Page 6 of Sin

Chapter Three

You’re supposed to suck it

Ididn’t know what I first expected to see when I opened my eyes, but it was Cyril’s scowling face centimeters from my own.

“Mierda!” I croaked, my voice rough and raw. My heart hammered a mile a minute from his jump scare. “Cyril, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Thought you’d want a pretty face to look at when you woke,” the old man deadpanned.

“Che. Pretty, not ancient.”

Cyril pinched my arm.

“Hey!”

He shrugged and leaned back in a small armchair positioned by the side of the cot. A quick glance around let me know I was in the infirmary. Again.

My brain was foggy from sleep, and as I moved to rub at my throbbing head, I jolted at the sight of thick gauze beneath shiny, new dampening cuffs.

“What happened?” I asked, twisting my wrists this way and that in puzzlement.

“Well, from the sounds of it, you somehow managed to break your last pair and then attacked four officers before you were… detained.”

My head throbbed at the word. But my thoughts snagged on one thing he’d said. “I… I broke my cuffs?”

Cyril nodded gravely. “You did. Fried them is more accurate. Caused the damn things to fritz out and burn off the skin down to the bones of your wrists.”

An image. An image of ringed, raw skin flashed through my head. And slowly, my memories came back to me.

Mike cornering me in my cell. Feeling so scared and angry. Mike’s ugly words. The laughter. Too much laughter. My power surging out of me. Mike’s horrified eyes as he’d found himself unable to open his mouth. My screams. The guard’s boot aiming for my head.

That last one had me gingerly poking at my scalp and finding it bound. If my luck kept up the way it was, I’d end up looking like a last-minute mummy costume for Halloween.

“How long was I out?”

“A week.”

I started. “Seven days?”

“Yes, that’s usually how long a week is.”

“Cyril,” I rasped, rubbing at my face and wincing when I bumped my still broken nose. “Now’s not the time for quips.”

Shaking his head, Cyril handed me a short stick with a small, circular sponge on the end. I quirked a brow at him. He quirked a fuzzy, white brow back.

When it seemed like he wasn’t going to say anything, I broke our stare off. “Am I supposed to know why you gave me this?”

Groaning so dramatically he could have won an Oscar for his performance, Cyril said, “You’re supposed to suck it.”

My nose scrunched. “Ew. Why?”

“Because I bet you’re thirsty and I can’t trust you to have any self-control if I gave you a cup to drink from. If I did, you’d probably drink it too fast and end up chucking it all back up. And that wouldn’t be fun for either of us.” He jutted his chin at the sponge stick. “Once you finish that, I’ll give you more.”

I blinked at him. “This is weird. You know it’s weird, right?”

His expression promised I’d reached the end of his patience, so I did as he said and sucked the water out of the sponge. When I finished, he took it back and dipped it in a little plastic cup of water I hadn’t noticed him holding. Again and again, Cyril controlled my water intake. He handed me the sponge stick, and I sucked down the little amount of water it offered like a man stranded in the desert. When he’d deemed I’d had enough, he set the cup aside. I eyed it with a scowl and wondered just how injured I was and if I could take on a ninety-year-old man.

“Enough,” Cyril said, snapping his fingers in front of my face to draw my attention back to him. “Any more and you’ll likely vomit.”

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