Chapter 15 Thayla
Thayla
Gods, this is why I never drink. This shitty-ass feeling right here.
A ghastly groan croaks out of my dry throat as I lift my arm to cover my eyes. Heavy metal collides with my nose, and I screech as I cover my face with my palms.
The throbbing causes my eyes to water, and I wipe under my nose gently to check for any blood. The shackles around my wrist and the white powder dusting my fingers make everything in me go cold.
That blitz of pain mixed with what I’m seeing has my stomach whooshing violently. A small twitch against my back feels more like a kick to my head as clarity rushes through me.
“Shit, I think the only time I’ve ever been to this part of the Athenaeum was on that tour he gave us.”
“Yeah, there’s no doubt he’s about to find out every time we tell him we’re going to look around, we really go sit with Rose and Lambrit.”
“You think he’s going to be mad?”
“I really can’t tell if you enjoy hearing his stern voice or if you really don’t know what makes him tick.”
I don’t bother hiding my saucy smirk from her. “Irrelevant and that didn’t answer my question.”
Yemi laughs, then covers her mouth as the passing Guider shushes her. “I’m not sure you can do anything to really get him mad. His mad isn’t anything like your mad.”
I scoff. “You say that, but you didn’t see him throw Jeremiah out of a flying carriage.”
She sighs. “I wish I did, though.”
I elbow her out of her dreamy look and turn back to the books. “Looky there, book number four. We’ve got this. Will you grab that one for me?”
“I wonder why he wants these particular books,” she comments as she slides it from its place.
“There’s no tell—Yemi!”
White powder explodes in her face and she stumbles back, waving the dust away as a cough tears from her chest.
The books in my hand clatter to the ground as I rush to ease her to the floor before she collapses.
“What the hell is that?” She doesn’t respond to me as her eyes flutter and her body sways. She attempts to lift her hand, but it falls fast to the ground like it weighs hundreds of pounds. “Shit, hold on, Yemi. I’ll go get someone.”
A scream gets lodged in my throat when I collide with a body right behind me. I spin around, drawing my fist back, but choke as the masked fucker blows white powder in my face.
My hand wraps around my throat as the fine, dry texture gags me. It has no smell, yet it’s all I can smell. My vision of the asshole doubles and I swing out at both figures. All that does is knock me off balance and I stagger back, tripping over Yemi’s prone form.
Everything I touch and grab disappears from beneath my fingers. I crumble to the floor, but I don’t feel a thing.
Crash after crash booms behind me.
That asshole picks Yemi up.
Then it’s dark.
“Yemi,” I shriek, forcing my numb body to roll over. “Gods damn it, Yem—”
The air in my lungs rushes out of me as I come face-to-face with her peaceful, snoring self, pressed right next to me.
I grip her hands as panic seizes my chest.
Fuck.
The immediate thought that something happened to her felt crushing. My heart is trying to crawl out of my throat right now.
This is a good damn reason why I never made friends.
This petrifying-ass feeling right here.
What if she weren’t here? What if whoever did this had taken her somewhere else or worse?
“Yemi, I need you to wake up now. Wake up and look at me.”
My raspy voice cuts through the silence around us. The metal of our chains clanks together as I shake her hands and move her hair out of her face.
Every move I make becomes more frantic. Pins and needles shoot through me as feeling returns to the rest of my body.
“Please wake up.”
She lets out a gruff groan and her eyes squint tightly as though she’s fighting to keep them closed. “Stop it, Thayla. Why are you in my room right now?”
“I so wish we were in your room.”
Another ungodly noise comes from her, but it’s abruptly cut off and her body falls still.
A tortured gasp echoes between us as she tries to fight me off her.
“It’s okay, it’s me. It’s really me.”
She begins hyperventilating and her bloodshot eyes fly open. Fear clouds her face as her gaze bounces around over my head, then she gulps and stares at me.
“W-where are we?”
“I have no clue. I just woke up too.” I release her and push myself up on my hands and knees.
Unfortunately, the only sight I have is a black brick wall that gives me no insight into where we are.
“Give it a moment and feeling will come back everywhere else,” I tell her as her panic intensifies when she can’t get her body to work.
“Well, well, well, boys. It looks like our tickets out of here are awake.”
Yemi screams and I throw myself over her. My head swivels in every direction, despite the pain throbbing in my palms from the rocks stabbing into them. I scout the shadows that dance from the flicker of a torch somewhere above my head.
“Show yourself, asshole.”
