Chapter 11 #2
The mess hall was huge, allowing all the prisoners in the space at once. The cafeteria-style setup was along one wall, the line winding all the way around the room, guards stationed every few yards. Inmates already sat down and ate at tables in the middle.
“Te geci! Don’t fuckin’ cut in front of me!
” A man bellowed to several people ahead of me, shoving another man in yellow crashing into a table.
The shrill clatter of trays hitting the floor had me stepping back, sucking in sharply.
Guards moved to stop them as other inmates raced to take their space in line, causing more squabbles to break out.
“Move!” Someone yelled behind me, jolting me forward, my nerves already a wreck.
My stomach grumbled. The last thing I recalled eating was a few shrimp at the party, which was more than a week ago.
Any nutrients since then had been through my veins or from magical herbs while I laid unconscious.
But knots of stress and fear still twisted up into my throat, blocking my appetite.
The gala already felt like a lifetime ago, where my evening had gone from hope to grief to hell in a few hours.
When I put on that gorgeous dress complaining about the stuffiness of the party, little did I know soon I would be wearing a used prison uniform and sleeping on the ground next to a urine hole in one of the most feared prisons in the East.
To go back and do it over. The notion tugged at my heart. But would I have traded one prison for another? Marriage to Sergiu would have been another level of hell. One I would have had to suffer through for years, breaking every part of my soul until I was an empty shell.
The line moved faster than I thought. As I inched closer to the food, the scents of shoddy coffee, burned toast, and hot cereal drifted up my nose. Nothing smelled good, but my stomach still grumbled with the need to fill it.
From my place in line, I could see the food dwindling to a few ladles of porridge.
Grabbing a tray, I set it on the rail and slid it down to the worker scooping out the food. A shoulder slammed into me, a wide frame cutting in before me, shoving me back. I stumbled into a body behind me.
“Hey!” I pushed back onto my feet, glaring at the guy in front of me.
The line cutter was several inches taller than me and built wide and thick in the chest. His torso barreled, tapering farther down, reminding me of a bull. He had deep olive skin, a broad nose, and skinny legs.
His nostrils flared, brown eyes almost the color of his pupils, his black hair flopping in one eye. “What did you say, human?” he snarled, tilting his head.
“I was next,” I spurted back at him.
“Really?” He chuckled. “Looks like I am, and oh look, I get the last of the breakfast.”
“No.” My voice came out soft and pliable. “It’s mine.”
A nasty smile lifted his thin lips as he stepped up so close to me, his chest touched mine.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” He leaned in, taking a deep whiff of me.
“So fresh I can smell the disinfectant on you. No matter how much they douse you with decontaminator, you little human fuckers keep surviving . . . like cockroaches.”
“Rodriguez.” A man’s voice sounded low but firm behind me. “Leave her be.”
The bull-shifter’s eyes flicked to the man standing behind me, his lids narrowing in a glare.
“What if I don’t, old man?” he huffed, his foot pawing the ground like an animal’s hoof.
“She didn’t know. Let her be this time,” the man said. Every word he spoke was like a warm bath. Soothing and calming.
Rodriguez snarled, his head wagging. “You take far too many liberties, Tadhgan. Someday you will see you aren’t as untouchable as you think you are.”
“Until then . . .” I felt the man step in close in behind me. “You will not touch this girl.” His hands cuffed my arms, firm and powerful.
Rodriguez’s glower moved from him to me, disgust curling his lips before he snorted and shoved his tray at the man behind the counter, taking the final cup of food before marching away.
Tension vibrated in my body, along with anger, fright, and disappointment. I had taken down men with his temperament many times, but this time fear crippled me. Maybe he couldn’t shift into his bull form here, but his power pulsated under his skin. He could tear me apart.
If I’d thought the teachings at HDF were brutal and relentless, I now realized it hadn’t been enough for real survival. How ill-prepared every soldier there was for a real battle against the fae.
Taking a deep breath, I curved around to look at the man behind me. Surprise curled down my throat, not ready for who stood behind me.
“Old man” was an understatement. His back was curved and twisted, hunching him over, far below my height.
He held on to a cane, the stick assisting his thin legs.
He had shoulder-length gray hair, left loose and knotted.
His face was craggy; years and stories lined it with rich history.
Skinny, his white uniform hung off his bones. It was the only white one I had seen.
His eyes widened, his body jerking back like he’d seen a ghost, his throat bobbing. But the emotion fluttered from him as fast as it came, making me believe I imagined it.
I stared at him, my brows furrowing with confusion.
The bull-shifter yielded to this old man? Frail and deformed.
“Not what you thought?” A soft smile grew on his worn face.
“No. I’m just . . . that’s not it.” My tongue stumbled over my lie.
His smile grew, his shaky hand reaching out to pat my shoulder. “Can’t really lie to a Druid, girl.” He clicked his tongue. “We tend to see through bullshit.”
“Y-you’re a druid.” My mouth fell open as people brushed by us, claiming what little crumbs were left. Shock kept me in place. Druids were rare, especially in Hungary. The bigotry toward Druids in the Eastern Bloc had never receded. Fae still hated them, and humans mistrusted them.
The old Seelie queen had murdered millions, long before my time, driving many of them underground to survive. But the current ruling queen was a Druid, and she’d drawn them back into the light, moving many to the Western world to live safely under her rule.
