Chapter 6
SIX
I’m not kidding when I say I’ve been sitting here for hours, huddled up to the join of the walls, arms wrapped around my knees.
Condensation climbs up the window through the bars—a window that cracked from some stray hail a while ago, when Shark was filing his brown nails into even sharper talons.
The storm doesn’t let up.
And every crack I hear has me flinching—because what if the window is hit again, and there’s an explosion of glass shards bursting into the cell.
Like the shrapnel from the shotgun…
I was collateral to that guy. But in the chaos of it all, the blur of movements, and the pull of the trigger, I don’t quite get how I wasn’t hit.
Samick moved me out of the way. Practically flung me around the shower post, until pipes and tiles shielded me.
But not a single piece of shrapnel got me?
That. That holds my brain in a fierce grip.
Time passes in the cell, but my chin stays stuck to my drawn-up knees.
Even though Shark has taken to cleaning out something that looks like a miniature flute, I don’t move—not just because I’m rooted in place with Samick’s absence, but because of what happened in the shower block.
I swear, I swear on my life—Samick stopped the water raining down from the showerhead. Stopped it mid-air, hardened it to ice… then fucking fired it at the shrapnel.
Little weapons of icicles speared right into the shrapnel, blocking and taking it all down at once.
Samick hadn’t even turned to face the man yet.
He was still holding me to him.
Whatever he did to the man after that, I don’t care. As long as I don’t have to see it—or hear it ever again in my fucking life—that’s a nonfactor.
It’s what he did to the falling shower water.
‘But can’t you stop it?’
‘No. There was too much.’
If there was less hail out there in the farm, could he have done something to stop it? Or, he did stop some hailstones from hitting us, he just couldn’t stop them all.
It makes me think of the black ice on the road, when he trapped us.
It makes me think of the frost on his hand when his mood shifts dangerously.
The way he can move with the cold air, like he shudders through mists and chills.
Almost everything that Bee has told me about the dark fae doesn’t help me with Samick.
He’s a different kind of fae.
He’s not light.
He’s not dark.
He really is ice.
Even his touch—
His hand forcing between my clenched thighs with ease, the pressure of his fingertips, there was something cold about it.
Fleetingly, I thought I could feel the detail of his fingerprints. But the more I sit here and go over it again and again in my mind, the clearer it becomes.
Samick did something to his hand, did something to his fingers, the way the frost can grow over him, the way rain can stop around him and turn to ice. He chilled his touch.
Whether or not he did it intentionally, I don’t know.
His hand on my mouth was intentional.
He silenced me—wedged me between him and the pipes… and I should be overwhelmed with rage, by sickness storming in my stomach.
But I just feel exhausted.
I could sleep for days and nights.
But not without Samick here.
Shark grew bored of watching me a while ago. That’s when he started using the tip of a blade to clean his long, sharp nails, before he began filing them.
Felt like an unspoken threat.
But then he moved on to the mini-flute, and now, he’s sagged over the edge of the mattress, head dangling between his legs, and he hums an eerie tune.
The face I make at him is of blatant concern—and judgement, too.
Then he sits up straight, his eyes on the entryway.
I don’t hear the bootsteps out there in the cellblock corridor, so maybe the warriors move quietly. I decide I’m right, because suddenly, Arwyn’s beefy shoulders are squeezing through the doorway.
Shark slips off the bottom bunk.
A yawn rises through him, twisting his face, and there they are—those sharp teeth of his, the ones that make my shoulders curve inwards. At the same moment, he stretches out his arms, and tilts off the bed.
But like he isn’t there at all, Arwyn leans over the edge of the narrow bed and checks on Mika. He taps his hand around her neck, as though feeling for a pulse, but in a hurried, messy way. Or he’s making sure her neck wasn’t slashed in the time he was gone.
Shark murmurs something that darkens Arwyn’s face, then he jumps for the bed above me. He makes it in one fluid lunge, like it’s nothing, and the frame only rattles with his landing.
I half expect it to cave in, collapse down on me with his sudden weight.
Satisfied, Arwyn takes the bed above Mika—and I realise there’s an order here.
Arwyn keeps Mika in his care.
Shark bows out for him.
Then there’s me—and Samick.
Just as I think his name, he steps into the cell.
My insides clench at the sight of him.
And my face sours.
Knives and daggers are strapped to his body, some wearing streaks of blood darker than crimson, but lighter than the inky blood of the dark fae.
Looks like it’s oxidising.
Hopefully they found just a bunch of prisoners hiding out.
Since they were gone a while and the blood on their weapons and leathers is darkening, I guess they found those people really deep into the prison, way on the other side, or in a maze of basements they had to find their way into.
Samick slides a still-frosty gaze my way before, without a word, he drops onto the edge of the bed.
The mattress creaks and dips.
