Page 20 of Vengeance and Vipers

‘I will, I promise. Please don’t go yet.’

He pauses at the door and looks at me expectantly, looking almost fearful of getting too close again.

‘Books,’ I blurt. ‘Please bring me something to do. I’m going nuts like Krase down here.’

He looks at me like he’s going to say no, but he doesn’t.

‘I’ll think about it,’ he says gruffly before closing the door and locking it behind him.

I sink to my knees by the bars, not knowing what just happened between us but needing more.

‘Come to me, and I’ll give you what you need,’ Krase growls from his cage.

I jump because he sounds close enough to grab me, but when I look, I’m just out of his reach.

I laugh. ‘No fucking way.’

‘It’s only a matter of time,’ he says.

‘Until you kill me? I’m not going to let you do that, Krase,’ I say with more confidence than I feel because he was very close to snatching me a few moments ago, and I don’t actually know if Maddox would have intervened on my behalf.

I stay like that for a few minutes, and my thoughts slowly turn back to Siggy as they always seem to. Maybe it’s normal after a bereavement, but I can’t really remember feeling this when my parents died. Maybe there was just too much going on, so there wasn’t time to feel like that. I had other problems around that time.

I mean I have other problems now, but nothing else is going on. There’s just time stretching out in front of me. I go to the only spot in my cell where Krase can’t see me, behind the slab of rock that serves as my bed. It’s a little nasty because the waste bucket is back here, too, but at least it has a cover on it. And, besides, I literally lived with a giant spider over rotting corpses for three months. A little poop in a bucket is nothing.

Thoughts of Siggy have me crouching down to cry as quietly as I can.

I can hear Krase moving around his cell. He sounds agitated.

‘I can hear you,’ he finally rasps. ‘I know what you’re doing.’

‘So?’

‘So why hide?’

I think about that for a second. ‘Because I don’t like to cry in front of people.’

He chuckles. ‘I’m not people. I’m a monster.’

I peek over the stone at him. He’s standing right at the bars, gripping them hard.

‘What do you care?’ I ask, rolling my eyes.

‘I don’t, thief.’

‘Seems like you do,’ I retort.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asks, changing the subject.

‘Yes,’ I admit, clutching my aching abdomen.

He lets out a snort. ‘I could help you.’

I return the sound. ‘How? You have another dinner in your cell?’

‘I do, actually.’

I peek over my bed again and find him holding the bowl of stew Maddox brought.