My head twitches back to the left at movement and I gasp as I get my first glimpse at not only the man who stepped up, but what he stepped up to.
Bars.
We’re in some sort of barred cell.
“The name is Dimitri, ladies. I like to introduce myself to my conquests. It makes your deaths mean something to me. What are your names?”
“You don’t have to answer him.”
I jump back, slamming my back into the brick. That shot of adrenaline gets Yemi’s limbs working and I drag her to sit beside me before she even fully attempts to roll over. She presses herself as close to me as she can while we take in our surroundings.
Including searching for the man who just spoke.
From somewhere within our cell.
“Oh, come on, boy. You’ve had a week to get over the last fight. You didn’t even know the blokes who died.”
My eyes narrow on the man who steps out of the cover of darkness in the corner directly in front of us but farthest from Dimitri.
I scan his body quickly enough to search for any obvious weapons, then return my deadly glare to his face. Only, he isn’t paying me a lick of attention.
His gaze is fixed on Yemi.
I attempt to slide her between the brick wall and me, but she’s frozen like a block of ice.
Unmoving.
Her mouth is parted and the fire from the torch has her eyes sparkling like a river full of gold.
“Yemi,” I whisper and shake her.
Her head twitches and she slowly blinks as she finally looks at me.
“Shit, sorry.”
I peer out of my peripheral to make sure our silent, but honestly kind of scary, cellmate isn’t moving toward us. “Do you know him?”
“I don’t think so, girls. We don’t whisper down here in Hell.” Dimitri chuckles, grabbing all my attention again.
Hell…
“Enough. Let them be.”
“You take all the fun out of this. I’m a little sad tonight will be our last dance in the dark.”
What the fuck is he talking about?
The man in our cell with us shoots Dimitri a withering glare, then takes three strides toward us. I’m on my feet in a millisecond.
“Come any closer and you’ll meet your end far sooner than he just threatened.”
He raises his chained and shackled hands. “I’m not going to hurt either of you. We’re on a team. For now.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Well, I was coming to explain, but you kind of told me you were going to kill me.”
“That promise still remains.”
Yemi’s chains knock against the wall, and his eyes whip to her movement. I attempt to step to the side to block her again, but her hand on my arm stops me.
“We need to find out what’s going on and you need to get in touch with someone. Anyone. Anyhow.”
Shit, she’s right.
“Can your secret ability do something to keep some distance between him and us?”
She shakes her head. “My power isn’t working.”
Ah, fuck. Come on.
We both face whatever his name is.
“Fine.”
“Are you giving me permission to move around my own home?”
I don’t like this asshole.
Yemi, on the other hand, has the audacity to fucking laugh.
“Are you kidding me right now?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from. I’m kind of freaking out.”
Gods, same.
Each of the strange man’s steps has the sound of metal scraping across rocks echoing around us. He keeps his hands where we can see them, and the closer he gets, the better of a look I get.
Yemi gasps, then covers her mouth with her hand. I trace the faint bruise still dusting his right eye, his busted lip, and the scar that runs around his neck like a second smile.
This guy has taken a beating. Probably two.
“Shall we?” he asks, sitting himself down about three feet from us.
I have no desire to lower myself to his level and give him an advantage if he decides to attack. Yemi, obviously, hasn’t picked up on any damn lessons because she jerks my hand as she slides down the brick wall.
A jagged piece scrapes across my sensitive skin, and I fall still as panic seizes my chest.
A whip cracking rings in my ears.
The wood leaves splinters in my fingertips.
His hand smearing my blood as his body presses in from behind me.
“Thayla.”
I flinch as Yemi’s cold hands grip my tightly coiled ones. A hiss slips through my teeth when I unclench them, and rocks and gritty dirt fall from my palms.
“I’m fine,” I murmur, then look at our staring cellmate. “What’s going on?”
“What are your crimes?”
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“What landed you in here?”
My sneer is immediate and my fingers flex back into fists. Yemi has far more patience than I do, though, and cuts me off before I can cuss him out.
“We didn’t commit any crimes. We were drugged and dragged in here.”
“So you’re claiming innocence?” He laughs as though it’s the joke of the century.
Heat surges through my cheeks, but he ignores me. His stupid-ass condescending smile fades at whatever is on Yemi’s face.
“You’re serious?”
“Very,” she whispers. “We were in the Athenaeum getting books, then the next thing we know, we’re here.”
“The Athenaeum? In the Godsdawn.”
“For the love of the fucking Valories, where else?” I snap and my chains rattle as I throw my hands up.