My plan spread through Věrhăza quickly. So quickly I started to worry the guards would catch on or overhear as we moved through the day. Bitzy and Opie had woken me up early with information they got from other inmates—positions of guards, their break times. Nothing groundbreaking, but it was a start.
“The cerulean creature says as long as she gets steak, sex, and a drink after she’s all in.” Opie folded his arms over his lederhosen, which appeared to be made out of an oat burlap bag and were so short they could have been bikini bottoms. His chest was left bare under the suspenders. He tied another burlap strip around his beard and wrapped his hair into a high bun, with carrot leaves springing from the top like a fountain. Bitzy had booty shorts and a bow tie in the same burlap.
“Sounds like Kek,” I smirked. “Anything else?”
Opie peered down, ramming his toe into my leg.
“What?”
“I tried—”
Chirp!
“We tried,” he corrected himself. “To unlatch some locks at the top... thought we could help.”
“And?”
“I couldn’t—”
Chirp!
“We couldn’t.” Opie’s face looked pained. “The Druid spell blocks us too. We tried to find you when you went missing, but we were blocked.”
Because Tad had spelled Killian’s cabin too, keeping them from finding me.
“Oh.” My shoulders sank. I wasn’t relying on them, but damn, it would have helped. “It’s fine. We’ll find a way.”
We had to. We didn’t have a lot of time. Every day someone was beaten or killed here, and it was only days until the next Games. I had no doubt there would be even more death and new levels of hell in Istvan’s plan for us.
Our goal was to do it the afternoon of, when we were all still in the factory and some guards were away, setting up for that night’s event.
Purpose is a powerful thing. It bloomed hope—a reason to continue when you have no incentive to do so. This place quickly drains it out of you, swallowing you whole in horror, despair, and anguish. To the point death would be mercy.
Death himself was losing hope. As much as Warwick tried, he could no longer keep me out. Though it didn’t really matter, he had receded to the far crevasses of his mind. Breathing, but no longer living.
Boyd and his merry band of dicklickers continued to torture Warwick in the most excruciating ways. They had his feet and hands bound together behind his back, curving the huge man into a painful position, drowning him in stimuli over and over again.
“Warwick.” I kneeled next to him now, my hand brushing at his face. I could feel the blood, sweat, and dirt crusting his skin, beard, and hair. “Please hold on.” I gritted my teeth, trying so hard not to cry. Hoping I was easing his pain.
There was no response. His eyes were too swollen to open, his black hair, almost red with blood, knotted over his face. His frame was nothing but old and new wounds, deep and oozing, some even infected.
He may still be alive, but I could feel him slipping away mentally. Even the Legend had a breaking point. I was scared if he did let go, I would never get him back, his mind lost to the darkness.
“Please.” I leaned into him, my lips grazing his torn and swollen mouth. The wounds felt like braille against my touch. Heat radiated from his skin in a fever, sticky and clammy. “We fight, Farkas. We survive. That’s what we do. Whatever it takes, remember?”
He was my world. And if this world took him from me...
I would burn it to the fucking ground.
Chapter 7
By the next breakfast, if you could call it one, you could feel a spark in the air, a change in our demeanor. Which was not lost on Boyd, nor Joska and Kristof, who were both back, and appeared even more twitchy and filled with increased rage.
They could taste our hope, smell it in the air, feel it brush their skin. Boyd’s intuition could sense it, but the fake-fae picked it up like smelling another animal in heat. It confused them. And when beasts get confused, they get angry. Agitated. They wanted to rip it out, beat it down, and remove anything that challenged their hate and wrath.
Boyd went around randomly clubbing people, having their beaten bodies dragged out of the room, only antagonizing the souped-up soldiers around him.
Somebody would break eventually.
“We have to hurry this up,” I muttered to the group at my table.
“How?” Tracker hissed back.
So far, I found out most fae guards here were only in it for the money. They didn’t like the humans but weren’t faithful enough to their own side to refuse the money Istvan was giving them. And the HDF soldiers acted more as if they were in a cult than an army.
There was a thin line between the two, which could be used in our favor.
“Okay, maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Instead of inside out, what about outside in?” My gaze darted between Hanna and Tracker. “You two were the last to be on the outside. To be in HDF or around Istvan. Can you remember anything that might help?”
“As soon as Istvan debriefed me about my time at Sarkis, and I asked to go see my parents, he had me hauled into a holding cell then brought here.” Hanna scooped some gruel into her mouth, her face not able to fight the flinch of disgust.
“He said nothing to you?”
“Just that my whole family had turned out to be grave disappointments and traitors.” Her blue eyes went from her mom to me, her voice lowering. “He asked me about the nectar.” Her tone was poignant, hinting back to the conversation we had at the canteen that day, reminding me she knew I had it.
“Nectar?” Tracker’s spine went straight, his voice peaking slightly louder than it should have. He instantly bowed his head, our whole table going still, waiting for a reaction from the guards. Fortunately, most of them were away from our table, unfortunately poking at Killian.
“You didn’t tell him anything, did you?” I finally spoke again.
“No,” she refuted strongly.
“Do you know if Caden did?”
Hanna wagged her head. “I don’t know. I never saw him after we left the square. But General Markos would debrief him first.” The highest-ranking officer was always interrogated first. It was how it was done. Caden far outranked Hanna. “When the General spoke to me, he didn’t seem to have any idea where it was.”
My shoulders eased. “Good. I can’t have him finding it.”
“Wait. Are you talking about the same nectar we were looking for in Killian’s tunnels?” Tracker addressed me. “Did you find it?”
I let out a scoff. “You could say that.” And part of it is sitting right across from you, buddy.
Tracker’s eyes widened more. “You have it.” He stated with awe, then his gaze went over me. “Where is it? How did they not find it on you if you had it? Do you have it now?”
“No. But I know where it is. Sort of.”
My only hope was whoever went through the pile of jackets and bags didn’t have a clue what it was. It was far better off staying in innocent hands until I could get to it. I felt confident I would be able to find it the moment I got out of here, as the pull to it would lead me like a compass. It was part of me.
“Where is it?” Tracker responded automatically.
My mouth pinned together in a flat smile, letting him understand no one at this table would know except me.
“I can’t believe you actually found it.” He shook his head in disbelief. “That it’s real.”
“Oh, it’s real.”
“The power it’s supposed to have is immeasurable. Why didn’t you use it if you had it?”
“I did,” I muttered without thinking. “Brought Andris back to life after his base was bombed.”
“Wait.” Tracker blinked at me, his shoulders pushing back. “It can bring people back from the dead?” I knew that tone, his look. The hope.
“It doesn’t work lik—”
“Chow time is over! Let’s move!” Joska yelled, strolling past our table, shutting me up. “Now!”
Our group got up quietly from the table, walking to the stairs to the level leading to the factory. Tracker got lost in the crowd, and I lost my chance to tell him I could never bring Ava back. The nectar didn’t bring people back from the dead. It was only in the first moments of death, when life still clung to the body.
I searched for him by Lukas when we got up to the factory, but he wasn’t there, and with the growing numbers of inmates coming in daily, he was lost in the throng, men outnumbering the women prisoners by more than double.
Most of the day had gone by when I suddenly found him next to Lukas, his shirt not yet sticking to his body, as if he decided to finally come to work, though I knew that couldn’t be the case. Every single inmate worked, no matter age, sickness, or capability. If you collapsed or died, they would drag you off as though you were rubbish.