Page 27 of Caged Kitten

“Very,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “And you?”

“Don’t you know that’s a rude question to ask in a place like this?”

My heart plummeted. If it was only taboo to ask if the prisoner actually committed the crime… Had I read him wrong? Had he tricked me into believing—

“Only joking,” Elijah said with a soft chuckle. He wiggled his brows at me as I scowled, then ducked out of the way when I flicked flour at him.

“Not funny.”

“Right, right, noted.” He fell straight back into his work, grabbing at Dough Mountain with both hands. “I ran the village jeweler’s shop… Buying and selling pieces sort of satiates my hoarding instinct.”

A dragon working in gold and diamonds? Yeah, that sounded about right.

“So, naturally, I’ve been dubbed a jewel thief,” Elijah remarked dryly, tossing two perfectly round balls onto the tray. “Supposedly I swiped some huge ruby from a Russian coven… I dunno, usual nonsense.” His voice dropped as he added, “Like I can’t find a fucking ruby without stealing it.”

I studied him for a moment, wondering how he talked about this without breaking—how he could make light of the injustice.

“How do you do it?” I pressed my lips shut tight; the question had just slipped out. Asking what an inmate had done to send them to Xargi Penitentiary may not have been rude, especially if they were guilty, but asking how they survived in here, the implication that this place didn’t weigh on them as heavily as it did me, felt wrong.

“Hmm?”

But I went with it anyway. “How do you just… accept this? I want to… to… scream at the top of my lungs. I want to freak out and hide in a dark corner, and I want to cry and curse and hit someone as hard as I can. I want to fight and…” My lips wobbled, and I paused for a calming breath, emotion threatening to bubble up and boil over if I didn’t. “And I feel like I can’t do any of those things. You always imagine what you’d do in this situation when you have to fight and be brave, and then it happens… and I feel like a coward.”

I had always thought that when faced with the worst possible circumstances, I would go down swinging—that I would be this badass heroine who took no prisoners, who knocked a guard out and stole his wand, who crept through the shadows and struck like a viper.

Xargi had shone a spotlight on reality: I wasn’t a badass. I was barely a heroine. I was just a witch without her magic who cried a lot—who hadn’t the courage to tell two pervy guards to screw off that day Elijah had stepped in.

Not only did I feel like a coward, but most of the time, I just felt pathetic. After the loss of my brothers, then my dad, mourning all their deaths and coming out the other side a somewhat normal, relatively stable adult, I thought I could handle anything life had to throw at me.

But…

“You’re not a coward, Katja.”

I closed my eyes and sucked down another deep breath. A little voice sneered that I didn’t need his pity, but nothing about Elijah said pity.

And I couldn’t explain why.

Couldn’t understand why.

Again.

“I don’t accept it—this,” Elijah said roughly, smooshing the dough between his palms, then ripping it into two even pieces. “But that doesn’t change anything. I can’t… I can’t even… They’ve taken away one half of me with this fucking collar. I hate it. My inner dragon hates it. I hate them, but I can’t fight magic with might. No matter what the stories say, it doesn’t work that way.”

“So, you’re just going to take it?” I winced: that could have been worded better. Rather than looking offended or wounded, Elijah grinned wryly down at the tray, nudging some of the dough balls farther apart.

“You got any other ideas?”

“No,” I said miserably—honestly. I had approximately zero clue how to get out of this place. Sure, it wasn’t the stuff of nightmares or how humans envisioned Hell, but the guards ran a tight ship and these collars limited funny business. I wasn’t a player in the great political game; I had no interest in joining any of the gangs smuggling contraband and battling for power amongst trapped supers.

I was nothing here.

I had nothing here.

“Well, I intend to survive this shithole, no matter what it throws at me,” Elijah insisted, and our eyes locked as he said, “if that means anything.”

Fighting with the lump in my throat, a sudden rush of feeling throwing me for a loop, I nodded.

“Yeah,” I croaked. Somehow, his sentiment bolstered me—gave me courage in the darkness. “It does.”

With that, we got back to work, rolling dough balls in the bakery’s brutal heat. Strangely unified, this dragon and I, we stood together at that table for hours and hours, until I couldn’t stand anymore, my feet aching, my knees crackly, my lower back begging for relief…

But my spirit just a little stronger.

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