“What a stupid bitch.”
“Right! Anyway, for a couple weeks that was all I felt. Then last week, one of the guards tried to…um?—”
“Which guard?”
“I don’t know, they all look the same to me. Although that particular guard is now missing a finger, so he shouldn’t be hard to point out if he’s still here. Which he’s probably not because Fuck Head made it very clear I washisand no one was allowed to touch me.” She gagged. “He didn’t,” she added quickly as though she saw the question on my face. “He wanted me willing. He didn’t touch me—at least not like that.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was relieved she hadn’t been violated to that degree sure, but she still went through hell. And I wanted to kill him—slowly, brutally, over days. But that was Violet’s kill, no chance I was taking that away from her.
“Anyway, I bit off that one guard’s finger and spit it back in his face. You would have died—the look on his face as his finger landed at his feet…” She trailed off laughing. “As his partner was dragging him out of the room, I felt it. The spark, my fire.
“I started practicing on the torches when I was alone in the tor—my usual room. I’d fan the flames a little. Nothing supernoticeable, because I knew they were watching when I was in there.”
She stopped to peek around the next corner.
“A few days after that I accidentally put out one of the torches in the hall when they were walking me back to my cell. That was when I realized I could control the air too. So I tried for water and earth too. I was a hugeAvatar: The Last Airbenderfan as a kid, so I got a little giddy when I got two out of four, not going to lie.”
She smiled, continuing our walk.
“So you started on earth right away, considering you’re surrounded by it?”
She nodded. “I took little chunks out of the walls then put them back like they never left. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get water. Until yesterday, when Amber showed up. She decided it would be fun to watch me get waterboarded. I felt the water respond to me, like it didn’t want to drown me. I actually had to force it to.”
“You… You waterboarded yourself?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t let them know yet. I was planning to build up my strength this week and see about breaking out once I’d gotten control of my powers. But then you found me and I thought, that’s perfect, we can do it together.”
“You… You did all that to Amber with no practice? Scared off twenty guards with no practice? Jesus Christ, Violet.You know, I think that makes you the most powerful out of all of us.”
She grinned over her shoulder at me. “Am I? I guess the two of us will be an unstoppable team then. Think of all the good—or evil we could do. I guess it depends on which side you’re looking at it from.”
“You want to team up?”
“Hell yeah, I do! Are you kidding?”
I grabbed her hand and spun her into my chest. “God, I fucking love you. How did I get so lucky?”
“You pinned me to a wall in an alley and you never got rid of me.”
“More like, I never let you go.”
She smiled, popping up on her toes to kiss me. My arms tightened around her as her lips parted.Never let me go.
Not even if you tried to kill me.
“What the fuck?”
Violet barely pulled away from me to glance at the open doorway at the end of the hall. In front of it stood Officer Fuck Shit, surrounded by fifteen guards. She shot them a wicked grin.
“Hello boys, so nice to see you all while we’re on even footing, don’t you think?”
“How—”
She tsked, taking a step toward the door. “Oh gosh! How rude of me! Officer O’Neill, have you met my husband?”
“He’s not— But you’re supposed?—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up would you? I told you a hundred times I’ll never be yours. Get over it.” She shrugged. “Or don’t, you won’t live long enough for it to matter.”
