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They stared directly ahead, likely unused to an attack of this kind. After all, which inmate would be stupid enough to attack out in the open like this?
Five became four.
My muscles stiffened and I drew my arm back. A swipe across the face. That was all I required.
An instant of insanity would seal the next few months or even years — if I was lucky — of extra penance. I drew down my brow like a hood, rounded my shoulders, and stalked toward them.
“Don’t do it,” a deep voice over my shoulder said.
I missed my step and the movement caught the guards’ attention. Their eyes locked on mine but now my anger had dissolved into confusion. They were wary and they shifted their weight and their rifles tilted in my direction.
I turned to identify the speaker, who had likely ruined my plan.
Cayggod stepped from a shadowed recess of a cell door and joined me at my shoulder. “I don’t think you’ve fully thought this through,” he said.
“I’ve thought it through plenty!” I snapped, attempting to shoulder past him.
He blocked me. “What kind of life at Ikmal do you think you’re going to have after you attack a guard?”
“One with Lily,” I said, but now the guards had finished tossing the room and turned to leave.
“One not worth living,” Cayggod said. “The guards protect their own. Do you honestly think they’re going to let you live in peace with Lily if you attack them?”
I hesitated. I figured the guards wouldn’t be happy about it but that they wouldn’t be vindictive… and yet, that was exactly what they would be. There would be no peace for me, no peace for Lily.
My anger turned toward Cayggod. “Why do you care?” I growled. “What difference does it make to you?”
“None,” Cayggod said with a shrug. “And with any other inmate, I wouldn’t even bother trying to reason with them. Maybe I’m a fool for thinking I can reason with you too but I’ve seen you overcome difficulties with intelligence, patience, and humility. There’s no reason you can’t do the same with this issue.”
I got up in his face. “This issue? This issue? I stand to lose my fated mate and you brand it an issue? A fated mate comes along once in a lifetime — if you’re lucky! — and I’m supposed to think of it as an issue?”
“Yes,” Cayggod said, unaffected by my rant. “You’re not thinking clearly. You’re not seeing all the angles. Attacking a guard might buy you some time, but it’s not going to buy you forever. And what happens when someone figures out how to beat you in the pit?”
“That won’t happen,” I snarled.
“Then what happens when you get injured?”
“That won’t happen either!”
“Then what happens when you serve your extra time? Are you going to attack another guard?”
I opened my mouth to argue but no words came out. The truth was, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
“I’ll… cross that wormhole when I come to it,” I said.
But he’d already robbed me of my insanity. What I’d intended to do was not a long-term solution and it never was going to be. I needed another idea, I needed another way to solve this but time had already run out.
Cayggod waited patiently for me to come to the same conclusion. And now that I was thinking clearly, I knew what to say:
“What do you suggest instead?”
A smile curved his broad lips. “Finally, you ask the correct question.”
27
LILY
Today was our final day together.
