The way her lips wrap around my name makes my mouth water. She says it so casually, but I hear how forbidden it sounds coming from her.
I shouldn’t be listening for her to say my name again. I doubt she will.
Bollocks, I’m pathetic. My only friend barely remembers me, and I’ve been pining for years, making her into something she never promised to be. What’s worse, I’m salivating over another guy’s girl. Even if that bloke is a shifter, this sort of forlornness is beneath me.
Or, well, it should be, anyway.
Cassia shoves her tray forward with a huff of frustration. “Fine, I’ll start. You want to make real friends? This is how this works. A person volunteers information about their sentence, and only when they’re ready to do that. Since you’re the only other person who’s stuck up for our Arly-girl, you’re in.” She grips the edge of the table, and Charlotte leans in, placing her hand on Cassia’s back. It’s as if the touch sets Cassia free. “I got seven years because my mum is a thief. She likes diamonds—the shinier and bigger, the better, though she never turned down anything sparkly, no matter the carat. Robbed too many jewelry stores, so here I am. Mum is the Diamond Street Burglar.”
I purse my lips, realizing now why it’s rude to ask why people are serving time here. Cassia’s wounds are clearly painted on her face. “I’m sorry, Cassia.”
“I’ve never stolen so much as a paperclip.”
The shifter glowers at me, as if I’m making him confess things he’d clearly rather not talk about. “I met my dad for the first time on the day I was sentenced for him raping a bunch of women. I also learned that day that he’d raped my mum, and that’s how I was born.”
This additional tidbit is apparently new to the girls, who gasp their horror and sympathy. Arlanna threads her fingers through his atop the table, making a clear statement that he will not suffer through this story without her holding him together.
Gray keeps his gaze on his lunch. “Never laid my hand on a woman to disrespect her, but here I am, serving time for eight counts of rape, and probably a whole lot more that went unreported.”
I fight the urge to pull back in disgust. I mean, what is a person supposed to say to that?
The shifter points at the frown I didn’t mean to display. “That, right there. That’s the reason no one in here wants to talk about why they’re here. You’re looking at me and seeing a rapist. No matter if I’m inside of Prigham’s or outside, I’ll always pay for my father’s sins. That’s the beast in all of us.” He takes a surly chomp out of his apple. “Your dad was a right prick to put it into a law, but the nature of man would be there all the same, holding us accountable for things we have no control over.”
I swallow my discomfort at being scolded. It’s clear the shifter isn’t cross with me, but more explaining the way of the world so I don’t trip up again so publicly. Still, it stings when the judgmental prig in me is brought to light. Thoughts like those fester more comfortably in the dark. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it through.”
The shifter polishes off his apple in five large bites. “It’s alright. Arly likes you. Charlotte needs you for the plan. I’ve got your back.” And I can tell he truly means it. “Part of that is explaining the way of the world and making sure you don’t get jumped for accidentally putting your foot in your mouth.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder toward the rest of the cafeteria. “When they figure out that you’re just as trapped in here as they are, and you can’t do a thing for them, your adoring fans are going to thin out. I’ll be here when they do.”
My heart sinks. I know the people who make room for me, pick my things up when I’m clumsy and look forward to seeing me aren’t actually my friends, but hangers on. I knew this, but it’s mildly crushing all the same. Being used is part of the gig.
I clear my throat but keep my eyes on my tray. “And when the four of you realize I can’t be part of your plan? Is that it for us, too?”
I can’t bring myself to look at Arlanna. I don’t want to catch sight of her stoic nature that seems to turn kitten only for Gray.
Charlotte puts her hand atop mine. “Not in the least.”
Cassia chomps her corn, chewing with her mouth open. “Afraid you’re stuck with us, kid.”
A chuckle finds me unexpectedly. “‘Kid’? I’m twenty-nine.”
Cassia reaches across and pinches my cheek, drawing a chuckle from everyone at the table, including Arlanna. “You’re a newbie here, so you’re our little buddy for now.”
