Silver tumbles from the fabric, dull in the dim light but undeniably identifiable.
“Careful, Gray,” he murmurs. “I was beginning to think you cared about me.”
Gasps travel through the crowd as whispers evolve into pointing fingers and shouted accusations.
No, no, no.
Even if I’m able to escape the Enforcer, I can’t outrun every person in Dor. And now that they’ve seen my hair, seen that I’m here, I can’t fight in the ring anymore. Can’t earn enough money to start over.
Something akin to amusement lights his eyes, making me regret not slitting his throat when I had the chance. And I’ve certainly had that chance, more than once.
“You bastard.” My voice is little more than a whisper, even as I struggle to shove myself out of his grip.
He suddenly has both my wrists clutched in calloused hands, yanking me closer to him as the dagger slips from my sweaty palm. I practically topple over his chest before his mouth is at my ear. “What are you going to do, hmm? You won’t make it one step outside this cage before being torn apart—”
“Oi, come on out, little Silver Savior!”
Before the words have even left his mouth, taunting shouts ripple through the crowd.
“That’s who’s worth so much?”
“Pretty little thing worth a pretty penny, eh?”
People are rattling the cage now, shouting at the stunned Silver Savior. “Great observation, Prince. You could pass for a Psychic.” I’m all but baring my teeth at him. “We had a deal.”
“And I won.”
“Oh, is that what you’re calling it?” I scoff. “How exactly are you planning to get me out of here, then? Why the hell did you do that?”
He smiles. It’s a simple, soft lift of his lips that feels like a punch to the gut. Like a piece of the past slipping its way into my present. A piece of him I didn’t think I’d witness again. “Because,” he answers calmly, “I needed you to need me.”
I choke on a humorless laugh. “And you think today is the day I suddenly decide I need you?”
“I think today is the day you don’t have any other choice.” He starts to sit up, my wrists still gripped between his fingers despite my incessant yanking. “The only way you’re walking out of here in one piece is with the Enforcer at your side. Unless you think the Silver Savior can take down every person in this cellar? Then, by all means, be my guest.”
I glare at him—a last resort when I refuse to say what he wants to hear. Because he’s insufferable and intolerable and annoyingly right. The Enforcer is my only way out of here. But one person is far easier to evade than the entirety of this packed room.
I’ll use him to get out, and then I’ll deal with him alone.
I swallow, my throat dry as I try to gulp down my growing pride. “Fine,” I grit out. “Get me out of here.”
“There are those glowing manners of yours,” he says dryly. “You may need to get out of my lap, though, if we plan on leaving anytime soon.”
I startle, my cheeks burning with the sudden realization that I’m perched atop his lap, my wrists pinned down. He’s far too close, the feel of him far too familiar. I can’t stand it, stand him. Which is why I ungracefully slide from his lap to stand with him.
He releases one of my wrists but makes up for it by gripping the other all the more tightly. Turning to face the crowd, his voice is even as he announces, “I’ll be taking the Silver Savior with me, and no one here is going to give us any problems.” The crowd erupts in an outrage that the Enforcer refuses to acknowledge as he continues, his tone every bit the commander. “As Ilya’s Enforcer and second to the king, she’s my property. Mine. Which means if anyone so much as lays a hand on her, you’ll learn firsthand just how brutal the Elites can be.”
Silence.
The cellar is thick with it, drawing attention to the ringing in my ears. I shift uncomfortably, spinning the band on my thumb while his words sink in.
“She’s my property.”
I swallow my scoff and instead scan the room, fear hiding among the crowd in the form of flickering eyes and furrowed brows. No matter their feelings about Ilya, fright runs deeper than detest. Just the mere possibility of an Elite’s wrath raining down on them has their imaginations running wild. I doubt most of them have yet to even encounter someone from Ilya, let alone hear anything but horrors about the powerful population isolated across the desert.
They don’t even know what they’re afraid of, what it is the Elites can do. What he can do. The Enforcer only has abilities when there are others to wield them from, though he’s a weapon himself. And yet they cower from the potential of his power, from the threat of an infamous Elite.
Maybe the unknown is half the horror.
He used their ignorance against them.
“Stay close,” he murmurs, reaching for the cage door. “Or don’t. It’s your life at stake.”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes while simultaneously trying to ignore the fact that I look and feel like a toddler. He has me pressed close to him, not out of protection but something far more predatory. It’s the possession radiating off him that has the people parting to make a path, has them gawking as he guides the girl worth their livelihoods from the room.
Eyes follow us up the stairs and into the world above the cellar. The streets are dark with the dead of night, and a warm breeze whips at my unbound hair. I fight the sigh that threatens to slip past my lips at the feel of wind kissing my scalp.
This is the freest I’ve felt in days.
A rough tug on my arm has my unfortunate reality resuming.
I’m not free at all.
“This way, Little Psychic. No time for a moonlit stroll tonight.”
I bristle at the mocking title. “So, what’s the plan?”
He throws a bemused look over his shoulder while tugging me down a narrow street. “You know, I try not to make a habit of informing criminals of my plans.”
I snort at that. “You know damn well I was a criminal long before that final Trial. And yet”—I smile slyly at his tense shoulders—“I seem to remember you informing me of much more than just your plans.”
