Page 38 of Reckless
No, no, no.
Even if I’m able to escape the Enforcer, I can’t outrun every person in Dor. And now that they’ve seen my hair, seen that I’m here, I can’t fight in the ring anymore. Can’t earn enough money to start over.
Something akin to amusement lights his eyes, making me regret not slitting his throat when I had the chance. And I’ve certainly had that chance, more than once.
“You bastard.” My voice is little more than a whisper, even as I struggle to shove myself out of his grip.
He suddenly has both my wrists clutched in calloused hands, yanking me closer to him as the dagger slips from my sweaty palm. Ipractically topple over his chest before his mouth is at my ear. “What are you going to do, hmm? You won’t make it one step outside this cage before being torn apart—”
“Oi, come on out, little Silver Savior!”
Before the words have even left his mouth, taunting shouts ripple through the crowd.
“That’swho’s worth so much?”
“Pretty little thing worth a pretty penny, eh?”
People are rattling the cage now, shouting at the stunned Silver Savior. “Great observation, Prince. You could pass for a Psychic.” I’m all but baring my teeth at him. “We had a deal.”
“And I won.”
“Oh, is that what you’re calling it?” I scoff. “How exactly are you planning to get me out of here, then? Why thehelldid you do that?”
He smiles. It’s a simple, soft lift of his lips that feels like a punch to the gut. Like a piece of the past slipping its way into my present. A piece of him I didn’t think I’d witness again. “Because,” he answers calmly, “I needed you to need me.”
I choke on a humorless laugh. “And you think today is the day I suddenly decide I need you?”
“I think today is the day you don’t have any other choice.” He starts to sit up, my wrists still gripped between his fingers despite my incessant yanking. “The only way you’re walking out of here in one piece is with the Enforcer at your side. Unless you think the Silver Savior can take down every person in this cellar? Then, by all means, be my guest.”
I glare at him—a last resort when I refuse to say what he wants to hear. Because he’s insufferable and intolerable and annoyingly right. The Enforcer is my only way out of here. But one person is far easier to evade than the entirety of this packed room.
I’ll use him to get out, and then I’ll deal with him alone.
I swallow, my throat dry as I try to gulp down my growing pride. “Fine,” I grit out. “Get me out of here.”
“There are those glowing manners of yours,” he says dryly. “You may need to get out of my lap, though, if we plan on leaving anytime soon.”
I startle, my cheeks burning with the sudden realization that I’m perched atop his lap, my wrists pinned down. He’s far too close, the feel of him far too familiar. I can’t stand it, stand him. Which is why I ungracefully slide from his lap to stand with him.
He releases one of my wrists but makes up for it by gripping the other all the more tightly. Turning to face the crowd, his voice is even as he announces, “I’ll be taking the Silver Savior with me, and no one here is going to give us any problems.” The crowd erupts in an outrage that the Enforcer refuses to acknowledge as he continues, his tone every bit the commander. “As Ilya’s Enforcer and second to the king, she’s my property.Mine.Which means if anyone so much as lays a hand on her, you’ll learn firsthand just how brutal the Elites can be.”
Silence.
The cellar is thick with it, drawing attention to the ringing in my ears. I shift uncomfortably, spinning the band on my thumb while his words sink in.
“She’s my property.”
I swallow my scoff and instead scan the room, fear hiding among the crowd in the form of flickering eyes and furrowed brows. No matter their feelings about Ilya, fright runs deeper than detest. Just the mere possibility of an Elite’s wrath raining down on them has their imaginations running wild. I doubt most of them have yet to even encounter someone from Ilya, let alone hear anything but horrors about the powerful population isolated across the desert.
They don’t even know what they’re afraid of, what it is the Elites can do. Whathecan do. The Enforcer only has abilities when there are others to wield them from, though he’s a weapon himself. And yet they cower from the potential of his power, from the threat of an infamous Elite.
Maybe the unknown is half the horror.
He used their ignorance against them.
“Stay close,” he murmurs, reaching for the cage door. “Or don’t. It’s your life at stake.”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes while simultaneously trying to ignore the fact that I look and feel like a toddler. He has me pressed close to him, not out of protection but something far more predatory. It’s the possession radiating off him that has the people parting to make a path, has them gawking as he guides the girl worth their livelihoods from the room.
