Page 117 of The Prince's Captive

The realization struck her and cut her off when she was in the middle of Hagne’s Prayer Fifteen.

She didn’t want to kill Gavril. Not to end her own misery.

She didn’t want to kill him because… he didn’t deserve it. He was an Inimicus, but he wasn’t like his people. There was something different about him. And if she killed the only one of them who might have some goodness in him…

No. If she took him captive and delivered him to Hypatia to use as a hostage, he would live. He would be returned to his people safely.

But how was she ever going to get her limiters taken off and a chance to be around him when there were no guards around? Not to mention figure out how to even escape Areator with a hostage?

It was an impossible task.

So she prayed for a miracle.

The sound of someone opening her cell door had her shooting up off her cot as she opened her eyes and her clasped hands broke away.

She immediately relaxed when she saw who was stepping inside her cell.

Gavril shut the door behind him and said, “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt your… prayers?”

Marcella pushed herself off her cot. “It is no matter. Prayer can be returned to.”

In the dim light of distant runes of the dungeon, she could see Gavril had something in his arms, a basket. When she looked even closer, he was dressed differently than what she was so used to seeing him in. He was dressed like he had been the night she’d cursed him. The last time he’d ever come to her cell.

Gavril nodded and he stepped further inside her cell, adjusting the small basket tucked against his side. He gestured with his other hand to the space between them. “May I?”

She nodded.

He sat on the floor of her cell, setting the basket down, and she slowly approached him and sat across from him. He had his commander’s cloak wrapped around his shoulders, clasped on the left, but she could see his chiton underneath was finely trimmed and decorated. Where had he just come from?

And why would he come see her?

He started pulling something out of the basket. A covered plate, two glasses, and a bottle of wine. He set them between them, fiddling with them until he was satisfied with them before looking up at her and said, “You are curious. Why I am here.”

“You usually prefer for me to kick the living tar out of you in front of an audience, so yes.”

His lips twitched. “I will tell you, but first we eat and drink.”

As he moved to pour the wine, Marcella listened and the silence wasn’t silence at all. She could hear in the distance, somewhere in a courtyard nearby the sound of music.

She blinked as he started pouring the second cup. “Your people are celebrating and yet you sit here with me?”

He shook his head as he finished pouring and recorked the bottle. “Celebrating… That is one word. It is… Yes, I would rather be here tonight.”

She started to reach for the glass, but he caught her hand and said, “Not yet.”

“Is there some sort of rule I’m missing?” Marcella asked, drawing her hand back.

Gavril laughed, “Not rule. Tradition. Before—”

He cut himself off, his shoulders dropped, and that was when she noticed the bags under his eyes somehow seemed worse than ever before.

“My people they are… not quite celebrating. It is—send off. I leave tomorrow.”

Marcella’s stomach dropped to her feet and bile shot up her throat. He was leaving?

He shifted closer, accidentally nudging the plate even closer to them as he held his hand out. “Not for long. Just a few weeks. I am being sent on a mission. Since they could not find the supply cache, I am going to find it.”

Her heart was still racing and she still wasn’t sure if she was terrified because her only option for freedom was going to be gone for weeks on end—and if he was captured or killed while away so went her freedom, or if because she was certain he was the only thing keeping her off the table—and if he was captured or killed, she was going to wake up on it.

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