Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
Two weeks passed in a blur of sameness. The one difference I noticed was most stepped out of my way or nodded at me with respect, the name “Piranha” circling the prison.
I still had to fight to get any “real” food, but toast with butter was available for me every morning.
Still, more weight slid off my bones, leaving me weak and tired.
I wasn’t ready to fight tonight, but when death awaited you, time had a funny way of speeding up. In a blink, the day of the Games was on me again. I had no idea who I’d be fighting, but there was no question they would make it harder, my chances of survival dimming.
“You will win tonight.” Tad set down his coffee cup, studying me. The mess hall buzzed with more intensity than normal, excitement for a night of blooding and the thrill of looking around the room wondering who wouldn’t be with us tomorrow.
“You don’t know that, old man.” I tossed my toast down, suddenly not hungry.
“Eat every bite.” Tad nodded at the three slices of bread. “You need your strength.”
Glaring at him like a nagging parent, I made a show of shoving half a piece into my mouth all at once.
“Oh, good. Choke to death first.” He shook his head with a sigh, going serious again. “You can do this, girl. I have never seen someone fight as you do. The way you move?” He tilted his head. “Like a ghost. You are magic out there.”
“Yeah, against a slow-moving human,” I snorted, swallowing my bread, feeling it lump in my gut, “I’m lightning.”
“No.” Tad’s bushy eyebrows blended into one long fuzzy caterpillar. “It’s more than that. You actually remind me of—”
Tad’s sentence was cut off by commotion at the doorway. Chatter and people turning to look drew my attention. My gaze landed on the guard who had checked me in, “cleansed” me on the first night, and showed me to my cell. He stood with a new prisoner, dressed in gray.
Human.
My eyes latched on to the new fish.
The world tipped to the side. With a gasp, my cup fell from my fingers, spilling over the table, whipping everyone’s attention to me for a moment, including the new prisoner.
I blinked several times, not understanding what I was seeing. There was no way.
His eyes widened, taking me in, and filled with a mix of joy, relief, and shock.
“Oh. My. Gods. Kovacs?” He shook his head, not believing what he was seeing either, his form already moving toward me. “Shit. We all thought you were dead.” he wailed, my brain taking in the form running for me.
Aron Horvát.
My comrade at HDF, the asshole who took my virginity, the guy I loved beating up. All that made sense out there, but seeing him here? My mind couldn’t make sense of it, a puzzle piece being forced into the wrong spot. What was he doing here? How?
“Brexley, I can’t believe it’s you.” He was suddenly there in my face, his arms slinging around me. “Fuck, Kovacs, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you. Markos would flip if he knew you were alive.”
Caden’s last name and mine seemed to break away from the rest of his words, booming off the walls, echoing in surround sound like a jackhammer, slamming me back to the present.
Holy. Fuck. He had just said my name—one of the cardinal rules broken.
Dread filled my stomach, panic walloping my lungs as my eyes darted around. Some faces were blank, but most stared at me in disbelief, their brains trying to place the name, filling with awareness. Shock. Hatred.
Prisoner 85221 or Laura Nagy was safe. Unknown. Brexley Kovacs, ward of General Istvan Markos, daughter of Benet Kovacs, was a target.
It was something Istvan drilled in Caden and me, to keep our identities secret at all costs if we were ever caught. We had to be extra careful because we would be used as ransom, blackmail, and punishment to Istvan.
In seconds, Aron had crushed the foundation out from under me.
He grabbed my face, his eyes watering. “I-I can’t believe this. Kovac—”
“Shut the fuck up, you idiot,” I hissed under my breath, standing up from the table, breaking our connection.
“What?” He stepped back in disbelief, his eyes going back and forth between mine.
I could see he was trembling, fear tossing out years of conditioning.
I knew he didn’t mean to pitch me under a train.
Seeing me alive, a friend in a hostile place, took over his actions. But he still destroyed my safety net.
“What are you doing here?” The hostility around me grew, eyes drilling into me from all angles.
Most of all, I could feel his attention cutting me like glass from across the room. The king of Halalház. Nothing good came from Warwick Farkas’s attention on you.
He had left me alone for weeks, acting as if I didn’t exist. Now I could sense his eyes burning the back of my head, his eyes peeling at my skin.
“Caden’s totally lost it.”
