The urge to hit out at him twitches my fingers against the weight of abrasive covers. “Go away.”
The nicest way I can manage what I really want to say.
Samick’s curt exhale is small before he draws back—and takes the blankets with him.
They are swiped from my body.
I seize up immediately.
The freezing cold is an instant attack I recoil from, curling up into myself, as though that’ll bring back the warmth.
“You can sleep more later,” his tone is bored, and he looks out the open doorway to the corridor. “But for now—up.”
I can’t see around the angle of the wall. But I do smell the fragrance of soap that’s thick in the air. So thick that I can taste it the more I wake.
A guttural moan drags out of me.
Pure, utter unwillingness.
It’s in my hateful stare as I slog my heavy legs off the mattress, one at a time, then heave my upper body to slump over my knees.
My feet flatten on the floor, and they would probably be frozen off if it weren’t for my thick socks shielding me.
Samick’s patience holds.
It holds for longer than usual.
His boots stay in the edge of my line of sight, planted on the grey floor as I gather the scraps of energy I need to push off the bed.
Another yawn starts to rise up in me and twist my face. But it halts—because now, I can see around his muscular frame to the other bunk.
Mika is draped over the mattress.
Not sprawled, not turned on her side, but placed unnaturally on her back, arms down her sides.
I hesitate.
At first glance, she looks dead.
Pale, glassy skin—not unlike her glacier hair that’s sprawled over the thin pillow—reflects with the sparse torchlight that reaches into the cell and washes a ghostly pallor over her.
But then I notice it.
The flicker behind her eyelids.
Not dead. Just in a deep sleep.
The sort of sleep I endured with that powder Samick stuffed down my throat to heal me.
Movement shifts above her.
I lift my tired gaze to Arwyn on the top bunk.
I wouldn’t have noticed him if he didn’t move, bringing a small leather-bound book to rest on his thigh. His thumb slowly flicks over the page—but his cold eyes are on Samick’s back.
I look down for my shoes—placed neatly at the foot of the bed, next to my folded rain jacket that’s now dry, and I know I didn’t do that, because I kicked and shrugged them off and left them scattered on the floor.
Samick predicts me.