Though any table would cheerfully make room for me, I realize how very right our laughter feels. I take a bite of my… whatever this is—it’s pale and lumpy—and reason that, of all the people I could’ve ended up with, I don’t mind this quirky bunch one bit.
Gray brushes his knuckles to Arlanna’s. “When we get out, the pack won’t give us such a hard time. You’ll be the very first fae in a shifter’s haven.”
Arlanna offers a wan smile as she leans into his side, but I can tell she shares the same doubts that swirl up in me. We all like to think our own kind is better, more enlightened than the rest, but the same prejudices that plague the fae have not escaped the shifters.
Arlanna will never be accepted by Gray’s pack, and she knows it. Still, she permits Gray his fantasy because she is kind.
I truly enjoy this small group that cares for each other so deeply.
I want to help them, to let Arlanna unlock my cuffs, but a lump rises in my throat when I realize the party might stop tonight when I tell them clearly, I can’t let that happen.
Scrubbing in the Shadows
Paxton
I’ve never scrubbed a toilet in my life. It’s a fact I keep to myself, though I’m sure my awkward and pitiful effort makes that truth plain as day.
Cassia is on my shift. Well, I’m on Cassia’s shift. She’s leading the detail, under the supervision of a guard. The man in the blue uniform is only kind of watching over five teams who are scrubbing the latrines, showers, sinks, walls and floors “until they shine.”
Cassia is a natural leader, even if she’s surlier than a porcupine on a bad day. It works for her. No one wants to go through the trouble of crossing her, so even with the handicap of having me on her team, we’re well ahead of the others who are scrubbing furiously.
“Amos, take the toilets on that end. The new kid and I are going to the other. We’ll meet you in the middle.”
Amos doesn’t argue. On the contrary; he looks relieved to be given purpose.
Cassia jerks her head to the left end of the row of toilets. “Let’s go, kiddo.”
I don’t mind my new nickname. It takes the burden of feeling like I have to know everything off my shoulders. “Ready, boss.”
She smirks and rolls her shoulders back at the nickname. I can tell she revels in the respect.
She gets down on her knees and motions for me to do the same with the toilet beside hers. “Put some elbow grease into it. It’s not clean until the stainless steel shines. You’re missing the edges, too, so get the entire thing. Long, hard swipes, not dainty rich boy dabs.”
I chuckle at both her choice of words and my ineptitude as I take her advice to heart. “Like this?”
She eyes my concerted effort with a nod. “Better.”
She’s training me, which means she doesn’t think I’m useless. I don’t want to be thought of as a zoo animal meant to be gawked at but not do anything practical or meaningful. “Cheers, Cassia.”
She casts me a sideways smirk, showcasing a dimple that makes her look sweet instead of strictly authoritative. “Any friend of Arly’s is a toilet-scrubber of mine.”
I snicker as I wipe around the edges of the seat, making sure to get underneath this time. “I still can’t believe Arlanna only has one memory of me.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. It’s weird, isn’t it? That she has one memory of you, and nothing else? Also weird that you just so happened to have your powers enhanced the night after you slept by her sid
e. On top of the weirdness of your gift being what it is.” She glances around to make sure our conversation stays private. “Most of us have persuasions, but she enhanced you a long time ago by accident, it seems. She was six. She didn’t know what she was doing. And your gift is potent. It seems like it hasn’t been polluted at all through the generations, which means that at six years old, she was able to fully restore your magic, and didn’t know she did it.”
It is strange, indeed. I’m still processing it all. “That she didn’t know she enhanced other people’s magic amazes me. Her family knows. How could she not?”
Cassia shrugged. “No idea. Arly had to unlock and enhance me during one of our group meditations, and then my ability got stronger.” Her eyes dart over her shoulder to make sure we’re still out of earshot. “Want to see something crazy?”
I look over my shoulder, confirming that everyone else is wrapped up in their own thing, too distracted to overhear. “Always.”