“Jesus,” I growled, grabbing Aron’s shirt. “Stop talking.” I tugged him out of the mess hall. No one moved toward us, but I sensed that would soon change. Marching him around the corner, I slammed him against the wall. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I know. I wasn’t thinking. I saw you . . .” He glanced away. “I can’t . . .” He broke off, a sob tearing up his throat. “I can’t die here. It was just a silly dare. I shouldn’t be here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Caden,” he cleared his throat . . .”since he saw you die, or I guess thought you did, he’s been on a bender. Lost it. Drunk and doing stupid shit. He’s on some sniper mission to kill every guard at the fae train depot across the river.”
The one where he watched me die.
“Caden has gone off the deep end. He dragged some of us with him in his pursuits. I was caught while trying to run away this last time.” Dragged, my ass. Aron, with his big ego, would be the first in line, claiming he could kill the most.
“I can’t believe this.” Aron gazed at me in wonder. “We all thought you were dead.”
“No, not yet.” Though with tonight looming over me and my real name painting a bright target on my back, it probably wouldn’t be long.
Another small sob hiccupped up his throat. “Fuck, Brex, help me. I don’t want to die. Not like this. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I shouldn’t be here.”
The arrogant boy in the training room was gone. Cocky in his environment, but at the first signs of true horror, he was blubbering like a baby.
“You think any of us want to be here?” I shoved him harder into the wall, whispering hoarsely. “You don’t think I want to go home? See Caden again? This isn’t a fucking holiday, but here we are. The faster you accept it, the better.”
He rubbed his hands roughly across his face.
“You are not gonna get any sugarcoating from me. This place is everything you imagine, if not worse. I’ve been beaten, tortured, starved, assaulted, threatened, demeaned, and locked in a hole for days.
But you show weakness, and you’re dead, Horvát.
And as much as I’ve thought you were an asshole back at HDF, you are still my comrade.
My team member. We protect each other. So get it together. ”
He nodded, his head dipped toward his chest, his hands shaking. I understood how overwhelming it was when you first arrived to find yourself in a place from which no human had ever returned. But it wasn’t in me to give up and accept the end so easily.
Tonight I might die. But I would go out fighting.
The bell declaring the breakfast hour over, time to get our asses to work, trilled through the air. Aron jerked his head at the loud sound, his throat bobbing, his eyes leaping to the doorway, watching figures start to emerge from the room.
“What’s going on?” he asked, reminding me of someone high on drugs: paranoid and jumpy.
Instead of answering him, I pushed him back into the wall again, demanding his attention back on me.
“You do not speak my real name again. Keep your mouth shut. Out me one more time, and I will kill you myself. You understand?”
He nodded at my demand, though it really was too late.
“Being a newbie, you will go as fish. Don’t tell anybody anything about yourself.
Keep your head down, stay close to me, and do what the guards tell you.
” Aron was scared now, but I feared that as soon as he got a tiny bit calmer, his swaggering nature would start to show, which would not be good for him.
“You want to live? You keep to yourself and follow the rules.” Unlike me. “You understand?”
“Yes,” he replied, flicking up his chin, a touch of the old Aron in his voice.
“Come on.” I twisted around, feeling Aron was some younger bratty brother I had to show around at a new school, let him know the rules and unspoken laws of the place.
“Unless a guard tells you differently, you can come with me to work. There is no training, so observe everything; pick up everything as fast as you can. Don’t assume other humans are on your side here, because they are not.
Whatever decrees we go by on the outside do not apply here.
They will be the first ones to slit your throat.
Demons are in red, fae in yellow, half-breeds blue, humans in gray. ”
“Then who is the guy in black?”
I stopped so fast Aron slammed into the back of me. My stomach plunged into my boots as I stared forward, feeling the side of my face burning.
Warwick stood in the doorway. No one moved behind him, waiting for the king to decide what he was doing.
“Who the fuck is he?” Aron sounded arrogant.
“Shut up,” I muttered, keeping my head straight.
“Why? Who is he?” Aron’s male insecurities were rising to the surface, the only person clueless to the power billowing off the man in black.
“Listen to her, fish.” Filled with disgust and threat, Warwick’s deep voice rumbled through the space, plucking the air from my lungs and running shivers down my arms. Sauntering to us, his long legs ate up the gap in a blink, gliding right up to Aron.
Towering far above him, he leaned down into his ear, taking over his personal space. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”