Chapter 25
A Bird Without Wings
Griffin
Over Five Years Ago – Violencia
“Scum!” The feet that kicked him relentlessly seemed to multiply. Two, four, ten, twenty. It was endless as he huddled in on himself. Ever since Oleks had been captured, everything had gone downhill quickly.
Too quickly.
The bomb at the Facility had been the catalyst, and less than a month later, his entire world crumbled around him.
“Get off of him.” The voice came from the back of the room he had just been thrown into. The one he wasn’t sure he would make it out of.
The feet paused, but then continued on until there was a loud bustling, the sound of a crunching nose breaking through it.
“How can you still side with him? He is the reason we are all locked up. He is one of them.” Dres’s voice broke through.
Griffin lifted his head as blood rushed through it now he was past the point of pain. Instead, it was a dull numb that wound across him as he watched the interaction play out.
Oleks stood, covered in rags against the back wall, three other members of the Griffin gang facing him, a fourth nursing a broken nose.
“And yet he is locked in here with the rest of us,” Oleks proclaimed, his attention finding Griffin’s.
There was anger, distrust in their depths. But there was also a deep unsettling respect that Griffin did not deserve.
“He is not the one who betrayed the Griffin gang. Who sold out its members.” Oleks stared down Dres. “From my understanding that was all of you.”
Dres snapped, rushing to Oleks and putting his elbow against the man’s neck. “They were hunting down our families! They wanted Griffin, so I gave him up. We were promised freedom.”
The door to their prison slammed open. “Break it up!” The guards filed in, toting guns and wearing helmets.
Dres released Oleks but didn’t dare move further back.
“We are here for Felix and Asher Spade,” One of the guards spoke loudly, his face whipping around the space.
Griffin watched in shock as the brothers appeared from the back of the cell. He wanted to catch their eyes but neither would look at him.
The guards filed forward, grabbing hold of the brothers. “You two are in luck. The Government believes you might just be able to redeem yourselves.” While his face was covered, Griffin recognized their voice.
Niko.
Why isn’t he taking me out of here? Has he turned on me too?
And then his words landed.
Redeem themselves?
A cool horror coated across his skin at the realization of what that meant. Anadil’s words from before compounding with it.
He knew exactly where the Spade brothers were being taken, and it wasn’t good.
The guards filed out, slamming the door shut behind them.
Oleks pushed Dres further back. “Do you feel free?” He spat on Dres’s face.
“How can you blame Griffin? You are the one who turned on their own. It wasn’t him.
It was you. All of you. Leave him be. We will all rot together in this cage.
Killing him will not change that.” Oleks kicked off the wall, finagling out of Dres’s hold and dropping to the ground.
Griffin attempted to get up, to thank Oleks, to warn him, but Oleks was pushing through the crowd around him and slinking further back into their prison, not giving Griffin another second of his attention.
Tears welled in Griffin’s eyes. But not from his physical suffering. For the very first time since coming to Violencia, he felt hopeless.
They were all locked away in a Government prison. Everyone had turned on him. And while he was thankful to see Oleks was still alive, it was clear the man no longer wanted anything to do with him.
Anadil was up to something.
Harold and Sharon had taken over the Redemption games.
And his brother… He still hadn’t heard a single word from his brother. Not even now.
Being a prince of Grypheem had afforded him nothing in this country, even when those in charge knew exactly who he was. If anything it had made his existence worse.
He was a bird without wings.
A griffin without allies.
A lonely man who would never escape. Who had simply wanted to do right by his father. By the rest of the world.
A woman’s face flashed through his mind as the walls closed in around him as the realization that he had no one and nothing.
He held onto that face. Onto that single light in this darkness.
Raven.
Present Day - Grypheem
This isn’t the same as that. That was a prison in Violencia, this is a room in the castle I will escape.
Griffin cracked his neck, releasing as much tension as he could. Julian paced the small room humming with annoyance and concern.
“We have been locked in this meeting room for nearly an hour! Where is your brother?! Why are we here?! And how did you manage to leave Raven alone?” Maverick snapped, his voice echoing around the space.
He sat across from Griffin on the other side of the circular table.
Maverick turned his rage onto Griffin. “What are your brother's plans? I thought she was safe here. I thought being married to the two of you was supposed to create a bubble of protection.”
“She was going to speak with that man…Matt. She knew him growing up and I didn’t want to stop her at a chance of normalcy.” Levi grunted from across the room, he leaned against the wall, his beefy arms folded across his chest.
“I was in there for a while, but then one of Drago’s men came and found me, dragging me in here.” Julian didn’t pause his pacing.
Griffin hadn’t been in this part of the castle before.
It was a floor above his quarters, a restricted area that he had spent most of his life avoiding.
Never questioning why this entire floor was off-limits.
He hadn’t cared enough to. There was a large wooden table with chairs in the middle of the space and a metal pocket door on each side.
One led back out, but the other he wasn’t sure about.
What he did know was once he was inside this room, the door behind him had slid shut and locked on its own. And the one leading to a mystery place was sealed shut as well.
They were trapped and had been for nearly an hour…while Raven was out there alone.
Because they were all idiots.
I shouldn’t have come here. I should have disobeyed my brother.
But he couldn’t very well disobey a king even if it was his own brother.
He sat at the table, tapping his foot as he continued to count the bricks on the walls, his attention going upwards, but near the top of the wall he paused.
There was a small vent, one that appeared to be installed long after this room came to be. The reflective metal of it was fresh and new, but streaked in a residual film.
He didn’t like that.
A loud screeching noise filled the air causing Griffin to cover his ears with his hands. And perhaps if he wasn’t already trained on the vent he wouldn’t have noticed, but smoke began to funnel into the room through it.
He especially didn’t like that.
Enzo jumped to his feet as it quickly filled the space. “What is this? What’s going on?”
Griffin’s attention landed on Oleks, knowing that Oleks would be the one to know what this was if it were poison.
He saw the ashen white face of the man. Recognized the pure unadulterated fear in their depths.
And he knew with complete certainty exactly what this was.
The only poison he wasn’t immune to. The one he hated the most.
“Listen up. I don’t know why, but they are funneling a drug in here that is going to make us all…euphoric. It’s going to give us hard cocks and the urge to put it in any hole we can,” Griffin bit out, bringing his shirt up to his face and gesturing for the others to follow.
Oleks didn’t move, frozen in the corner of the room, his head resting back on the brick as if it were all that kept him held up.
“It’s going to make us want to fuck—”
A loud screech echoed, followed by the mystery door creeping open.
The sight before Griffin was enough to nearly break him as he finally understood his brother’s plans.
He swallowed the lump in his throat as he stood up on shaky legs, his brother’s words cycling through him.
It doesn’t have to be you.