His words are out like a snarl he can’t hold back any longer. “Funny, coming from the lapdog you’ve turned into for your father. I thought you might have grown a kink for being spoken to that way.”
The insult lands heavily in my chest, but I let it sit there, stretching the silence until he hears how hollow it sounds against the walls. I show him how to take it on the chin and not react irrationally.
“You mistake survival for obedience,” I say, leaning down until he has nowhere to look but up at me. “A mistake that will earn you a lesson in this place, whether it comes from me, another guard, or my father.”
I take a step back and drag my gaze over him once, deliberate in making him feel small. “And if it comes from him, Elias, you won’t walk away with your tongue intact. Not now that he doesn’t need the family facade to keep you here. That’s a promise.”
His nostrils flare, chin tipping higher in another brittle show of bravado.
It’s Callum who moves first as his arms uncross to lift his hands placatingly. “Enough,” he mutters, voice taut with irritation. “Cool it, both of you.”
I can’t, though. They need to see the repercussions for speaking out here.
Elias stiffens, his eyes glaring daggers into the side of my face. His pride won’t let him back down and I prepare myself to really drive my lesson home.
“You think you’re any better than me?” I tilt my head slightly, letting our gazes clash once more. “Standing here in uniform, guarding the same girl you supposedly cared for a week ago. You watched her get flayed open.” My eyes narrow as his brow knits together. “What does that make you?”
For a moment, he says nothing. His nostrils flare, chest expanding with breath against the fitted black of his shirt. When he finally speaks, it’s a grumble shoved through his teeth, too quiet to carry conviction.
“I’m just here to get through my year of servitude. Then we’ll be out of here to move on with our lives, and I’ll never look back. Can you say the same?”
The words hang there between us, so ridiculously naive and further proof that they have no idea what they’ve signed up for. I almost laugh, not because it’s funny, but because I remember when I thought the same.
I shake my head slowly, letting a smirk tug a corner of my mouth up as I glance between them both. “You really think he’s going to let you walk after a year?”
Both of them look at me, confusion shadowing their features in different ways. Callum’s brows pull together, blue eyes searching mine for some hint of jest. Elias bristles tighter, irritation etched in the lines of his mouth, still unwilling to believe his own naïvety.
I let the silence hold them there a moment longer before I strip it bare with my own confession.
“You think I’m here because I want to be?” My voice hardens, each word deliberate. “Guess again.”
I turn on my heel before either can pry further. I’ve already wasted too much time.
“Make sure she gets her blood bags before night shift,” I say, tone clipped into command as their superior officer. “Her night shift guards have been dumping the blood out before tossing in the empty plastic. They make it look like she’s been fed by morning, but the footage shows otherwise.”
“Why haven’t you said something? Or kicked them off duty?”
Callum’s shock and thread of anger twining through those questions drags my attention back to them over my shoulder.
“And look like a vampire sympathizer? You forget where you are, Cal. If I kicked them off duty, they’d just be replaced with another pair who might think of worse ways to entertain themselves.”
Elias gives a short, sharp snicker. “Well, now that she’s recovered from the initial mist and awake when the sedative wears off, I’m sure they’ll feed her just to shut her up. Or she’ll be relentless.”
His tone is meant to dismiss her, but the flicker in his eyes betrays the truth. He likes it.
I sigh, a long breath through my nose, and pat my pockets until I feel the cool weight of the vials pressing against the fabric. Still intact. Still full. I need to hurry the hell up to the labs.
“She’ll be kept under the sedative mist every night from now on,” I mutter, “it’s safer that way for her.”
The ghost of a smile slips through Callum’s face before he can stop it. “Yeah,” he says softly, almost like he’s talking to himself. “Probably better she can’t rile the guards with her sass.”
Elias’s head tips, the sound that leaves him a low, disgruntled groan. “Careful. That almost looks like affection. Or appreciation.”
I immediately roll my eyes at the irony in that. As if he doesn’t have his own tells.
Callum’s half-smile and Elias’s prickly nature should irritate me, but instead it strikes something deeper. For a moment I don’t see two armed guards in black, posturing like men. I see the small, hollow-eyed boys who were brought through our doors after their mother was killed. Callum with his fists balled at his sides, still asking where she’d gone days later. Elias trying to stand taller than he was, already angry at a world too big for him to take on.
The sound of their bickering now carries an echo of the boys they were all those years ago, and it catches in my chest, welling up emotions I’ve tried relentlessly to suppress. Fear for their mental and physical safety rises in me, sharp and unwelcome. Because I know what this place does. I know what it’s already doing to them, even if they don’t.
