I hold his gaze without flinching. “And yet he hasn't.”
Samai's eyes narrow, playfulness receding to reveal ice underneath. “What makes you so sure?”
“I'm standing here having a conversation with his brother instead of being locked in a cell. Quarters in his private wing instead of a holding pen. Staff explaining rules instead of demonstrating them with violence.” Flat voice. Factual tone. The same delivery I used for bad news to soldiers' families. “Whatever your brother is, he's not wasteful. If he wanted to break me, he would have started already.”
Silence. I watch calculations happening behind his silver eyes, reassessment in real time. “You're braver than you look. Or stupider. Haven't decided which.”
“Let me hear when you figure it out. I'll add it to my list of things that don't matter.”
Laughter. Sharp and bright in the quiet common area. “My brother has no idea what he's gotten himself into.”
No response to that. There isn't one. The truth is I can't predict what any of us have gotten ourselves into, what happens next, what the work looks like that Drazex warned me about. Instinct and bravado are my only tools, the same ones that kept me alive through the colony wars. Whether they'll be enough here remains an open question.
Samai's posture changes, relaxation tightening into heightened alertness, his attention pulling toward the doorway behind me.
I turn to find Drazex standing in the entrance to the common area. The orange light of the corridor behind him throws his features into sharp relief: angular planes of face, charcoal skin with that faint silver undertone, the predator's stillness that makes the air in the room feel thinner. His gaze moves between me and his brother, assessing, taking inventory, revealing nothing.
Something tightens low in my stomach, and I crush the sensation. Inappropriate. Dangerous. He is the creature who owns my contract, who holds my brother's life in his clawed hands, and my body has no business responding to the way he fills a doorway like he was carved to fit it.
How long has he been there? What did he hear?
I search his expression for any indication of how to interpret his presence. What I find looks almost like approval. The faintest flicker of satisfaction, there and gone so quickly I might have imagined it. Then he turns and walks away, treading silent on stone. I don't exhale until he's gone.
“Well.” Samai stares at the empty doorway. “That was interesting.”
“What was?”
“How he looked at you.” Silver eyes slide back to me. “I've never seen my brother look at anyone like that.”
I refuse to give that statement any attention. “I should return to my quarters.”
“Of course.” Samai steps aside with a mocking bow. “We'll chat again soon, pet. I suspect you're going to make my brother's life very complicated.”
I brush past him without responding. I don't look back as I walk to my cage. The door seals behind me with a soft hiss, and I stand in the center of the room, breathing the quiet. Tremors run through my fingers now. Adrenaline metabolizing. The body's delayed response to threat.
The memory of Drazex in that doorway lingers like a bruise I keep pressing. His gaze finding mine across the room and holding, holding, holding until my pulse forgot its rhythm. I don't want to think about what Samai saw in his brother's expression, or why that gaze still sits warm against my skin.
The edge of the bed catches me when I sit, and I grip my knees, white bleaching my knuckles.
This is a means to an end, nothing more. I will survive this place, pay the debt, retrieve Tomás, and leave. Nothing else matters, and nothing here is real.
The bed is comfortable because comfortable prisoners are compliant prisoners. The rules are clear because clarity is another form of control. Whatever Drazex's expression meant when he watched me hold my ground, it means nothing. It reveals nothing, changes nothing about my situation or my plans.
The words ring hollow against the memory of silver eyes meeting mine across a room, against heat spreading through my chest when he watched me refuse to bend.
I lie back and stare at the ceiling, watching amber light shift across carved stone. Tomorrow brings Tomás, reveals what my work looks like, ends this strange suspended moment and begins reality.
Tonight requires rest, because tomorrow demands sharpness.
The canyon wind howls somewhere far above, a sound so faint it's almost imaginary. The compound settles with the quiet noises of a building carved into living rock: humming systems, distant patrol steps, stone creaking as it adjusts to temperature changes. Sleep should be easy. Exhaustion presses down on bones with physical weight, begging for surrender.
The footsteps reach me first, heavy and measured, moving through the corridor outside with a deliberation that sets every instinct on alert. I hold still, eyes closed, giving no sign that I've heard anything at all.
The footsteps stop right outside my door. Close enough that I can sense the presence on the other side. I wait without breathing, every muscle locked against the urge to rise and face whatever comes next, but the door remains closed. It doesn't open. Seconds stretch into minutes, and still the presence remains, a silent pressure I cannot see but cannot ignore.
Guarding or watching. The difference is impossible to parse, the intention behind this vigil impossible to comprehend. Why would he stand in a corridor at this hour instead of sleeping or working or doing any of the hundred things a crime lord must do to occupy his nights?
Because it is him. I need no confirmation to recognize who stands on the other side of that door, not after the hours spent in his presence today, absorbing his attention, learning the shape of his silence. Drazex is here, not entering, not leaving. Simply present. And even through stone and metal, even with my eyes closed and my body held rigid against the mattress, I’m aware of him in ways that have nothing to do with threat assessment. The breadth of him, the heat he must carry in that massive frame. Awareness that is unwelcome. I bury it beneath the fear where it belongs.