His frame is too big for this narrow bed that, even just sitting on the edge, the blood spattered over the back of his leathers threatens to touch my fresh socks.
I curl my toes. But I can’t bring them any closer to me, my heels have already kicked into the meat of my ass just so he didn’t sit on me.
There’s no acknowledgement of that.
No rush, because why does the human crammed in the corner matter?
Samick takes his time.
He swipes down for his bag, digs around, takes out some things here and there, and—by the time he’s dampened a cloth and started running it over the blood staining him—a yawn reaches down to my belly.
Now that he’s back, that simmering adrenaline has eased—and it’s like the sleep he woke me out of suddenly sweeps back over me.
The whole time he was gone, I’ve stayed stuck to this corner.
But it’s not like I can lie down now, stretch out, not with the mattress dipping in his favour, and the thin strip of space between him and the wall.
So I wait.
Eyelids growing heavier by the second.
Samick rinses the bloodied cloth, then starts wiping at his face.
Over his shoulder, I see the rag getting darker and darker. But like I’m not burning a stare into the back of him, he just wipes lazily.
I huff, and the breath mists at my face.
We might be indoors, but the cold in the cellblock seems chillier than it did outside on the farm. And it’s nipping at me.
Finally, Samick tosses the rag down to the floor, then throws his legs onto the mattress.
I wobble.
On a single bed that’s barely big enough for me, he lies down. But as he does, he snatches out for me—and takes me with him.
Before the back of his head has even hit the pillow, he’s clutched my ankle and jerked it hard enough that I’m swiped out of the corner—
And I’m suddenly flat on my back.
Not comfortably, either.
My shoulders are wedged between the concrete wall and his stone body.
He might not be as huge as Arwyn, the walking tree trunk, but he’s large enough that his other shoulder is off the bed, and I can’t move a muscle.
I give an annoyed grunt before I drape one leg over the other, sort of crossed, and shift on the creaky mattress, hoping to find a tolerable spot.
But I’m aware of too much.
The coils in the mattress; the even breaths from Mika still plunged into sleep; the creak of the bunk as Shark rolls over then kicks off his boots that thud to the floor.
Samick folds his hands under his head. He hikes one leg and shuts his eyes.
It startles me.
I pause mid-turn, my spine all twisted, and stare blankly at him.
Samick just shuts his eyes, like he’s about to fall asleep. And the sight of it—it makes me realise, I’ve never seen him actually sleep before.
Lashes low, I side-eye him.
The cloth he wiped over his face didn’t do a great job, not like the shower he took before waking me for my own. There’s a smear of red over his jawline, a streak of dirt on his brow, and dried dark crimson staining some strands of his soft blond hair.
I should be flooded with loathing.
Just the sight of his peaceful, sharp profile should stir the ugliest, darkest bloodlust in my gut. Hot, uncontrollable rage.
But I just feel…
I don’t really know.
I don’t feel hollow. There’s something there, stirring in me, but what it is, I can’t say.
As if feeling my stare on him, a curt breath fogs at his pink lips, and his lashes lift.
He slides a cold look to me.
I narrow my stare right back at him.
The silent accusation stirs in my glare.
But Samick is entirely unfazed by it.
There’s a fatigue to his voice, like he’s spent the last scrap of energy he had in him and can’t stay awake another moment, “Be quiet.”
I make a face at him.
I didn’t fucking say anything.
Before I can even argue, he has the audacity to roll his fucking eyes—at me?
Something ugly rushes up inside of me. But Samick is quick to stamp it out as he reaches for my face, and literally shuts my eyelids with the tips of his fingers.
“Sleep.” That’s all he says in that cold murmur.
And if he didn’t sound so tired, it might be more threatening.
The question thrums in my mind—
How?
How the hell am I going to get comfortable in this claustrophobic, crammed spot? I’m literally wedged between the wall and Samick’s solid frame.
I mutter a curse under my breath as I wiggle my legs, trying to build enough momentum and create enough space to at least shift onto my side.
The searing green of his gaze is pinned on me with every squirm and wiggle.
His patience is withering more and more by the second.
And it snaps.
A single shove of his hand against my hip, and I’m pushed around to face the wall.
The mattress shifts again, like he’s moving around, and it only pauses when I feel his touch—
His fingers brushing over my damp hair, combing it all to come down the nape of my neck, then the bed shifts again.
And my heart lunges to my throat.
Samick curves into me.
His chest presses against my back, his legs moulded to mine, his warm breaths disturbing the crown of my head—and he drapes his arm over my side.
I stiffen.
He gave me more space. I don’t feel as suffocated anymore, but the price is too high.
“Sleep.”
That one, firm command comes out like ice, a warning this time, and it’s enough to silence any protests building in me.
I fight it, just out of principle, but my resolve has always been lacking—and I think I last less than a minute before I drift off.