I eyed the metal that looked very much like a weapon. He might not remember who he was, but beneath it all, he was still a badass Vandar.
I flipped my spoon around and grinned at him. “This could work.”
Chapter
Ten
Kolt
Ireadjusted my grip on Skye’s legs as I shifted my weight from one leg to the other.
“Whoa,” she called down from where she stood on my shoulders, throwing her arms out to the side as she wobbled. “No moving down there.”
“Apologies.” I did not say that my shoulders were aching from her standing on them or that the ache in my head had returned with a vengeance. She was the one painstakingly scraping at the crumbly rock with a spoon while trying to keep her balance.
“Can you still see?” I asked.
The light inside the cell had long since dimmed and even the last remnants of the setting sun had faded. The shadows thathad kept to the corners and the corridor now entombed the space, shrouding us in darkness and deepening the quiet.
“I don’t need to see to scrape,” she whispered, as metal rasped against stone in steady strokes, “but I’m not sure how much longer I can do this without my arms giving out.”
“You should rest.” I tapped the back of her leg with one hand. “Come down.”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure how to come down. I barely got up.”
“Do you remember how you came down last time?”
“You mean when I fell?”
“That was not a fall.” I stepped away from the wall. “When I toss you up, drop with your ass down.”
“Oh, it’s pretty much a guarantee I’ll fall on my ass,” she mumbled.
I bent my legs slowly while keeping my hold on her legs, then I popped up and sent her into the air before stepping back and catching her in cradled arms.
Her eyes were wide when I lowered her feet to the floor. “You’re really good at that.”
I couldn’t say how I knew how to do certain things, but my muscle memory was returning much faster than any other kind of memory.
I tipped my head up to the grated window, which now let in slivers of silvery light that must have come from the planet’s moons. “Did you make much progress?”
She blew out a breath that ruffled a curl dangling over her face. “The stone crumbles if I scrape hard enough, but it would take weeks for me to move enough of a dent for both of us to squeeze through, and that’s if the Zagrath don’t notice that the window is getting inexplicably larger. Besides, once I scrape away enough to loosen the grate, it won’t stay in place, will it? They would definitely notice a missing grate. I know I’m the one who said we might as well try Plan B, but I think we should demote it to Plan C.”
I grunted. It was maddening to know that I was a battle chief, yet I could not devise better plans. I might not know myself well, but I knew enough to feel the hot flush of humiliation.
I walked to the bench and sat. “We cannot wait that long.”
“I agree.” Skye joined me on the bench. “I don’t think we have that long before the Zagrath do something with us.”
My pulse quickened. Despite knowing that the enemy wished me to care about Skye so I could be more easily manipulated, I couldn’t bring myself to not care. The thought of them hurting her sent white hot fury coursing through my veins.
You’re playing right into their hands, I told myself.
It didn’t matter. Even if she hadn’t kissed me, I would feel protective of her, but the kisses had made the instinct into something primal and not easily tamed.
Skye held up her spoon. “We need to try Plan A.”
I tried to visualize using the metal handles of spoons as weapons against blasters, but it seemed absurd. I might not recall my past as a warrior, but I felt reasonably certain I’d used better weapons than spoons.
