Page 5 of Beg the Night (Mystics of Ashora #1)

FIVE

sinner

G od, she looked even more shocked now than when I’d snuck up on her in the shower. Her eyes widened, and she instinctively took a step back.

Was she surprised that I was speaking to her? Or that I insisted she and my sister sleep on this cot instead of on the floor like rats?

I couldn’t care less about the new addition, but my sister had chosen to befriend her, and I did have some family loyalty, after all.

New Girl stood frozen in place, mouth agape, staring at me.

“What?” I pushed, taking another step forward. My voice was drawing attention now, but I didn’t give a fuck. This was my dungeon. New Girl would follow my orders. Someone needed to teach her that lesson, it seemed. “Can’t speak now? Or is there some other reason that you’d rather not sleep over here?” I pointed to the cot.

Yeah, I’d told her to leave me alone, but I had the right to change my mind, didn’t I?

I had to admit, now that she wasn’t covered in dirt and blood, she didn’t look half bad. If I had to guess by her lean frame and sculpted muscles, she wasn’t a stranger to hard work. But I wasn’t going to let her physical features distract me.

New Girl here was hiding something. I could fucking smell it.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Mags hissed.

Squinting, New Girl looked from my sister to me and back again, clearly suspicious.

Mags gripped my arm and pulled me a few feet away. She was small, but damn, the girl was strong. And from the look on her face, she was about to piss me off.

“What do you want, Mags?”

“Why did you have to go and scare her? We were perfectly fine minding our own business!”

“Are you kidding?” I raised a brow. “She shows up here and you wander off to play house with a complete stranger. How’s that cold dungeon floor treating you, by the way?”

Her nostrils flared as she took a deep breath. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me since we got here. I’m lonely and I’m tired, and Athena is actually nice to me, unlike any of you. You didn’t have to freak her out, now she’s never going to take a shower again!”

I glanced over Mags’s shoulder to where New Girl stood, arms crossed, watching us. “She needed to learn how things work around here.”

My sister huffed, throwing her arms out. “How things work? You mean how you work, going around here and bullying everyone until you get what you want?”

Lips pressed together to tamp down on a smile, I hummed. “Pretty much. Yes.”

“She’s my friend,” Mags huffed. “I haven’t had a friend in a long time. Not since?—”

She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to.

My chest did the strange tightening thing that it did only for her. With a long breath in, then back out to break up the tension, I nodded. “Fine. I’ll leave her alone. But the two of you are sleeping on your cot. I’m sick of fighting off the other guys. They’re like damn vultures when it comes to the beds, you know.”

Her eyes immediately lit up. “Thanks, Elijah.”

Annoyance flared in my chest. “Don’t call me that.”

But she was already walking back toward New Girl and her dripping wet hair. “Yeah, yeah,” she called over her shoulder, “you have a big, scary new name now . I know!”

I clenched my fists to keep my shit together rather than following after her.

“Come on,” Mags whispered, pulling her new friend toward the bed they’d now share. “This is usually where I sleep, anyway. It’ll be much more comfortable this way.”

Damn fucking right it would be. And now that they’d be three feet from me, I could actually sleep at night knowing they were safe.

“He might be your brother and a tier three, but none of that gives him any right to boss me around.”

My head snapped back in her direction. New Girl did have some backbone after all, huh? I supposed that was better than most of the newcomers. Typically, the people thrown in here were too afraid to stand up for themselves, too afraid to speak to me, too afraid to even look in my direction.

But New Girl? I caught her staring at me nearly every time I looked at her. Which made it even more clear to me that she was, in fact, hiding something.

And I was going to find out what that was.

I closed the distance between us, only stopping when New Girl’s chest brushed mine with every inhale. “Let’s get one thing straight here.” I balled my hands into fists at my sides. “I do get to boss you around. You will do anything and everything I ask you to do, New Girl, but it has nothing to do with my tier. I could be a fucking one, and you would still obey me. Hell, I could be an earthly, and you’d get on your knees before me if I asked you to. Understand?”

My sister grasped her friend’s arm and tugged, trying desperately to pull her away from me, but New Girl wasn’t the type to back down from a challenge.

Jaw set firmly, she zeroed in on me. She was small. Too small. She’d do the fucking Ministry no good in battle. Not without power, anyway.

Hell, part of me hoped she was hiding something. That she was secretly a tier two or three and not some useless earthly the Ministry would use as dog meat the first fucking chance they had.

As irritating as she was, things got boring around here month after month. And I was finally starting to have some fun.

New Girl remained silent, but a fight simmered right behind her eyes. Her fists clenched around her worn, battered boots and dirty clothes.

I locked my own jaw and glared back.

I used to possess that kind of fight. I used to care about winning, about arguing.

But now? Now there was no fight left in me. No resistance. That had all been stripped from me months ago. Hell, it disappeared long before Mags and I were ever brought here.

It was refreshing, honestly, to come face to face with someone who wasn’t done fighting.

Even if she was fighting the wrong damn person.

“Sleep tight.” I winked. “And if you snore, I’ll fucking kill you.” With that, I straightened to my full height, then retreated to my bed. I lay back on my cot and picked up my book, pretending to read. I was much too aware of the girls whispering together to actually focus on the words. Much too aware of how many eyes now lingered on them after our little show.

I didn’t talk to people in here. I much preferred my solitude. I rarely even talked to Mags these days, though she certainly never stopped making an effort. It was better if people like me didn’t make friends. It was better if everyone here hated me.

They would all learn to hate me eventually, so there was no use dragging out the inevitable.

After a few painfully long seconds, the two approached the cot. I had forced the original owner to move, and although he still glared at me every time we made eye contact, he didn’t say a goddamn word.

My dungeon. My rules.

And I needed these two where I could see them at all times. Mags practically dragged New Girl behind her, fighting all the way about who would take the side closest to me.

Mags wanted the outside, because the owner of the next cot was Carter, whose prick fucking friends all bunked nearby.

I shifted, flipping another page. I scanned the page from left to right, unseeing, while keeping my ears perked and my focus locked on the movement beside me.

New Girl eventually set her nasty, wet boots down on the edge of the cot. She moved slowly, as if the careful movements would save her from the horrible fucking fate of this place.

I didn’t look up from the book as the bed beside me shifted. I waited until their quiet whispers stopped, waited until their breaths had slowed to a dull, even pace.

Only then did I dare a glance in their direction.

Moonlight from the small cracks in the cave ceiling filtered across the bed, allowing enough light for me to make out their forms. They slept back-to-back, as if on guard. And when I dragged my eyes up to New Girl’s face, I found her watching me.

I didn’t look away. Neither did she. We stayed like that, practically killing each other with the daggers in our eyes, until she slowly moved her hand up.

And flipped me off.

If I had any emotions left in me at all, I might have been amused.

Instead, I simply returned my attention to the book, pretending to read the same page over and over again until I finally drifted off to sleep for the first time in days.