Chapter 5
FIVE
The double barrel of the shotgun is aimed right at us.
I loosen a glassy breath, and as I do, tears roll down my cheeks.
The man blinks.
His short eyelashes flutter before his greyish brow furrows.
I just stare at him, and slowly, his resolve cracks.
The tension in his furry jaw slackens for a moment—and in that moment, he falters.
He lowers the shotgun.
Still, my heart is pinned in place, like my insides are still frozen over.
But Samick should know.
He should realise there’s a man in the entrance, a double barrel shotgun aimed at his back, but…
Maybe the now-cold rainfall of the shower coming down on us is distorting his hearing. Maybe it’s the storm battering the outside that drowns out the noise.
Maybe he’s misreading me.
Samick has something in his abilities, a power to sort of sniff out what I’m feeling, what anyone is feeling.
But that weighted dread in me… he must think is for him. For what he did.
For what he’s doing.
And he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t stop.
Still, his hand is pinned to my jaw, keeping me in place. My legs are slung over his hips, feet dangling off the towels on the floor, and my hands are fisted in his leathers.
But Samick is curved over me.
Dragging his other hand down the curve of my waist.
The softness of his lips travel the length of my cheekbone to the shell of my ear, like he’s almost tasting me—but denying himself more than he’s taken.
Denying himself the release pressing against my core.
He’s fighting himself, his urge to fuck me.
But I don’t have the time to wait out his inner battle to take this further.
Not with the man in the threshold, his brow furrowing as—fuck—he raises the shotgun again.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He decides, right in front of me, that I’m… collateral.
So that’s how it feels.
Loathing rushes up inside of me.
I would do the same to him.
But I won’t go down for him.
My eyes burn with rage.
I throw my head to the side, like I’m burrowing into Samick’s chest, and the word screeches out of me—
“Gun!”
The moment—the exact fucking second—I speak, the world tilts.
The blast of the shotgun throws a confetti of metal shards at us—and the water falling down on me suddenly halts, it turns to fucking icicles that dart towards the shrapnel.
Samick moves so fast that everything shudders for a fractured moment in time, a moment of frost rising up around me. I whirl with his movements, until I hit the wet floor and go sliding around the shower post in a curve.
The stand of taps and pipes conceals me.
But I still feel utterly exposed—and the panic is pumping through me, cold.
The heels of my feet splash on the puddle of water. I kick myself back to huddle against the cold metal pipes just as another blast echoes through the room and bounces off the hard, cold walls.
My teeth bare, gritted against the freezing air swirling around me and the clatter of the shotgun.
The clatter ends with a curt grunt—
Then a gurgling sound that has my hands slapping to my ears.
I cringe into myself.
Knees drawn up to my chest, I drop my face and wait out the noise—fucking hell, the sound of it.
I don’t look around the post.
I don’t know exactly what Samick is doing to that man. But I hear enough.
The gurgling, the choking, the slow and wet sound of flesh tearing.
Then the rip.
That one, I feel.
My breaths turn hoarse, gravelled, as though my vocal cords are being dragged over rocks.
Something cracks against the tiles.
Then there’s only the sound of water still raining from the shower and pattering down on the towels I laid out on the floor.
“Tesni.”
I unbury my wet face from my bony knees.
A breath loosens from me.
Samick’s thick, coarse accent butchers my name—but his tone isn’t rife with loathing.
It would be if he knew seconds passed before I even told him about the man and the gun, and that I don’t even know I would have told Samick about him if he didn’t raise the shotgun again, that if I could have gotten out of the way, I might have let him take the shot.
But Samick doesn’t know any of that.
His tone is soft, kind almost, as he says, “Come.”
Droplets of water cling to my lashes, trails of it cutting along my temple and falling down my cheeks.
Bringing the back of my hand to my eyes, I wipe away the distortion and roll onto my knees.
I heard the commotion.
I heard the ripping and tearing and slushing of flesh.
So he’ll have to forgive me for moving slow—for the unwillingness that weighs me down as I lean to the side and peer around the shower post.
I immediately regret it.
An acid burn rises through me.
I swallow it back and let my eyes shut on the mess of blood and bone and flesh.
Samick’s boots are planted in the puddle of blood—between the body of flesh slumped on the tiles and the literal spine that he tore out before tossing it aside. Discarding it, like it’s just litter.
“I can’t.” My confession comes out guttered. “I can’t.”
A dizzy wave swirls in my head and I curl up again, letting my lashes shut.
“I can’t.”
I can’t look.
I can’t get up and walk past that… that severed body, flesh from bone, bone from flesh.
Just that one glimpse of it is churning my stomach.
The soft sound of boots come, stepping on watery and bloody tiles.
