Chapter 46
Ksenia woke up freezing cold in the early dawn quiet.
She wasn’t going to fall back asleep despite the handsome man holding her.
She couldn’t stop staring at him. His laughter and genuine delight in her little knife trick was adorable.
Too bad they were locked in a dungeon and couldn’t have a real conversation.
He’d be fun to get to know. It would be even better if he wasn’t covered in his own blood and his skin looked like a broken jigsaw puzzle covered in bruises.
The knives still played like dancing flames in her head.
They called to her to come play with them.
Maybe, if she took one more, she could use it to pry out the permanent marker sitting in her backpack’s side pocket.
She could see that pocket. It wasn’t covered by the blanket.
The guards must have forgotten about the backpack and she was grateful.
A seven inch blade happily hopped across the top of the table for Ksenia.
She was getting better at small shoves. Just enough thrust to get her knife moving without flinging it into the wall.
Still not good enough to float the knife slowly over any distance.
If she lived, she’d probably get that good.
A female Magneto terrorizing wolf people and monsters everywhere.
Ksenia settled to concentrate on moving the knife. It clanged to the floor a couple of feet from her backpack. She crouched down to get a good look at what she was trying to do. Three thrusts had the knife by the backpack pocket.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on simply raising it up, just like she had when Jaxom had been watching.
It rose a little and fell, rose, and fell.
Frustration rose and the knife skittered away from the backpack.
How did one learn to control a power in an instant when the need was great?
It was like learning to balance on a tightrope. She just kept falling off.
Ksenia sighed and got up to sit beside Jaxom again.
She reached through the bars to hold his hand.
That connection was a comfort to combat frustration.
It wasn’t just the knife. It was being locked up in a place she didn’t know with creatures that were terrifying.
Watching a man get tortured was the worst. And, knowing her mom was beside herself with worry for her only daughter didn’t help.
Those thoughts were not helping. She had to step back from emotion.
It wasn’t helping to get the marker. She could only work with what she could control at the moment.
Learning to make knives move with her mind, and retrieving the permanent marker, was what she could control. The rest was useless speculation.
Time to try again. Luckily she could see the backpack just fine as she held Jaxom’s hand.
She felt calmer when she touched him, comforted, like he was a source of safety she could bask in.
If she wasn’t surrounded by the mystical, she’d think those kinds of thoughts were crazy.
As it was, it totally made an odd kind of sense.
She imagined holding the knife, raising it up and slipping the tip into the space between the clip and lid. Slowly, the knife wedged the marker up out of the pocket, allowing the pen to fall to the floor.
Ksenia squeezed Jaxom’s hand in excitement. She’d done it! The pen was out of the pocket. Now she needed to get the knife to slide the marker to her and Jaxom. The tattoo on his arm needed to be finished. It was one thing she could control. One task she could accomplish.
Voices down the corridor sent Ksenia into a panic.
She did her best to use the knife to shove the marker back against the backpack, trying to hide it from the guards.
The dungeon door banged open and the guards shoved a food try under her cell door and gave one to Jaxom.
Two bottles of water were shoved through the bars.
Jaxom was awake and watching them as Ksenia rocked against the corner wall.
She had appearances to keep up. The look of hate on Jaxom’s face was jarring.
She didn’t want him to have to hate them.
No one deserved to be a punching bag. Jaxom didn’t need anymore abuse.
Couldn’t they see that? The guy was a bloody mess.
He couldn’t defend himself and the beatings, whippings, and whatever else, had spilt enough of his blood.
One of the guards picked up a stick, put some sort of syringe on the end and jabbed it into Jaxom’s bicep.
He gripped the cell bar with his free arm and made a pained groan as the guard yanked the syringe out.
Jaxom was panting hard as the guard laughed at him and mocked him.
While she couldn’t understand the words, she could understand tone.
Bullies all had tone down pat. The guards left with their laughter echoing down the hallway.
Jaxom broke out into a sweat. He writhed on the cell floor. His face a grimace of pain. Ksenia got on the mattress and reached for his hand. His moans broke her heart. There was no reason for any of this. What the hell did he do to be treated so vilely?
She got her bottle of water and helped him drink it. He panted and squirmed even as he downed every drop. Sweat running off his forehead dripped onto the floor of the cold cell.
“I’m so sorry,” Ksenia said to him. “Please don’t be a horrible person. I need to believe you are innocent like me. That we really are in this together to get out. I’d like us to be more than enemies of the same people. We could be real friends.”
Jaxom watched her as she talked, like it helped him concentrate on anything but the pain he was clearly in. Ksenia held his hand for hours as he panted and moaned. It looked like he had no control of the twitching of muscles. It had to be agony to bend the way his body did.
Ksenia hummed to help distract him and comfort herself. The game with knives was another distraction. The knife slowly pushed the pen to the cell. It was almost within reach. Inch by inch, learning to hover the knife just enough to agonizingly slowly move the pen across the floor.
Even through his pain, Jaxom was watching the slow motion action, too.
She just needed a few more pushes. Voices sounded down the corridor.
In a bid of desperation, Ksenia gave the knife a hard push.
The marker skittered to Jaxom’s cell. He had enough control of his body again to pick up both the marker and knife before the guards flung the door open.
He got them hidden in the crack in the wall as the monster strutted into their cozy piece of hell.
Ksenia shrieked in fear and huddled in the corner. Jaxom was going to get hurt again. She could see it in the monster’s disfigured face. If anyone needed to be taught a lesson, that thing did.