“If a brownie comes to your cell with a pissed-off looking imp... they’re not there to clean,” I said before dispersing, doing my business quickly.
A coup would only happen if we did this right. Killian would know the most about this place, but he didn’t know all the guards nor what Istvan might have done to it since the takeover. We had one shot, and we had to be smart about it.
We were shuffled through to the mess hall. A lot of eyes on me, a similar response to when I won the first time in Halálház. Awed, angry, scared, and uneasy that a human won. This time, though, there were a lot more who struggled with anger and sorrow. Andris was a big hit for many. A light going out in the rebel fight.
I couldn’t show any weakness, any nicks in my walls, even if I was a burning hot mess inside.
Settling down on the bench, my gaze caught Nora’s red-streaked eyes from the table over. Next to her was Hanna.
Hanna and I stared at each other as strangers, though I remembered when she threw up Pálinka on her mother’s favorite rug after the first time we got drunk with the boys and stumbled back to her apartment. We scrubbed and scrubbed the stain, but it never fully came out. We blamed it on their cat.
In all my grief, I had forgotten they had lost a father and husband last night.
But Andris’s sacrifice saved Hanna and Nora’s life.
“Before we start your yummy breakfast,” Zion’s voice took my focus away from them to the doorway. He strolled into the room, escorting a new prisoner dressed in gray. “Let me introduce you to the new fishy in the schoolyard.”
Disbelief stilled my body. I blinked, making sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
A sharp, guttural noise pulled my focus to Lukas across the room. He jerked as if he’d been electrocuted, his eyes wide with shock on the new prisoner. Sensing me, Lukas’s gaze snapped from me to Kek, like he was making sure we also saw the same person.
A person who should be dead. We had all watched his execution.
“What the fuck?” I muttered to myself, my mouth parting as he was pushed toward the human section, his eyes meeting mine.
Tracker.
Was alive.
“Watch and learn, fishy, or your first day might be your last.” Zion shoved him onto a bench across from mine. Tracker’s lip lifted in anger, the alpha in him wanting to retaliate. He sat down, and slowly his emotionless gaze found mine again while my shock and bewilderment cracked and fizzed.
How was this possible? Where had he been this whole time? How did he survive?
The night we left him at the bridge entrance, I didn’t even question that he was dead, otherwise, I would have brought him with us.
“All right, humans, get your privileged asses up to the food line now, or I will have the fae go first for once.” Zion waved us up.
Collectively, we traveled to the food counter, forming lines. I cut and wiggled, making sure I was next to Tracker in the queue.
“Tracker.” I breathed out his name quietly, my disbelief still not letting me fully comprehend he was here. “You’re alive. How?”
He turned about to answer me, but I put my finger to my lips, wagging my head. His gaze darted around, picking up on the tense silence; only a murmur of voices from the guards and sounds from the kitchen buzzed the air enough to cover my whisper.
“How are you here?” I asked through my teeth.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he muttered back, rapidly catching on to the danger around us, keeping his voice barely above a whisper.
“We thought you were dead.”
“Yeah, I would have thought the same until I woke from a coma a few days ago.”
We inched up the line. “Where have you been?”
“HDF. Guess they found me that night and realized I was still alive.” He peered around, checking on the guards strolling up and down the lines.
I don’t know why they would keep him alive. Even if he were human, he was still a traitor to them.
“The bullet should have been fatal. I shouldn’t even be up and moving around so fast.” Tracker leaned in closer. “What’s strange, besides the bizarre dreams of being in some water tank, is waking from my coma. I’ve never felt better in my life.”
Dread sank in my stomach like a boulder. Now I realized why he was still alive. Of course, Istvan would use him as a science experiment. What a perfect specimen to test on while in a coma. And if he died, no loss to Istvan.
Was he one of those in the tank I saw that night? Was he faux-fae now?
My eyes scanned Tracker; he looked the same as when I saw him pumping iron in the gym: healthy, ripped, young, and virile.
He shouldn’t be if he was near death and in a coma this long.
I bit down on my lip. Right now wasn’t the time to get into it, but I needed to learn more. Anything he could recall.
“I’m sorry. If we had known...” we wouldn’t have left you for dead.
He shrugged, looking away from me.
“When you’re at meals, stick with me, and when we go to the factory to work, stick with Lukas.”
“Lukas?” Tracker’s head snapped to me. “He’s here?”
“So is Kek.” I nodded my chin over to them.
They both stared at Tracker as if they hadn’t even blinked yet, questions and bewilderment written in their gazes.
“Wow, the whole gang is here.” He jerked his chin at them like he had seen them yesterday. “Well, almost.”
“Sorry about Ava.”
“Yeah, me too.” His jaw tightened. Tracker was never a warm fuzzy, keeping everything inside. If he just woke up two days ago, it must be still so fresh to him.
After being handed our watery bowls of gruel, we had no more chance to talk. Tracker was an unexpected hitch, but he might be the very piece we need. Someone who might know more about what is going on outside the House of Blood.
Halfway back to the table, my bowl came tumbling out of my hands, spilling across the floor. I froze. My lungs clamped down as my senses went from normal to overwhelmed with pain. Bile coated my tongue, rooted terror exploding over my neurons.
Physically, I was still in the mess hall, but everything else was torn from the silent, dull room, now filled with piercing sounds and agony. I could feel the pounding in my head, filling with so much pressure, it felt like a tick about to burst.
His pain was acute; even taking on a little of it dropped my real body to the floor in the mess hall, vomiting on the floor while my shade stood in the hole with him.
Shackled up like a starfish and upside down, he was beaten badly with old and new bloodstains covering him. The chains could be cranked and tightened, stretching his muscles and limbs to the point they gave. Drawn and quartered.
“Warwick!” I cried, moving to him. The moment my fingers grazed his skin and laced through his hair; the agony tripled inside me. My teeth gritted together, trying to absorb the harsh punch of it in every muscle, nerve, and bone. The pressure in his head from being upside down, on top of the shrill noises, was the worst. It would break any human, mind, body, and spirit.
I didn’t know how “death proof” Warwick and I were or if we had just been lucky. What neither one of us was immune to was losing ourselves mentally. If they couldn’t break his body or will, they would crumble his mind.
“Warwick...” I leaned my forehead against his swollen, cut mouth. They had him hanging right at eye level—easier for them to beat him without him being able to do a thing.
A light groan came from the back of his throat.
“Stay with me.” My nose rubbed against his, my lips grazing his forehead and cheeks.
Another moan. His lashes flickered; his puffy eyes only able to open into slits. Through the flashes of light, I could see his aqua eyes looking back at me.
And it almost broke me.
He had no fight in him. No will. He was slipping away from me. My heart pounded with terror at the thought of losing him. A world without Warwick Farkas?
No. Fuck. No.
There would be no world left. I would make sure of it.
My hands dug deeper into his hair, grabbing the back of his scalp, absorbing more of his pain. “You don’t get to fucking leave me, Farkas,” I growled, my real body curling into a ball, convulsing. “You don’t get out of this so easy.”
“Easy?” The barest of sounds huffed into my ear, almost lost to the torture around us. But the more I pushed, the more it became further away. A barrier protecting us from the onslaught.
“Yeah, asshole. You’re stuck with me. I didn’t drag your ass back from the dead for you to die here. So, no more getting yourself thrown into the hole. I forbid it.”
He snorted. “Whatever you say, woman.”
“Agreeing with me? Now I know you’re losing your mind. Too much blood going to your brain.” As I cupped his head, his tiny slits of eyes watched me. A spark of life, lust flared in them.