Page 66 of Power of Draken

She does. And she doesn’t look back.

The next day, which is filled with more cadets captured, basic questions asked, and meager food distributed, Ulyssus confirms what I’d finally worked out. The reason why Ellie wasn’t turned over to the commandant already, why the interrogations haven’t started, why Logan’s been reporting more mercs gathering than the offered gold was worth is because our captors are playing a different game all together.

Hak is making plans to transport the prisoners north-east, Ulyssus informs me. Which, if you’ve been paying attention, is toward -

The approaching Flurry fae host. The mercs aren’t playing the commandant’s game, they are selling their easy earned bounty to a higher bidder.

Good. You’re still in possession of some wit.

I rub the back of my head. Have the civilians started getting uneasy about the delay in cashing in their prize yet?

Logan said they are starting to. Ulyssus hurumphs. Or maybe he said they are smelly. I didn’t care to mind the difference.

That sounded about right. On all counts.

The mercs are having a large meeting across town in two hours time. Skeleton guard left at the inn. Logan thinks he can get you out then. Can you be ready?

I look at Rowan and beg the stars that she might one day forgive me for what I’m about to do. Tell Logan to stand down. If Hak and his crew are kind enough to give us a ride toward home, no reason to turn them down.

Approval radiates from Ulyssus and I haul up my shields.

Chapter 32

Rowan

“Where are you taking us?” I ask Mercer as he shuts the door to the prison wagon we've been piled into. There are eighteen of us here now. I'm trying to stay calm, as calm as Kai appears to be, but everything inside me screams that being moved to another location is a bad sign.

"Let's not spoil the surprise." Mercer clicks the door closed behind him. The lights streaming in through the window becomes striped, like the bars. Sitting beside me, Ellie squeezes my hand.

"They are taking us to an interrogation chamber," one of the cadets, Yokos, says from the opposite bench. He is biting his nails down to blood. "Somewhere better equipped to get the codewords. I saw Hak hand off all our tags to someone from town as collateral. Need a tag and codeword, remember? Now they’ll be getting our codewords out of us.”

"Or turning us into dead bodies," someone mutters.

"Enough.” Kai cuts off the discussion with a single word. He sits comfortably in the corner, as if riding in an ordered carriage instead of a prison wagon. “If they wished to kill us, they’d not bother moving us.”

“Is it just me, or does your lover seem bored with all this petty speculation about our fate?” Ellie whispers.

“Not my lover."

“Arch nemesis with killer abs?” she waggles her brows. “The amount of effort you two put into not looking at each other is making me exhausted. Seriously, what’s happening with you two?”

“Same game that happened with Logan and Kyrian.” I lean my head back against the wagon, trying to ignore the way Kai’s proximity makes my chest clench even now. “They have this way of sparking intensity, chipping away at my defenses until I'm completely vulnerable. And then they leave. Literally in the case of the other two. Kai shoved me off verbally this time, but that’s just because we are actually chained up, so there is a limit to the distance he can create. Anyway, I think we’ve bigger problems than my fucked up relationship record.”

The wagon halts before a contingent of Eryndor military guards and the mercs honestly tell them that we are in the prison wagon. Any other time, our trip would end here, but the soldiers are under the commandant’s orders to stay out of this for two weeks. A few minutes later the wagon is again jostling along the uneven road, each bump and rut mirrored in the wooden planks beneath us.

The motion, combined with me having now missed several days of my tonic, is making me nauseated and I stare at a spot on the wall to try and keep my rations in my belly. Yokos shifts restlessly on the bench opposite me, his eyes darting between the barred windows. Probably trying to guess where we might be going. The other cadets mutter amongst themselves, their voices pitched low and tight, even Collin’s.

And then there is Kai. Long legs stretched out before him, arms folded casually across his chest. With his eyes closed and breathing even, he looks like he might be napping. Hells, maybe he is napping. The man somehow looks equally lethal asleep as awake.

“Is that a facade?” Ellie asks, motioning her head toward Kai. “I mean it has to be, right? No one can be that calm.”

“Honestly, I have no idea.” I try to take shallow even breaths. “Maybe he’s trying to keep everyone’s tension from spiraling into desperate violence. Or maybe he is just savoring basking in our collective misery. It’s fifty-fifty either way.”

Ellie snorts.

“Both,” Kai says without opening his eyes and both of us stop discussing him immediately.

We stop around midday and are allowed out to relieve ourselves and eat rations. There are over a dozen guards around us, with more riding ahead and behind, which seems overkill but successfully tamps down any thoughts we have of rebellion. I shiver as the cold nips mercilessly at my skin, but the cost of fresh air against the warmth of many bodies in a single wagon is worth it. Especially now that my nausea has brought dizziness along for company. Sometimes, I really hate my body. Most of the time, actually.

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