Page 14 of Caged Kitten

We stared at one another for a beat, that blue orb suddenly dancing about, and I bit back a grin.

“Rafe.”

“It’s nice to meet you…” She shuffled closer. “Rafe.”

Excitement fluttered about in my chest at the sound of my name on her tongue. Abort. Abort!

“Good night, Katja.”

She blinked back at me. “Good night, Rafe.”

Another unsettling tingle, my dead heart skipping a beat despite the fact it had been rotting in my chest for nearly five and a half long centuries.

Katja rolled away first, and I quickly did the same, returning to my creaky bed and flopping onto the mattress with a sigh I didn’t need—never needed, but always felt satisfying to do, some semblance of humanity clinging to me even now. Hands folded on my chest, I stared up at the ceiling, at the thin beam of moonlight slashing in from the window. Odd how the giddy flutter had vanished, replaced instead by a warped feeling of pride, of accomplishment, that I had settled this crying woman.

The crying witch.

Katja.

And even after she fell asleep, her breaths long and even, occasionally hitched, I struggled to close my eyes, finding it even harder to doze off now in the prison’s familiar nighttime hush than I had when she wept by my side.

And frankly—that pissed me right off.

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