A yawn rises through him, twisting his face, and there they are—those sharp teeth of his, the ones that make my shoulders curve inwards. At the same moment, he stretches out his arms, and tilts off the bed.
But like he isn’t there at all, Arwyn leans over the edge of the narrow bed and checks on Mika. He taps his hand around her neck, as though feeling for a pulse, but in a hurried, messy way. Or he’s making sure her neck wasn’t slashed in the time he was gone.
Shark murmurs something that darkens Arwyn’s face, then he jumps for the bed above me. He makes it in one fluid lunge, like it’s nothing, and the frame only rattles with his landing.
I half expect it to cave in, collapse down on me with his sudden weight.
Satisfied, Arwyn takes the bed above Mika—and I realise there’s an order here.
Arwyn keeps Mika in his care.
Shark bows out for him.
Then there’s me—and Samick.
Just as I think his name, he steps into the cell.
My insides clench at the sight of him.
And my face sours.
Knives and daggers are strapped to his body, some wearing streaks of blood darker than crimson, but lighter than the inky blood of the dark fae.
Looks like it’s oxidising.
Hopefully they found just a bunch of prisoners hiding out.
Since they were gone a while and the blood on their weapons and leathers is darkening, I guess they found those people really deep into the prison, way on the other side, or in a maze of basements they had to find their way into.
Samick slides a still-frosty gaze my way before, without a word, he drops onto the edge of the bed.
The mattress creaks and dips.
His frame is too big for this narrow bed that, even just sitting on the edge, the blood spattered over the back of his leathers threatens to touch my fresh socks.
I curl my toes. But I can’t bring them any closer to me, my heels have already kicked into the meat of my ass just so he didn’t sit on me.
There’s no acknowledgement of that.
No rush, because why does the human crammed in the corner matter?
Samick takes his time.
He swipes down for his bag, digs around, takes out some things here and there, and—by the time he’s dampened a cloth and started running it over the blood staining him—a yawn reaches down to my belly.
Now that he’s back, that simmering adrenaline has eased—and it’s like the sleep he woke me out of suddenly sweeps back over me.
The whole time he was gone, I’ve stayed stuck to this corner.
But it’s not like I can lie down now, stretch out, not with the mattress dipping in his favour, and the thin strip of space between him and the wall.
So I wait.
Eyelids growing heavier by the second.
Samick rinses the bloodied cloth, then starts wiping at his face.
Over his shoulder, I see the rag getting darker and darker. But like I’m not burning a stare into the back of him, he just wipes lazily.
