I’d put a guard on the ground. Humiliated him in front of his peers and a handful of shields. Embarrassing him wouldn’t go unpunished. Perhaps my punishment was being closeted in the gray dining room with Pierce and Flynn. Somehow, I doubted it. Anxiety gnawed at my empty stomach.
“Worried?” Pierce sounded only slightly curious.
“You should be worried.” Flynn sipped his coffee, making a show of enjoying every drop.
They were such assholes. All of them. They didn’t deserve a response. They’d watched as Drake accosted me. They’d done nothing. Yes, I could protect myself, but what about the other girls taken from their homes? Still children at fourteen and fifteen. Had those girls been forced to wrap their lips around Drake’s cock? I shuddered.
“No answer?”
I stared into the empty guards’ dining room, where the buffet table still held enough food to feed an army. “Does it bother you?”
“That you’ll be punished?”
“The way girls here are treated.”
“They’re shields,” said Flynn, as if being a shield made a girl worthless.
My thoughts turned to Sara and the scars on her wrists. Had she lost all hope and tried to take her own life? “They’re people.”
And the guards were monsters.
Pierce covered a yawn.
My impending doom bored him? Men who treated women the way they did weren’t worthy of my words. I memorized the order of the buffet—proteins first, then pastries, potatoes, and finally fruits and cheeses. There were strawberries. My mouth watered. Strawberries were a luxury we couldn’t afford. I hadn’t had a strawberry in years. At the end of the table sat an urn of coffee and a stack of mugs. “May I have coffee? Please?”
“No.” Pierce’s answer was immediate. Then he lifted his mug to his lips, inhaling the aroma before taking a sip.
I’d expected nothing less from him. But now that I knew where it was … “How long does the buffet stay open?”
Flynn frowned at me. “That’s an odd question. Your meals are served here.”
Meals? That was a generous description. I glanced at the oatmeal congealing in its pot and shuddered.
“The breakfast buffet remains until they put out lunch.” Pierce took out his dagger, flipped it, and caught the hilt.
“And the coffee?”
Pierce flipped his dagger again. “It’s always there. For guards.”
Two guards, each at least twice my size, appeared in the doorway.
“We’re here for the shield,” said the one with a gold bar pinned to his uniform.
Pierce continued flipping his dagger, but I noticed his knuckles had gone white around the hilt. His usual perfect posture had stiffened even further, if that was even possible.
“Where are you taking her?” Flynn sounded only mildly interested. His apathetic tone made me want to steal Pierce’s dagger and shove it up his indifferent ass.
“Why do you care, Flynn?” The man with the bar on his uniform chuckled. “Haven’t had a chance to fuck her yet?”
Flynn flushed as if the man’s arrow had hit its mark.
What. An. Asshole.
Leaving Pierce and Flynn to enjoy their coffee, the two men led me back to the gymnasium.
We crossed the threshold, and a bad, bad feeling settled in my gut. My feet slowed. “What’s happening?”
Without a word, they dragged me toward the two wooden poles.
