Despondently, I start trudging back towards my room. My spine tingles as I approach the door I saw Mabon through. I’m not going to look. I’m not. The best thing to do is to march forward, keeping my eyes facing front.
My feet stop. My head swivels. I look through the tiny slit of a window.
The room beyond is empty.
My heart and stomach flutter strangely. It feels an awful lot like disappointment. But that can’t be right.
My gaze despondently flicks around the abandoned room as if I think I’m going to find him hiding in a corner. But there is nothing in there apart from a ton of medical equipment.
My attention snaps back to the table I saw him sitting on. There are cuffs. And leg restraints.
My stomach heaves. It’s fine. He looked fine. He was swinging his legs and chattering away. They were just giving him a medical or something.
Because they are bound to be curious about fey physiology. As far as I know, Mabon is the first fey that humans have got their hands on.
My heart is beating like crazy now. My legs feel weak. It’s probably from the intense workout.
There is a dark blob of something on the floor under the table. I stare at it in horror. It’s not blood. It can’t be. Well, maybe it is, but it is a damn medical room, so blood happens. And it is right under the table, so probably just missed by whoever was on mop duty.
It could be anyone’s blood. It is not necessarily Mabon’s. The fact it looks slightly purple is just a trick of the light. I don’t evenknow if Mabon has purple blood. I mean, that’s quite a leap for me to make, assuming that because he has purple hair and eyes that his blood is purple.
A memory flashes. Mabon panting and sweaty beneath me. Looking up at me and grinning with sparkling eyes. Smears of cum on his taut belly. Cum that’s tinged purple.
I whirl away from the window and bend over. I retch, but nothing comes up. My head is spinning. I need to breathe. Deep, calm breaths. I’m still making conclusions. My rather dirty memory doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It’s not evidence. I don’t know jack shit.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Okay. I know what I need to do. I need to find someone in authority and I need to yell at them.
No. I need to ask them questions. Calmly. Like a sane person. So they answer me. I need to know.
Is Mabon a hostage, or an experiment? Did I trick him and lead him down to the bottom of the garden for him to be tortured?
Is this all my fault?
Chapter twenty-three
Somehow, I find my way to the office where I had my first debrief session. I don’t bother to knock. I press my new keycard against the reader. The door beeps open. It seems I really am not a prisoner. Surely that should be far more reassuring than it is?
I fling the door open and stride in. Mr Jones looks up calmly from his stack of paperwork. I’m hit with a wall of silence and his assertive confidence.
“I wasn’t expecting you for a few more hours, Mr Robinson,” he says mildly, but I can hear the condescending tone in his voice.
This man may well have ordered all sorts of awful things to be done to Mabon, and here he is acting all polite, civilised and superior.
My teeth grind. Yelling will achieve nothing, except to make me look unhinged. I need to stay calm. I need to keep the Resistance’s trust and respect. They need to think I’m not a threat.
“I saw the medical exam room,” I say. “Is Mabon a hostage or a science experiment?”
There. I think that sounded calm and reasonable. A simple question, as if I’m merely curious.
Mr Jones steeples his fingers. “Which do you want him to be?”
“Hostage!” I snap without thinking. Damn it! This bastard knows just how to get under my skin.
He raises one eyebrow. “After everything he did to you?”
My body recoils. His words hit me like a slap. The renewed silence that follows feels like a punch. My mind is freewheeling. Slipping and sliding and unable to grab onto a single thing.
“It wasn’t like that!” I hear myself say in a strangled wheeze.
