Chapter 4
FOUR
A hand grips my shoulder and rattles me.
The sturdy metal frame is unmoving beneath me, the faint creak of the mattress muffled by blankets, and the hail still battering the earth.
I pry an eye open.
Just one.
But that’s all I need to see Samick leaning over me, his hand firm on my shoulder, and his face as cold as ice.
“Up,” he says, then lets his hand slip from my shoulder. “Now.”
The urge to hit out at him twitches my fingers against the weight of abrasive covers. “Go away.”
The nicest way I can manage what I really want to say.
Samick’s curt exhale is small before he draws back—and takes the blankets with him.
They are swiped from my body.
I seize up immediately.
The freezing cold is an instant attack I recoil from, curling up into myself, as though that’ll bring back the warmth.
“You can sleep more later,” his tone is bored, and he looks out the open doorway to the corridor. “But for now—up.”
I can’t see around the angle of the wall. But I do smell the fragrance of soap that’s thick in the air. So thick that I can taste it the more I wake.
A guttural moan drags out of me.
Pure, utter unwillingness.
It’s in my hateful stare as I slog my heavy legs off the mattress, one at a time, then heave my upper body to slump over my knees.
My feet flatten on the floor, and they would probably be frozen off if it weren’t for my thick socks shielding me.
Samick’s patience holds.
It holds for longer than usual.
His boots stay in the edge of my line of sight, planted on the grey floor as I gather the scraps of energy I need to push off the bed.
Another yawn starts to rise up in me and twist my face. But it halts—because now, I can see around his muscular frame to the other bunk.
Mika is draped over the mattress.
Not sprawled, not turned on her side, but placed unnaturally on her back, arms down her sides.
I hesitate.
At first glance, she looks dead.
Pale, glassy skin—not unlike her glacier hair that’s sprawled over the thin pillow—reflects with the sparse torchlight that reaches into the cell and washes a ghostly pallor over her.
But then I notice it.
The flicker behind her eyelids.
Not dead. Just in a deep sleep.
The sort of sleep I endured with that powder Samick stuffed down my throat to heal me.
Movement shifts above her.
I lift my tired gaze to Arwyn on the top bunk.
I wouldn’t have noticed him if he didn’t move, bringing a small leather-bound book to rest on his thigh. His thumb slowly flicks over the page—but his cold eyes are on Samick’s back.
I look down for my shoes—placed neatly at the foot of the bed, next to my folded rain jacket that’s now dry, and I know I didn’t do that, because I kicked and shrugged them off and left them scattered on the floor.
Samick predicts me.
“You don’t need them,” he says, and it’s only now I realise he’s holding my backpack.
He moves for the doorway.
I drag myself along in his shadow.
He leads the way out into the cellblock corridor, the dense make-shift camp of warriors. The faint creaking of his leathers under the rampage of rain and hail battering the concrete prison is a whisper.
There’s no rope on my wrist.
Nothing tethering me to him as he steps around the boots of sleeping fae.
The bruises on my wrist glisten as I reach out for him. I splay my fingers out on his back, as though that will make the difference between a fae snatching me and not.
Samick’s muscles jolt under my touch, but he doesn’t pause, doesn’t look back at me.
My hand stays stuck to his back as he moves for the metal grate stairs leading up to the door.
He pauses at a warrior slumped against the railing, relaxed, watchful.
Beside him, a torch is placed upside-down, and so the flame is out.
The warrior eyes us over, then—with a tired sigh, like he’s desperate to sleep as most of the others do, but has to fight the strain of his heavy lids—passes Samick the torch.
Samick starts up the steps.
And the higher we climb, the wider the view—and my face heats.
Most of the warriors have their arses out.
Totally naked, head to toe.
The ones we passed, sprawled out and fast asleep, are dressed in their leathers. But the ones further along the corridor are stripped down to the nude, complexions of marble and granite and onyx.
They washed.
Lathered up and scrubbed themselves raw.
Explains the smell of cheap soap in the air.
Now, like nothing is even slightly weird about having their bits out, those warriors catch some sleep, too.
I tighten my hold on Samick’s back.
His leathers are hard to get a grip on.
I manage a slight ridge of it as Samick turns for the door.
The one the deputy booted in. The metal is bowed and dented, and it doesn’t look like it would even fit in the frame now if anyone tried to shut it.
Samick shoulders through the gap.
My hand slips from his back, along the definition of his arm, to the cold touch of his hand.
Predicting me, his fingers come around mine, a firm grip, and he leads me through the darkness.