Cassia reaches behind the toilet, between the pipe and the wall. I can barely see what her hand is doing in the shadows.
And then I can’t see her hand at all.
My eyes narrow, but still nothing. When I glance up at her face, she looks just as worried as I feel. “Cassia? What is that?”
“Sh-Shadowmelder,” she whispers, losing a portion of her bravado and revealing the scared girl beneath. “I’ve been practicing at night after the people in my cell go to sleep. When I do it again, try to grab my hand.”
She dips her arm back around and waits a few seconds before it vanishes from view. When I reach for her grip, my fingers fall on nothing. I grasp around, stretching my shoulder and grunting as I fish for her, but find only concrete and steel. “Cassia?”
“It’s gone,” she confirms, as if she needed me there to give validation to her assumptions. “Charlotte was right. I’m not just invisible in the shadows if I turn on my magic; I become a shadow.”
I think back to my knowledge of shadowmelders. “Next, you’ll be able to cast your invisibility onto other things.”
“Come again?”
“The ancients used to be able to touch something, and not just make it appear invisible, but actually turn it into nothing. Then, of course, the magic would wear off, and the object would reappear.”
Cassia bites down on her lower lip while she scrubs. “I don’t… This is a lot.” Her voice sounds scared, and not impressed with the ancient magic come to life. Anyone in the palace would be proud and immediately tout their newfound ability, but she looks afraid of herself.
Though we’re disgusting and on our knees, stinking of chemicals and dust, I reach for her. My gloved hands don’t touch her, but my arms wrap her body in a hug that I hope communicates comfort. “We won’t lose you to the shadows,” I promise her, which, as it turns out, is the wrong thing to say.
A single tear springs in the corner of her eye as she lightly shoves me away. “You’d better not. I’ll kick your arse if you even think about it.”
I chuckle, not because it’s not absolutely what she would do, but because she’s terrible at being vulnerable. Still, she manages climbing that mountain all the same. “How can I help?”
“You can scrub the toilet and stop looking at me like I’m a kitten whose ear has gone bent.” She sniffs. “This tear never happened.”
“Noted. How else?”
She keeps her eyes on her task, putting her energy into making the steel shine. “You can tell Charlotte that I love her, and that I’m scared. I’ve hidden before, but I’ve never disappeared. I don’t know enough about the ancient magic to know if I’m going to be okay. So tell her I love her.”
Compassion wells in me. “Well, you’re in luck. I just so happen to have one of the most useless and expensive educations in the country. I learned all about the ancients who have little bearing on the world today.”
She manages a chortle. “Thank the fairies for that. I wouldn’t mind a few daydreams over dinner.”
The levity in our back and forth masks the dread I can tell has been in her bones for a while now.
“It’s going to be alright,” I assure her under my breath as we scrub, this time in perfect unison. “The shadowmelders were fierce, and afraid of very little. They were always four steps ahead of their adversaries, coming up with contingency plans for their contingency plans. It’s no great surprise you’re descended from them. They didn’t lose themselves to the shadows. They had dominion over both the light and the dark.”
It gives me a sense of peace to watch her inhale with new focus and far less despair. She seems to take my words to heart while she scrubs the steel surfaces. It’s clear her mind is shifting into a new gear as we work.
I hope that’s all my role needs to be in their bizarre plan without details. I like encouraging people to fulfill their destiny, bolstering them and empowering those with purpose to go on to achieve what they were meant to become.
They won’t need me; I’m certain of it.
And even if they do, my magic is not something I can give them.
Ten Minutes
Arlanna
Nurse Jen tapes the cut on my forehead with her tattooed hands. She winces at the sight of me, which is never a good sign. “You’re going to bruise up brilliantly by morning. It’s already rising into a lump beneath the cut. They bashed the bridge of your nose, too. Lucky they didn’t break it.”
“That’s exactly how I feel,” I drone. “Positively lucky.”
