“I hate you,” the next said. “You and your piece of shit family.”
“Lovely.” I smoothed back my hair.
“Princess…”Dig Graves interrupted down the hall.
“Oh, Dig Graves asked me to give this to you.” The young man unfolded a piece of stale bread from a napkin that we had received for dinner the previous night. Inside the crinkled napkin was also a handful of raisins that had been picked out of the porridge slop from this morning. My guest set it just outside of my bars. “He said you need to eat to keep up your strength.”
I disregarded the offering. “What is your name?”
“Eat the food, Princess!” a voice shouted from down the hall. I wasn’t sure from whom.
“Tommy,” my guest said.
A very child-like nickname. In fact, most of him seemed juvenile. Gangly limbs and a well-freckled nose. Odd. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
I frowned. “Why are you in here? You have at least seven years to discover your Soulmate. Alert the officers.” I readied to beckon one myself. “You must immediately be set free.”
“Princess…”
Tommy picked at a loose thread in his shirt. “They attached monitors to my heart and found out I was Soulless.”
“Princess…”
“That does not matter, Tommy,” I said. “That only means that you are not yetreadyto connect. Perhaps your Soulmate may only be sixteen, you may have to wait another two years before their heart thrashes and then yours will too. That is very common. For some it may not even occur until their last month of twenty-five.” I stood up, irritated at this mistake. This perfect young man should be in the world, not bundled up in rust and mould and evil. “You should not be in here.”
“I killed my dad,” Tommy snapped.
“Princess…”
I resat. “You killed your father? Interesting. Why?”
“I wanted to go to a party.” Tommy rubbed the back of his neck. “He said I couldn’t and so I snuck out and stole his car and he woke up and tried to stop me and I mistook the pedals and instead of pressing on the break I pressed on the throttle and ran him over.” He quietened. His shoulders hung down. His eyes glazed as if trapped in the memory.
And then, a tear.
It bubbled up in the corner of his eye.
Such a delicate little thing, like a diamond.
I leaned forward, watching it. “Oh dear. You poor soul.”
He slapped it away and resummoned his anger, flinging his finger to me. “You and your family need to die in a ditch.”
My brother visited.
We were given a private room.
“It’s not that nice in prison,” I told him. “Zero stars.”
Magnus brought me my toiletries. I was able to shower privately and fixed on a hydrating mask to help my dry skin. While I edited one of his speeches, Magnus set out the selection of foods he had brought.
“Duckie, I’m working on this.” He shook up my bubble tea. “It should not take much longer.”
I swallowed my sushi. “The Execution Battle is tomorrow. Do you think you can work faster? Oh, by the way. There is a young man in here named Tommy, you must set him free immediately.”
“Duckie, it’s costing me a fortune just to secure some way to get you out of here. I won’t be doing anything for anyone else.”
