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Brigid hummed thoughtfully and began pushing her bucket. “I need to think on it. Don’t talk to me until I’ve told you my decision.”
I nod. “I understand.”
But fate has another plan. The next day, while she’s picking up trash, one of the security guards knocks her over and into the trashcan on purpose.
“Hey,” I growl. My fingers wrap around the bars as though I could rip them apart with my bare hands.
The guard turns to me and laughs. “What are you gonna do in there?”
“Come closer and find out,” I say. “Or are you too much of a coward for that?”
Enraged, he punches between the bars, aiming for something that will hurt. But even with a small amount of sunlight in my system, I’m still faster and stronger. I step aside, grab his arm, and break it.
He howls in agony, sending the other guards running. The beating I receive is totally worth it to see the expression on Brigid’s face, a mixture of joy and relief that someone sees enough value in her to defend her.
That night, there’s a note below my bowl of Prylie. It’s clearly from Brigid and reads:
I’m in. But only if you take me with you. What do you need?
I flush the note down the toilet and sit on my bed, eating the Prylie without tasting it as I work to come up with a plan. Now, to figure out how to escape this hellhole with this human, Danel, and Dalex Arn. How hard can it be?
CHAPTER 15
TANIA
One night of passion.
If I stack up every moment of my life, every instance of my 29 years, it looks so minuscule compared to the whole. All in all, I counted roughly four intimate hours, strictly speaking, of uninterrupted passion.
When I omit the time we spent walking, talking, or eating, it looks very small indeed. Four hours. One night. One day. End of story.
Except it isn’t.
If anything, I’ve grown hungrier for more.
That one night of passion sticks in my mind, clouding my days in the sewing den. In my hazy mind, I’m stitching the seams together so tightly I hardly know now when one moment begins and the other ends.
When I close my eyes, I see him standing over me. I feel the relief of salvation wash over me again. I feel the touch of his scales, calling back to those precious fragments, and pulling me further away from the work in front of me.
“You seem distracted,” Alice says, handing me the fabric of the day, a pale synth poly blend with slight yellow flowers. Thefabric catches the attention of my fingers as they slowly trace the design. I can hear her, yet strangely I feel taken in. As much as I want to answer her, silence feels like my only cue.
“Yup,” she says, her eyebrows reaching the top of her head. “Distracted.”
“I’m sorry Alice,” I confess as I finally manage to free myself from the reverie. Hoverbots zoom over our heads keeping us on pattern, but as for my thoughts? They have no power here whatsoever.
“I’m just a little in my head.” It’s as good a lie as any.
Two weeks ago, my distracted state melted into a world of patterns and sequins. No one would have noticed me apart from the endless flurry of those days. But Fashion Week is a long-forgotten memory now. While the other girls have long recovered from the rush, here I am. So distracted. So hungry.
With nothing more than memories to feed on.
I keep getting stuck in that one night of passion. Leaving when Sathior demanded it haunts me now like a missed opportunity. I keep going back to the faded note, the flower waiting for me. Maybe I missed something in that note. Maybe my assumptions got the wrong idea.
I can only hope I don’t spend the rest of my life paying for it.
As the weeks drag on, my life wants to force itself into old familiar patterns. Roads I walked before, a life I know and makes sense to me. But the distance from when I met him grows wider with time. Much as I want to move forward, I keep finding my way back to those fragments that life gave us.
“Incorrect. Incorrect. Incorrect.” A hoverbot yanks me from my thoughts with a blazing red light. “This garment is off pattern. This garment is off pattern.”
