Page 50 of Caged Kitten

Fintan

“You know I’m one of the fae, right? Not a fucking wood elf?”

Honestly—assigning me to the greenhouse for work duty… Like I had any real experience with plants beyond smoking them. Inmates might have been clamoring for the position, desperate to work something cushy outside the main building, but I was a motherfucking prince of the Midnight Court. You’d never find me clamoring for any paid position that didn’t involve judging scantily clad ladies or taste-testing fae wine.

Mind you, I currently had zero access to my vast wealth given it was still my first month, and I was getting sick of begging off Elijah, Rafe, and Katja for goods. They had pennies to spare, which I appreciated whenever they tossed a few my way, but pennies barely bought me a single cigarette from the prison storefront. So, perhaps a job would be temporarily beneficial, but for how long I could endure some uppity warlock fuck telling me to water and fertilize shit was anyone’s guess.

A little over two and a half weeks in this pit and still no rescue. The wards likely put a dampener on my brother’s efforts, but really. Surely someone in our kingdom was adept at breaking them. They were only witch’s wards of this realm, after all. How difficult could it be to crack them? Fae magic was far stronger; the cavalry ought to be charging through by now.

“Did you hear me? I said—”

“Oh my gods, just shut the fuck up, Fintan,” Williams barked, groaning out my name as his grip tightened on my arm. Gravel crunched underfoot as he hauled me across the outer yards of the penitentiary, the sky a hazy blue overhead, the air thick and still inside the confines of the ward, a sea of grasslands stretching out to the horizon beyond it, dotted occasionally by a mountain or six.

Ahead, the greenhouse spanned long and narrow along a bit of unnecessary chain-link fencing—pure aesthetic, the dramatic fucks—its panels opaque glass, two unfamiliar guards stationed in front of the lone door. Xargi Penitentiary soared over my shoulder, looking oddly ancient for its recent construction, an imposing stone structure two levels tall with sentry towers in all the corners, warlocks positioned there to take out any runners.

You know, if the wolves didn’t get them first.

I’d spotted four since Williams had marched me out the doors, the process of stepping foot outside beyond tedious. So many checks, as if I’d had time to shove contraband up my arse from the moment this fucker had dragged me out of the cellblock and shoved me through winding corridors. And now here we were, on a brisk, forced walk to my new work duty.

A grey shadow whizzed along the base of the greenhouse, bypassing the guards and disappearing around the far corner. Five wolves, then. Shifters, most likely, given the militaristic precision with which they patrolled the grounds. A few wore identical leather collars to the inmates, and although Williams wouldn’t even entertain the conversation, I for one suspected that the security pack had a few prisoners of their own, only the collars kept them in their huge wolf forms. Meanwhile, poor bastards like Elijah were in a constant state of blue balls, desperate to shift but unable to let the beast free.

Really. I felt for him. Of all the creatures in this realm, a dragon shifter came closest to my kind in terms of raw, unhinged power.

Cruel, to keep him caged.

“Surely we can come up with something,” I drawled as we neared the greenhouse door, one of the guards unbolting it from the outside. “I mean, if you find a way for me to access my fortune, I’ll pay you what I’d earn here—”

Williams cracked me upside the head with his elbow, the first display of physical violence in weeks, and then shoved me forward. Right. Fair enough. None of the guards had fallen for my charms yet, but once I had real money to barter with, their tune would change; it always did.

Pain throbbed in my temple as one of the greenhouse guards lurched forward and grabbed my arm.

“Take him before I fucking kill him,” Williams growled. I flashed him a flirtatious smile, lips come-hither but eyes murderous. The warlock had the nerve to gulp, his hand flitting for the wand on his belt, but he beelined back to the main building before either of us could get another word in. Coward. Rolling my shoulders back, I massaged the ache away as a new set of steely-eyed, hard-as-stone, boring as fuck guards led me into the greenhouse—which turned out to be even larger on the inside than the outside let on.

Magically enhanced, the air thick with enchantments that gave off a slight fruity odor, the interior stretched on for miles. Met with rows upon rows of greenery, I let out a huff. Maybe this wasn’t the cushy gig everyone had expected. Inmates peppered the long metal tables, fussing over herbs and perennial blooms and periwinkle-blue hydrangeas and for fuck’s sake, not a hint of either wolfsbane—a killer to wolf shifters, but it gave a hell of a high to the rest of us—or marijuana in sight. Boring.

Fans whirred softly overhead, the humidity making the spell-tainted air even more pungent, and an alarm suddenly buzzzzzed throughout the entire greenhouses. Inmates leapt back from their leafy charges as sprinklers misted the lot, then got back to work as soon as it was over. Purple, grey, green, orange—a vast array of supernatural folk littered the rows, but it was one purple jumpsuit in particular that caught my eye.

Wily little minx. My grin sharpened. She hadn’t told any of us she’d gotten a new work assignment, but it positively tickled me that I finally had some alone time with the witch Elijah and Rafe guarded like the realm’s most precious stone.

The dragon had become even more intense about her since they’d wandered back into the cellblock last week positively stinking of sex. Rather a tense supper with the vampire after, but I had found a way to keep it light, as always.

Honestly, what would this bunch of misfits do without me?

“On second thought, I would be thrilled to devote my time to, er, shrubs and whatnot,” I announced, gesturing to the expansive greenhouse with a flourish, and as soon as the guard loosened his hold, I was off like a shot.

“Wait,” he called, footsteps trailing after me over a dirt floor. “You need your shift assignment—”

“Oh, I’ve found it.” I lobbed him an easy grin, hands up innocently. “Not to worry!”

Six rows over, fifteen feet down the table, Katja stood harvesting roses. Gloves hiding her delicate hands, luscious red hair braided and tossed over her shoulder, she attacked the task with a furrowed brow, so careful, so precise with each clip of her pruning scissors, until—

“Well, hello, darling girl,” I purred, sidling right up beside her, swift and silent enough in my approach that she jumped and mangled the stem of the stalk in hand. She stilled with a curt breath, glowering at me out of the corner of her eye, and I leaned a hip on the metal table, the air thick with rose-scented blooms.

How fitting: Katja’s scent reminded me of primroses.

“I thought you were a bakery mouse,” I mused as she got to work trimming the thorns from her recent acquisition, bushes upon bushes stretching down this row, roses of all colors and sizes awaiting her tender touch. No other inmate assigned to roses; clearly she needed an assistant.

“They’re putting anyone with any floral skills in here. I just found out this morning they wanted me,” she muttered, shooting me another narrowed look before plopping her de-thorned rose into a white plastic bucket of water alongside six other red blooms, this one slightly shorter than the rest.

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