My eyes tighten the closer he gets—until I feel that chill again, the prickling of his frosty rage.
Dropping to a knee at my side, he pushes something soft to my chest.
I pry my eyes open—
And find a pile of folded towels and a stack of fresh clothes that he’s handing me.
I don’t look up at him.
I don’t look at the face aimed at me, the features chiselled from ice that linger in my peripherals, those pale winter eyes that watch me with too much intensity.
A chesty sob gutters out of me.
I wrap my arms around the towels and clothes.
Samick doesn’t follow me to the shower post one over, the one with the dry floor. But I feel his gaze like an ice burn on the back of my head as, slowly, I dry off as best as I can with trembling hands, then I clammer into my fresh set of clothes.
Thermal leggings and a top, a fitted woollen sweater, and black cargo trousers that feel sort of durable, like they’re waterproof.
These weren’t in my bag.
I wonder how much time he takes to source me clothes and snacks and inhalers and new boots.
And then to force his fingers inside of me, and to use that same hand to rip out a spine…
A retch doubles me over.
I hold my middle like I can stop the nausea from burning inside of me—but then the floor is swiftly swiped out from under me.
Samick lifts me up, and deposits me on his shoulder again.
Without a word, he grabs the bags and the torch on the way out, then moves swiftly through the darkness, back to the cellblock.
He takes me straight to the bunk and I scramble onto it in a hurry, rushing to huddle in the corner.
Samick only looks at me, an unreadable stare that lasts a second before he mutters something to Arwyn, and though I don’t speak their language, I understand exactly what he’s telling him.
He’s telling him about the man.
Arwyn prickles with frost.
It’s different to Samick.
A frostiness climbs over Samick, starting with his hands. Like lace. Threads of ice.
But Arwyn’s hands prickle. The ice comes with little mountains on his skin, a smear of goosepimples.
He slips off the top bunk, his boots thudding down on the concrete floor.
He looks over at the darker shadows of the cell.
I trace his gaze to Shark.
Didn’t see him there, tucked in the corner, perched on a small desk, his boots resting on the spine of a metal chair.
He nods, and the pink of his eyes glitters.
My gaze is snatched away.
Samick is suddenly leaning into the bottom bunk, reaching for me huddled in the corner.
A whispery cry spears through me.
His jaw clenches, tight, before he snatches for my chin.
The firmness of his grip forces my stare to meet his icy one.
I blink, just as stunned as I was back in the shower block, and my breaths just as shaky.
Samick’s command comes firm, “Stay.”
I whisper the question, “Where are you going?”
The white frost of his eyes is unchanging. But his tone comes softer, “There may be more humans.”
More humans with guns in other cellblocks—and trapped in a prison with fae warriors in the middle of a fucking hailstorm.
I loosen a hollow breath, and the moment I do, his fingers slip from my face. Almost gently. Then he draws back and stalks out of the cell.
Arwyn follows. But slower, and he makes sure to let a frown linger over me.
I swear my heart freezes until he disappears out into the cellblock.
My attention is swerved to the metal desk and chair in the dusky corner.
The torchlight out in the cellblock doesn’t reach that far into the cell, and so Shark is a shadow with soft pink eyes as he jumps off the desk.
He lands silently.
Then, slow, predatory, he wanders to the bunk opposite me.
Mika is still passed out on her back.
Shark pushes her arm aside, like it’s a feather to be brushed away, not a limb of dead weight.
He drops onto the edge of the creaky mattress—and stares at me, unblinking.
My throat bobs.
I cringe further against the wall until it hurts.
Arms wrapped around my legs, I rest my chin on my knees.
I wait out the eternal stare aimed at me.
I wait out the movement in the cellblock, leathers being pulled on, boots being laced up, murmurs and weapons singing.
Then I wait longer.
However many warriors form that search party, I don’t know. However long they are gone, I can only guess.
But I keep my mind on that.
Each time my thoughts flicker back to the shower, his hand between my legs—
I force my thoughts back to the search party.
To the humans in the prison.
Maybe it was just that one man.
Maybe not.
Maybe prisoners are holed up here somewhere.
Maybe innocents seeking shelter.
I should care more.
I should be filled with worry that isn’t for myself.
But all I really want to stew in is the urge to talk to Bee—to tell her what happened, to ask her to dissect it for me, to help me understand.
No.
If she was here, with me, I…
I don’t think I would tell her.
She would probably punch him, or try to, and then her spine would be out of her body, and I would die from the heartache.
This isn’t like other guys I kept around, one for each need, a few at a time who liked to call me their girlfriend and beg for me to meet their parents.
This isn’t like the other guys I used over the years, the ones drawn to my distance, the ones who yearned to win my love, like it was a competition, a game.
This…
This is feeling a lot more like life and death than it ever has before.