Nurse Jen narrows one eye at my sass. “I’ll talk to the guard who was supposed to be watching you.” When I don’t respond, she fixes me with that signature understanding stare that nearly forces all my secrets to the surface. “Making friends with the wall again?”
“The edge of the sink this time. It’s fine. Thanks for bandaging me up.”
“You want to talk about it?”
My mouth pulls to the side in answer. I like her so much, but there’s nothing she can do for me. She can’t force the other inmates to leave me alone. She can’t make them aim their anger at the people responsible for their incarceration.
“Still wearing that stiff upper lip, eh?” She releases a heavy sigh. “You haven’t gone back to solitary, so that’s something. Still, you’re the inmate I see most often in here. For every scrape I’m treating, you’ve got about half a dozen mysterious bruises to go with it. They’re collecting faster than they’re fading.”
Then she does something so sweet, I nearly tear up. She reaches out and brushes my long hair away from my forehead. The touch is a mix of sisterly care and maternal affection. It’s something I grew up without, but desperately wished for.
“I wish you’d talk to me, girl.”
My chin angles downward so I can steady myself from her kindness. It always manages to rattle me. “It’s not you. I just don’t want to take you down with me. There’s no helping me. It’s just getting through it.”
She holds out her hands and squares her body to mine, inviting me to squeeze her fingers. “I want you to try something with me.”
It looks like she’s asking me to meditate with her, which I know from experience can come with some serious consequences. I don’t want to enhance her magic. That would give me away for sure. Still, I don’t have it in me to outright refuse her, compassionate as she’s always been.
So I hold on to her hands and mirror her deep breathing. Though, in my mind, I steel myself against any sort of meditating, going so far as to make sure not to close my eyes.
“I know. You want me to say the affirmations you gave me: ‘I matter. I’m a good person. My best days are still ahead of me.’”
She smirks at my readiness. “Very good.” Then her eyes scrunch with actual concern. “Next lesson: I want you to keep something in your heart when you start to feel overwhelmed. Say to yourself, ‘ten minutes at a time.’ Taking things one day at a time can be difficult, so let’s go ten minutes at a time. In this ten minutes of your life, you have a friend who cares about you. You
have clothes on your back. You have a place to sleep tonight. You have dinner being prepared for you right now. In this ten minutes of your life, are you okay?”
I consider her words, turning them over to examine them for the wisdom they hold. Sure, I’m not free, but in this span of ten minutes, “okay” is exactly what I am. Not great. I mean, Paul and his buddy slamming my head on the steel edge of the sink doesn’t feel good. I’ve still got a headache from it. But right now, in this ten minutes of my life, I’m holding onto someone who can bring actual healing and kindness into my world. I guess it could be worse.
I don’t mean to let a deep breath of relaxation fill me, but hope tends to do that to a person. With my exhale, I let a portion of my anxiety go. The melancholy of being without Sloan. The worry I’m going to be attacked at every turn. The strangeness that haunts me whenever Paxton is close enough to touch. All of it slides away from me.
It’s not gone completely, but at least it’s not splattered all over my psyche. I have one full breath between me and my panic, which is far more than I had a minute ago.
Perhaps that’s all I needed—one full breath.
Nurse Jen’s aura comes to light right before my eyes, though I didn’t mean to conjure it into being. A forest green—not uncommon for a healer—surrounds her head.
But at my touch, my deep breath, the color begins to change. The forest green gives way to a beautiful turquoise that surrounds her, telling me that her healing game has reached a new level of awakening.
I jerk my hands back, hoping I didn’t accidentally enhance her magic.
I feel different—not permanently changed, but like the air that I breathe now fills me instead of tires me.
Nurse Jen stares at her palms as if they look strange to her now. She turns them over, her brows knitting.
“Headache,” I finally admit, brushing her aura away from view. “In this ten minutes, I have a small headache. Maybe I should’ve said something about that. I don’t really want to spend the next ten minutes in pain.”
Sins of the Mother: A Paranormal Prison Romance (Sinfully Sacrificed Book 2) Page 5