“They don’t have me wearing white for nothing.” His free hand motioned down his bent form, chuckling. “Not that looking at this ugly mug doesn’t tell you I’m certainly not fae, but still far too pretty to be human.” He winked playfully.
Confusion tugged at me. Why was this man teasing me? It put me on edge, wondering if something was going to come at me while he was lowering my guard.
“So distrustful.” He stared into my eyes like he was peeling away my skin. “But at the same time so na?ve.”
My jaw locked down.
“Come.” He squeezed my arm, hobbling past me. “Sit with me. Have some coffee, at least.”
“I-I . . .”
“I need some company. Tired of muttering to myself.” He went to a counter with large thermoses, pouring two coffees. I followed, not knowing if it was a mistake, but the draw to the Druid was too powerful to fight. Something about him felt familiar and comfortable.
Automatically, I picked up both cups while he tottered to a table in the back. Heads turned in my direction, glares and snarls following me to the back table.
“Nice to have more than myself to converse with. Not many willing to sit with an old Druid man.” He grunted noisily as he sat down on the stool attached to the table. Everything here was bolted down or built in. Fewer items to be used as weapons. “I can give you a little rundown of this place.”
“I don’t need your help.” I set down the coffee cups. Need meant weakness.
He snuffed in. “Do you smell that?” He took a deep breath. “Are you bathing in bullshit now, girl?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Now sit down.” He nodded at the chair.
Stiffly, I perched on the stool, my eyes darting around.
“Good. Always be on guard in this place. Imagine this is the pride lands of Africa, and everything here is hunting you.”
“Africa?” I snorted, taking a sip of the black goop they called coffee, cringing as the bitter taste lumped down my throat. Africa was a distant continent I knew from geography books, but it might as well be another universe. I knew very little about it. “What the hell do I know of that place?”
“Goddesses, this breaks my heart.” He sighed. “Your generation lives its entire existence on a speck of dirt, where experience, education, and life are confined within walls because some nobles wanted to keep all the power and control. That’s not a life.”
“It is to me.”
“Because you’ve never smelled the rich spices in India, seen a sunset in Greece, heard the rush of the water in Victoria Falls, tasted real coffee in Turkey. Your life is minuscule.”
“Fuck you.” I slammed down my cup and stood up.
“Sit back down.” He grabbed my hand. “It’s not your fault, girl. Freedom is something this area has not had a great friendship with.” His blue eyes stared into me until I felt my ass hit the seat again.
He tilted his head, his gaze not wavering. “You are a strange one.”
“I’m starting to see why you have no friends, old man.”
A grin bloomed on his face. “Never take anything in here at face value.” He shifted on the chair with a groan. “What’s your name? What family do you reside from?” His sharp eyes peered at me on the last question.
I watched him over my cup, taking another sip, the lie slipping out easily.
“Nagy,” I said. “Laura Nagy.” I gave him one of the most common names in this area.
There had to be thousands of girls with this name.
Kovacs was common, too, but Brexley Kovacs was not.
My real name was very well-known by the fae.
I didn’t want anyone knowing my real identity.
“Sure it is.” His grin turned into a chuckle, amusement creasing his already wrinkled face. “I’m Tadhgan. Call me Tad. I know my name is a mouthful.”
“Okay, Tad,” I replied dryly.
His gaze centered on me, making me feel he was trying to dig through and unearth my soul, find my secrets.
“What?” I grumbled.
He watched me for another beat before he shook his head.
“Nothing. Simply mind tricks of an old, crumbling mind.” He took a sip of coffee and gazed out at the other prisoners.
“You need to quickly learn the hierarchy here if you want to live under the radar. Survive.” His blue eyes met mine.
There was surprising youth, but extensive knowledge also dancing in them.
I knew Druids lived thousands of years longer than humans, one of their gifts given to them centuries ago by the fae gods and goddesses.
“Though, I say nothing comes from being nothing.”
“Shocking really, you don’t have friends.” I huffed into my cup.
“Okay.” He nodded around the room. “Humans wear the gray uniforms, half-breeds blue, fae the yellow, demons red. Druids are in white, which is just me. The prison divides us by color on purpose—to keep the lines of hate strong between the groups. They want us to cling to our bigotry so we fight each other, not them. They want the constant reminder we are not all equal.” He patted his chest, trying to get down the thick coffee.
“And merely because you’re human doesn’t mean other humans are on your side.
If they are still here, it means they’ve learned to survive and will stab your back if they need to.
” He nodded at the dotting of gray outfits scattered through the space.
There were a few seated together, but most had wiggled in with yellow and blue uniforms. “Rodriguez and his group are what I call third-tier bullies. Mean, intimidating, the kind who beat up smaller people to show how big and powerful they are. Definitely a group to avoid, but there’s a lot of prancing and pawing the ground if the second-tier steps in.
” Tadhgan gestured toward a table in the middle. All red.
The demons. The top of the food chain. And almost all women.
In the group of eight, only three I could see were men, resembling lions resting on their rock.
My attention moved over them, noticing the blue-haired demon I met in the bathroom sitting among them.
Within the group, she seemed to be an island within herself.
Drinking coffee and picking at breakfast, she didn’t engage with the other demons.
But she was part of the second tier. Powerful.
“Wait. You said second tier?” I looked back at the Druid. “What’s above demons?”
His gaze slowly slid to mine, lowering the mug from his lips.
“Him.”