our blood to get rid of the weakness that flows through him," Harwal says.

He has to hate humans by the way he speaks.

"Interesting," Mateo mutters as he pokes a needle through the crease in front of Dante's elbow. He doesn't seem to disagree with Harwal's rude remarks about weak humans. "You said that the Zohra's bloodline is weak. What does that mean?"