guard oinks at Bow and pushes her toward the gym. For the first time, she sidesteps him and tries to follow me.
I remember her warning. You have to keep me nearby from now on.
She’s that worried about New Guy?
The guard—I call him Colonel Anus—grabs her. At the moment of contact, she spins, raising the arm he’s holding and also cradling it against her chest while rotating her wrist, putting her palm just under her chin. She uses her other hand to latch on to the meaty part of his palm. Then she steps back, twisting his wrist.
He drops, hitting the floor with a thud, his arm now positioned behind his back.
Girl has even more skills than I realized. I’m impressed.
“I’m staying with my roommate today. Get used to the idea.” She drops Anus’s arm and steps on the back of his head to pass him. His nose slams into the floor, and he wails with pain. The problem? He has a friend I’ve named Ben Dover. Ben launches into action, grabbing Bow by the hair and yanking. She flails as she falls backward.
“Chubby girls don’t get to spend their mornings chatting about their problems.” He spits at her when she lands. “The treadmill is your best friend.”
“Well, my fist is your worst enemy.” She kicks out and nails him between the legs. “And my foot. Yeah, I probably should have mentioned my foot.”
He loses his breath as he drops to his knees.
She sits up and draws back her elbow, clearly planning to knock out his teeth. New Guy runs past her before she can act and she goes still, as if her mind has clocked out for a smoke break. Did he do something to her? By the time she’s all systems go, the guard has swallowed the nuts she drilled into his throat and reentered the game. He easily dodges her next blow and throws one of his own, popping her in the jaw.
A loud crack rings out.
As Bow crashes, other inmates move out of the way. Including me.
I want to help her, and I will—when I can actually do some good. Know when to strike and when to wait. Or hurt.
Two other guards and a nurse—a woman I affectionately refer to as Nurse Ratched—enter the fray.
Nurse Ratched pulls a syringe from the pocket of her lab coat. “A special cocktail for a special girl.” Bow is held down and stuck in the neck. Her entire body begins to twitch, but she remain conscious. Most other kids pass out when they’re drugged.
Guilt fills me. Could I have done something?
She would have done something for me.
“Show over.” Nurse Ratched, another Russian, glares at me as if I’m at fault. “Move along. Now!”
No other choice. Well, no other intelligent choice. I head to the commons alongside the others. I’m trembling as I sit in my assigned circle in the back of the room, where chairs without cushions have been nailed down.
New Guy shoves someone aside to take the spot next to me. That someone—a boy named Hank—protests until New Guy gives him a hard thump to the throat. While Hank gasps for air, New Guy gifts me with that slow predator’s grin.
I breathe him in: peat smoke and heather. Exotic, with a hint of musk, and I swear it’s like I’ve just been transported to the British Isles after a rainstorm.
His eyes...they’re as bright as the sun I haven’t seen in over a year, and they are the most mesmerizing shade of gold with flecks of crystalline blue.
In one, there are five flecks. In the other, three.
Five. The number of our senses. Sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.
Three. A trinity. We have a spirit, soul and body.
In an octave, the fifth and third notes create the basic foundation of all chords. How appropriate. Those eyes have somehow made my blood sing. Or I’m simply malnourished and on edge, and my brain is overcompensating.
Yeah. That.
This close, I can almost count New Guy’s individual lashes. They are long, spiky and jet-black...and I’m staring at him, I realize.
“That wasn’t a very nice thing to do,” I say.
“And knocking over my chair was?” His voice is low and husky with a slight Irish lilt, and it’s almost as smoky as his scent. “Let’s do the introduction thing so my heartbeat will finally calm down. I’m Killian. And you are stunningly beautiful.”
Before he’s finished delivering the (clearly) practiced line, I’m already building walls. “I think you mean I’m attitudinal.”
“Definitely not. But now I’m certain you’re irresistible.”
“I think you mean unsuitable.”
“Or adorable.”
Oh, crap. Are we flirting? “All right. Enough.”
The corners of his lips twitch. “Are you playing hard to get, lass? It’s never happened to me before, so I need clarification.”
“I’m not playing anything. And I’m impossible to get.”
He rubs his hands together with something akin to glee. “Well, then. Challenge accepted.”
I open my mouth to protest, but my gaze lands on his wrists. Myriad brands. They are the loveliest I’ve ever seen, the links slanted rather than rounded, creating languid eyes. And up close like this, the tattoos on his forearms appear to be Technicolor. They are spectacular, but there are too many to count without a more intense study.
I want to do a more intense study.
And...there’s something odd about the images. Something more than simple aesthetics. The arrangement, maybe? There are lines through the skull with tears of blood. More lines through the cracked and crumbling moon, with pieces falling into the stars. Are they telling a story? Like hieroglyphics?
“Into tattoos, lass? Well, I’m happy to offer you a private unveiling later.”
My cheeks flare with heat. I duck my head to hide the reaction.
I’m not usually into tattoos, no. Even though I have one myself. A small rendition of planet Earth on the back of my neck. I was fifteen when I got it—snuck out with my friends in my first real act of rebellion—but I’m not sure why I thought a globe was “a perfect expression of my turbulent emotions, and something I’ll never regret.”
“You’re still staring,” he says.
I grind my teeth. “Where are you from?” Like the staff, inmates hail from all over the world. I’m a native of Los Angeles, where the House of Myriad resides—where my dad wields a massive amount of power. The laws he helps push through affect both humans and spirits.
My mother is an artist in high demand. Her paintings of Myriad always sell at auction.
I