I knew you. Knew your past, your present—and your future that we were foolish enough to think I’d be a part of.
He turns, forcing me to skid to a stop before my face meets his chest. “I know.” His voice is soft, sorrowful in a way that makes me squirm. “And I’m trying not to make a habit of repeating the same mistakes.”
Mistakes.
The seemingly simple word is like a slap to the face, no matter how fitting it is. Because that’s exactly what it all was—a mistake. Every shred of ourselves shared in silent looks and whispered stories under willow trees only contributed to the slow death that was us. And now we can add the rooftop to that ever-growing list of mistakes.
We were inevitably imperfect for each other.
“Come on,” he urges, all but dragging me down the street. “You can pick up the pace, even with that sloppy footwork of yours.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t be so sloppy if you’d let me keep my feet on the ground,” I shoot back at him, stumbling when he pulls me around a crumbling corner.
“Would you rather I throw you over my shoulder? It’s not as though I haven’t done it before.”
“No, I wouldn’t—”
I skid to a stop midsentence, midplotting, before planting my feet as best I can against his persistent pulling.
Maybe I would rather he throw me over his shoulder.
“I’m not budging until you tell me what’s going on,” I say simply.
He turns slowly, amusement hidden among the annoyance tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Is that so?”
I yank at my wrist still grasped in his unyielding grip. “It is. So I suggest you save us both some time and fill me in on my fate.”
He chuckles darkly. “Aren’t you entitled for a criminal.”
“And aren’t you righteous for being no better?”
We stare at each other, still connected by his rough hand encircling my own. Our unspoken sins seem to stretch between us, swallowing the insignificant words burning in my throat. We are one and the same, this Enforcer and me. Both numb, both burdened, both covered in the blood of each other’s fathers.
An Elite and Ordinary have never seemed so similar.
His next words are delicately dangerous in that devastating way of his. “Everything I’ve done has been for the king, and you’re the one who killed him, not me.”
“I killed a father,” I say, stepping closer to him. “And so did you.”
His brows crinkle, confusion creased between them. “What are you—”
His grip has loosened, his guard has fallen, and I don’t think twice before taking advantage of his distraction. In one swift movement, I twist so my back is against his chest and hook my free arm under his shoulder. With a combination of momentum and his sheer shock, I have him suddenly flipping over my shoulder.
It’s not exactly a smooth takedown, and Plague knows Father would raise his brows in that way he always did during training. After all, it was he who taught me to take down a man three times my size, so the sloppiness in which the Enforcer rolled over my shoulder just now would have him shaking his head with that exasperated smile of his.
The prince hits the ground with a trail of curses. I’m on him before my next thundering heartbeat, slipping my last thin blade from my boot. “Did you really think I wouldn’t have another knife on me?” I pant, pressing it to his ribs.
Something sharp bites into my back, and I shudder at the familiar feeling of a blade pricking my spine. I’m getting careless. I haven’t the slightest idea where the weapon came from, or when he pulled it out, and my lack of focus is frightening.
Sorry, Father.
“Did you really think I’d underestimate you after everything you’ve done?” His eyes bore into mine, burning like the unspoken words trying to claw their way up his throat.
“Go on!” The shout surprises me, the words far harsher than I intended them to be. “Say it. Say what I’ve done.”
His chest heaves beneath me. “You killed the king.”
I shake my head at him, my eyes never breaking from the betrayal in his gaze. “Yes. I killed the king. But more importantly, I killed a wicked tyrant. I killed a man who has killed countless. I killed a man who tried to kill me just because power doesn’t run through my veins.” I heave a breath, my teeth bared above him. “But I’m forgetting one other thing. What else did I kill, Prince?”
His throat bobs. “You killed… my father.”
“Yet another thing we have in common,” I breathe. His brows crinkle as I the hover the knife above his stomach. “Should I drive this through your chest like you did my father? That seems only fitting, don’t you think?”
He shakes his head at me, disbelief drenching his features. “Your father…? I didn’t—” His eyes widen slightly with something that resembles realization. “How many years? How many years ago was he killed?”
I refuse to believe he didn’t know whose life he’d taken that night. Refuse to believe he wasn’t deceiving me all these months, tricking me into trusting him after all he’s taken from me. Refuse to believe he didn’t know it was my heart he shattered the night he slid a sword through my father’s.
“Five,” I croak. “In my house.” My words are little more than a whisper. “I watched you kill him.”
He shakes his head at me, horror slipping through the cracks of his mask, the crevices of his crumbling walls. “Paedyn, I—”
It’s the first time he’s said my name, and some pathetic part of me would have liked to hear him say it again. But I don’t even get the chance to hear anything he says after.
“He’s over here!”
A shout that can only belong to an Imperial echoes off the walls, followed by the thundering of a dozen pairs of booted feet. My eyes shoot up toward the sound, finding shadows shifting closer. Then I’m looking at him again. He opens his mouth to say something, but it’s a strangled grunt that slips out instead.
The clean slice to his shoulder buys me a few seconds, and I don’t dare waste a single one.
I’m running again, like I always seem to find myself doing.
And I don’t look back.
