“You didn’t love him?”
She focused on him again. “Is that what you want? To fall in love?”
The shadows seemed to increase around him. “Doesn’t everyone?”
She shrugged again. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“You’re lying,” he said.
She scowled. “Why would I lie? I’m a Rae. All we’re taught to love is power, and more power.”
“Ah, but you’re not like the others,” he said. “Isn’t that right?”
“No. I am just like them,” she said. “I’m reckless and arrogant. I’ve killed more than once, and when I decide there is something I want, I won’t hesitate to kill again to gain it. The only real difference is that I’ve decided I want to live more than I want to be Radiant.”
“But live for what?”
“Isn’t simply being alive enough?”
“Not for me.”
“Well, that’s your problem.”
“It’s not a problem. I’m already in love with someone,” he stated.
“Oh? You fell in love with some poor common Pixie-girl?” she asked.
“No. A nymph.”
She snorted.
He glowered at her. “Is there something you want to say?”
She cocked her head towards the door, listening. She started to back up. “I think we have visitors.”
A voice bellowed outside their door. “Oi! Stop that damned beast!”
The rat’s head appeared under the door’s crack. Tight between its yellowed teeth were a pair of golden mail gloves.
“Yes!” Magda clapped her hands and dropped to her knees. “Come on.”
The other rats fled at the sound of the guards’ bellows.
Her ratty hero wriggled beneath the door and then darted through the bars towards her.
At that moment, the door swung open. Three guards filled the doorway.
The rat clambered up her leg and delivered the gloves straight into her hands. She scooped him up and kissed his damp fur. Though she hadn’t given him any reward, he squirmed free and vanished down the grate, too frightened to linger. She promised herself that she would find a way to thank him, somehow, someday.
The guards stared as she pulled the gloves onto her hands. They looked at each other, but none of them moved.
“Step forward,” she said to Kaelan, grasping the bars between them.
“What do we do?” one of the guards asked.
She gave the cage a shake, loosening the bolts from the floor. The rats had done well. Stone broke away from the iron in huge chunks. Bolts screeched against the floor, some snapping and breaking, others popping up and rolling away.
“One of you is going to have to unlock the doors,” she told the guards with a vicious smile.
