She tilted her head. “Okay, what?”
“Okay, we are not enemies. We can be allies.”
The smile that split her face was almost feline. “I can do allies.” She held out one hand. “I’m Skye.”
I took her hand, the buzz from her touch shooting straight up my arm. “Kolt, battle chief of Raas Wrexxon, the Qeth’rex.”
“How about I just call you Kolt?” She dropped her gaze to her still-clasped hand, which I released instantly.
I schooled my quivering tail as I folded my arms across my chest. “Okay, Skye. Now that we are allies, why don’t you tell me your escape plan?”
Chapter
Three
Skye
Iflexed my fingers, the warmth from the Vandar’s hand making my flesh tingle. Kolt, I reminded myself. I shouldn’t think of him as ‘the Vandar’ anymore, even though it was a tough habit to break. Then again, I’d been thinking of the aliens who took Jasmine as ‘those fucking Vandar,’ so it could have been worse.
“My plan for escape?” I swiped the back of my hand across my sweaty brow and blew out a breath that was far too warm for comfort. Under Kolt’s searching gaze, I suddenly felt even warmer.
The cell had only a small, high window for ventilation, but since the only air seeping in from it was from outside, it didn’t help with the uncomfortable heat. Living on an ice planet had made me very adaptable to cold but woefully unprepared for hot weather.
I turned and took the few meager steps to the metal bench to buy myself some time. I hadn’t been lying when I’d told him I was planning an escape, but I might have oversold my progress on said plan. Sitting on the hard metal bolted to the stone wall, I stretched my legs in front of me and leaned back.
Kolt rocked back on the heels of his boots and then gestured with one hand toward his feet. “I am no longer disturbing your escape planning by walking.”
“Right,” I said, remembering that I had complained that his pacing had been disturbing my thoughts. Again, that had been true. He had been disturbing me. Unfortunately, my thoughts had progressed little past the recurring one that I had to get the fuck out before I went crazy being trapped in a cell with an irritating Vandar.
But I wouldn’t tell him that. Not after we’d made friends, or at least allies.
“I haven’t come up with a fully realized plan,” I said. “I was still analyzing our situation and our potential advantages.”
“So, you have no plan?”
I shifted on the uncomfortable bench, as another trickle of sweat snaked down my spine and beneath the waistband of my pants. “It’s a work in progress.”
I gripped the metal and my fingers bumped across something carved into the front of the bench. Leaning down, I spotted an etched symbol. It was not a symbol I recognized—a circle crossed with two even lines—but it had to mean something.
When I glanced up, Kolt was staring at me, his gaze as penetrating as the heat of the stone cell.
I tugged at the neckline of my top. “It’s hard to think with you staring at me like that.” I breathed a sigh. The truth was, it was hard to think in such heat. How did people live like this?
“So, you have no plan?” he repeated.
I groaned. “A good plan takes time to formulate. We can’t just try to overpower the guards and make a run for it.”
“Why not? That sounds like a solid start of a plan.”
I looked at him standing with his hands on his waist. Even though his bare chest glistened with sweat, he didn’t seem half as uncomfortable as me. To be fair, he was only wearing a battle kilt, which wasn’t more than layered strips of leather that reached mid-thigh, and boots. But everything he had on was leather, which famously doesn’t breathe.
“Aren’t you hot?” I asked, ignoring his comment about a slapdash escape.
“I am accustomed to cooler temperatures,” he admitted, “but there is little point in complaining about something we cannot control. It will only make us feel hotter.”
I hated that he was right. The more I focused on the heat, the more it softened my bones and prickled my skin. Infuriating Vandar.
“Fine.” I took a slow breath. “In your plan of overpowering the guards and making a run for it, how do we disarm them if they have weapons trained on us like they did when they brought us here. Even if we get past the ones down here and anyone else who might be armed in the building, what do we do once we’re out in the city? This is clearly Zagrath-controlled territory, which means guards andpatrols.”
