Page 49 of Claimed By the Wraiths

It took time.

I’d started before Vain called me back. On the first day, I talked to the woman three doors down through the gap between our doors during the twenty-two-minute patrol gaps. Nothing dangerous if a guard overheard. Nothing about escape.

Just her.

She hadn’t spoken to anyone in weeks. I spent most of a day talking into silence before I got one word back.

“Narev.”

Just the name.

I took it like a gift and gave her one back. “That’s a coastal name. Tell me about the boats.”

The next time she answered, it was three words.

By the third day, it was whole sentences.

“Small boats. For the fishing cooperatives. Three-person hulls, shallow draft.”

“You designed them?”

“I built them. My mother designed them.” A pause. “The boats come in covered in ice in winter. Three months of storms. We’d haul them in and rebuild what the sea broke.”

“Sounds like hard work.”

“It was good work. You built something, it went out on the water and it came back with food.” Her voice was still rough from disuse, but it no longer sounded borrowed. “Here they take things apart. I’d rather build.”

Patel took longer.

He was the young guard who escorted me most often. At first his finger stayed inside the trigger guard. Then it moved outside. Then the barrel stopped tracking my spine every time I turned a corner.

Small things.

I waited through three escorts before I used his name.

“Patel.”

He glanced sideways.

“There’s a woman three cells down from mine. She hasn’t spoken to anyone in weeks.”

“I know.”

He said it before he could stop himself.

“You’ve noticed.”

“I’m not supposed to notice.”

“But you do.”

He kept walking.

“Her name is Narev,” I said. “She built boats.”

That got a look.

Not cooperation. Not yet.