The thuds of his boots echo against walls I can’t see.
My own steps are socks, muffled padding behind him.
The cold of the storm raging outside follows us through the dark until, suddenly, the echo of his steps expands, like we’ve left narrow concrete corridors and walked into an open space.
I’m right.
I know it when Samick lifts the torch—and orange light bounces off walls of tiles.
Samick’s fingers slip from my wrist.
I squint against the glare of torchlight and trace his movements, a tall and broad shadow advancing on the grey wall.
A bench is bolstered to the wall, long and metal.
Samick tosses my bag onto it, then his own satchel before angling the torch to rest against it.
I look around.
The scent of soap is thickest in here—the prison shower.
Rows of pipes sprout up from the tiled floors, ending in curved showerheads with drains dotted all around the floor.
I count at least a dozen shower stations before the screech of a zip wrenches my attention back to Samick.
“The water is warm,” he says, his back to me as he sifts through my backpack. “No one will interrupt.”
I rub the back of my hand over my tired eyes. “Have they all showered already?”
“Most.”
“Have you?”
He brings out the plastic Ziploc bag with my toothbrush in it and sets it down on the bench. Then he slides my backpack aside and drops onto the spot on the bench.
“I left you under Arwyn’s watch,” he says.
He reaches a hand into his satchel and, as though it was prepared and ready at the top, he lifts out a folded pile of fresh clothes.
My mouth curls.
Not at the clothes.
I could use fresh ones. Clean. Not bogged down by rainfall, then dried to carry that damp smell with it.
I curl my mouth at the realisation of what he told me.
He left me.
While I was asleep, he left me with Arwyn so he could go shower.
“What if Rust got me?”
Samick lifts a faint frown to me, slightly etched grooves on the brow of a marble sculpture. “The rust?”
My eyes roll back. “Rust. That fae who’s hellbent on killing me.”
The creases smoothen out, and he stares blankly at me.
“He looks like rust,” I add with a shrug, my cheeks starting to burn.
“Rust,” he echoes—
And I swear, I swear, for the briefest second, a fraction of a heartbeat, that the corner of his mouth tilts, as though he almost, almost smiles…
But that is fucking crazy.
Samick shakes his head. “He is healing. He is not awake, and won’t be for some time.”
“Oh.”
I give no apology for my almost accusation.
“Did he get hurt in the hail?”
The faint green of his eyes gleams in the hollow light, watching me. “Yes.”
I hum a curt sound.
The corner of my mouth twitches, daring to smirk. Instead, I stalk for the bench with a bit more confidence than I should have.
I have my sights set on the toothbrush.
The clothes.
The promise of a shower.
Samick stretches his legs out and, slumping against the wall, watches me bypass him for the towels folded on the far side of the bench.
I steal quite a pile.
One for my hair.
One for my body.
One for washing.
And a couple for the floor, because I’m not about to get some nasty foot fungus from shared shower floors.
Those cold lettuce eyes follow me back to him.
I snatch the toothbrush and paste from the pile, but leave the clothes on the dry bench before I head into the shower maze.
Any ideas I have about heading out of sight are swatted as he says, “Stop.”
I’ve gone far enough.
The tut of my tongue is soft, but I’m certain he hears it as clearly as the toothbrush rattling onto the edge of the soap holder.
I prepare before stripping down.
Laying out towels on the floor, stealing the shampoo bottle from the shower over, then draping my towels over the neighbouring showerhead to keep them dry.
Finally, I brace the cold and strip in a shimmying rush, kicking away my clothes and the pad with them.
I’ll deal with that later.
The reminder brings my hand to my belly. No cramps. No pain.
I slept through the last of it.
Thank fucking god—even though I’m atheist.
The sentiment holds, like the small smile on my face as I turn on the taps, and it’s instant bliss.
‘The water is warm.’
I almost didn’t believe him.
Not hot, not scalding, perfectly warm. I don’t have to balance out the cold and hot taps to find the right temperature.
It’s fucking goldilocks.
And I sag into it.
I swoon.
My head falls back and I let it all strike my face.
The warmth pours out of the pipes. I don’t know how but it does.
Out there, in the blackout, before I was taken prisoner, we would find running water or we wouldn’t. We would find hot water or we wouldn’t.
Bee thinks there’s something in the blackout that attacks mechanical things, but not gas and pilot lights. So maybe this place still has a pilot light flickering in the water boiler.
I never argued because, honestly, I don’t know shit about any of that.
I called the landlord whenever there was any sort of issue in the flat.