Page 63

“Oh. Sorry.”

I stepped quickly to my right, out of the noonday sun and closer to Nick. As soon as I did, sunlight poured into the hole.I placed my foot carefully near Nick’s side and bent closer, now conscious of staying out of our only natural means of illumination.

Bars had been built into the floor. A thick metal edge held them all in place. Each bar looked about an inch thick and stood maybe one and a half inches apart.

Between those bars, a face peered up at me.

Wide, blue-green eyes stared into mine.

“Jesus!” It startled me so much, I jerked back.

Maybe I should have expected to see what I saw, or to see something like it, at least, but the stillness of that face meant its presence took me entirely by surprise. It was like looking at an abstract painting that suddenly snapped into a clear, unambiguous image. It shocked me so badly, I was breathing hard even after I stepped back, one hand pressed to my chest.

I stared at that face, and the large, round eyes stared back at me.

They hadn’t changed expression.

My eyes adjusted more.

It was a child, or near enough; I definitely wasn’t looking at a full adult. The face that stared at me was still rounded with youth, with a full mouth, too-large eyes, soft cheeks, a soft chin. Her features contained the barest hint of a heart-shaped face, but I guessed I was seeing the ghost of what her adult face might look like one day.

Her current face was close to round, despite her high cheekbones.

Her large eyes were rimmed with dark, long lashes.

I suspected that face would be even rounder if she wasn’t so thin.

I was looking at a young girl, a barely pubescent girl––fourteen?

Maybe thirteen?

Dark, tangled, dirty, but possibly straight dark hair hung down her shoulders and covered most of her upper back. Small, pale fingers gripped one of the bars, the nails painted pink. The expression on her face was tense, like she was prepared to have to defend herself if it became necessary, or maybe readying herself to run away.

I realized she was gripping Nick’s fingers with some of hers, holding him as tightly as she could through the openings in the metal.

She seemed to make herself smaller in Nick’s direction, too, as if her entire being winced away from me and Black and closer to Nick.

Given her situation, and all of us being strangers, and the resignation I felt all over her light, she might have been bracing herself for whatever came next. She likely didn’t knowwhereto turn for help; maybe Nick made the most sense, given he’d been the one to find her.

He’d found her, and he hadn’t done anything bad to her yet.

Because a girl her age, living in a cage, in the floor of a mansion owned by a narcissistic billionaire asshole, likely had suffered through some very bad things happening to her already.

The girl swallowed, and licked cracked lips.

She looked dehydrated, underfed, terrified.

She had bruises on her wrists, and a large swollen area on her jaw and face.

Her toes had been painted pink, just like her fingernails.

She was completely naked.

Black let out a string of curses in a language I didn’t know how to translate exactly, one of those he used occasionally from Old Earth. He sank his weight down to a crouch; his boots stopped just at the edge of where the metal bars began.

Without saying a word to me or Nick, he addressed the young girl in the more scholarly-sounding version ofPrexci,the seertongue. I jumped when I heard him speak. It was the same version he’d taught me, and the one most of the Old Earth seers used.

“Who are you?” he asked gently.