My door flew open, and he startled me from sleep in the most jarring way possible.
I panicked so much, I ended up falling out of bed, hitting the hardwood on my hands and knees.
The guard laughed loudly. “We’re gonna have some fun.”
My knees ached from the collision with the hardwood floor, and it took me a second to get up, to grab my boots from the floor and return to the bed to put them on.
“Go, come on.” He smacked the back of his hand against his palm in my face. “Chop-chop. That coke isn’t going to cut itself.” He kept making the hand motion right in my face, over and over, like he was trying to get a rise out of me or make me burst into tears.
I ignored him and got my boots on then grabbed my jacket.
He grabbed me by the arm and shoved me outside before I could even get the jacket on.
I stumbled forward over the wooden patio and hit the rail, my jacket hanging from my body because I only had one arm in the sleeve.
He walked past me and headed down the stairs. “Chop-chop.”
I glared at him as he passed before I righted myself. I took the stairs as I pulled on my jacket the rest of the way, zipping up the front and hugging what little warmth I had left to my body.
He walked ahead and escorted me to the clearing where I’d work for the day and strain every muscle in my body from lifting all the heavy boxes. Instead of leaving like Magnus did, he stayed, joining the others to keep an eye on our progress.
I turned to the table and started to prepare a box.
“You okay?” Bethany worked on her own box, her head down.
“I’m fine.”
“Because you look like you’re going to kill someone.”
“I must always look like that, because that’s how I always feel.”
We ate our lunch, the guards circling around, hoping that someone would step out of line so they could punish us.
Because they were sick.
The Red Snow was tomorrow…and I couldn’t go through that again.
“I snuck out of my room last night,” I whispered.
Bethany was good at not reacting, and she didn’t now. “What happened?” She stabbed her fork into the chicken and took a bite before scooping into her rice.
“I explored the camp, tried to figure out where they keep the essentials.”
“And?”
“I found the guards playing poker in a cabin. When I peeked inside, one of them saw me…”
She stilled, her fork stationary. “Oh my god…”
“It ended up being Magnus. He came outside and told me to go back to my cabin.”
“What?” Her voice rose a little.
I kicked her, telling her to be quiet.
She snapped out of it and kept eating.
We didn’t talk again until the next guard came and went past us.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“He told me he was leaving for a few weeks… I asked him to take me with him. He said no.”
“And he didn’t report you?”
“I’m sitting here, aren’t I?”
“I can’t believe that…”
I still couldn’t believe it either.
“He could have hung you right then and there. He should have reported you, and he didn’t.”
“I know.”
“I guess they aren’t all evil, but I’ve never seen a guard be anything other than evil.”
It made me reflect on our first meeting, when he was rough with me. Maybe he only acted that way because the other guards were around. Or maybe he always did act that way, but something about me made him less violent. I really had no idea.
“Are you sleeping with him?”
“No,” I said immediately.
“Has he tried…?”
“No.” He never did anything like that.
“You think he’s an undercover cop or something?”
Wouldn’t that be nice? “No…because he would just tell me.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“I have a new guard in the meantime. He’s a fucking psychopath.”
“They’re all psychopaths, girl. Did Magnus say where he was going?”
“No, but the guards must have time off. They can’t live here all the time. They must have lives outside of this place. Does your guard rotate?”
“Yeah. I’ve had a few different ones over the years.”
I pushed my food around, thinking about the way those brown eyes burned into mine with an inferno of rage. When the hood covered his face, I never really cared what he looked like underneath, because all the guards were the same to me—monsters. I never imagined that was his appearance, with masculine angles to his face, a hard jawline, eyes full of authority, and a voice that could make the walls shake with its