I Regret Nothing - JB Trepagnier Page 0,13

the witches and warlocks up here to come at me. She was petty enough to have other witches do her dirty work, so her sentence wouldn’t get extended. Because I bit her to steal the amulet, I got caught, but honestly? She would have done that on her own. She didn’t disable the security cameras or the alarm and had guards chasing her. They would have caught her before she made it out of the parking lot. I had been hoping to catch her first, and that was my big mistake.

There was nothing I could do about that now. I was in prison. Now, I just needed to make some allies to make sure I survived Venus and Faust. Especially if inmates tended to go missing around him. Venus wouldn’t have her magic, and neither would any witches she joined up with. Faust didn’t rat me out about my handcuff. He could have easily hauled me back in there and gotten an answer about what I was with a blood test. He was clearly fucked in the head if he wanted to leave me in prison with magic for the shits and giggles of figuring out what I was on his own.

The mess hall was vast, and the line was long. Dakarys pulled me straight to the front and skipped everyone in line. No one beat him or complained. No one said anything about the new girl going directly to the front either. I leaned into him.

“How did you just do that and not get both of us killed?”

Dakarys just smirked at me.

“Computers and television may have been invented while I was rotting in Scorchwood, and I thought they were magic, but they kind of are. We got assigned to the mailroom, and the Silverhold black market is now booming. Honestly, I’m shocked no one pulled it off before I got here. No one lays a finger on Rajack and me because they know we’ll cut off their supply of whatever their little black hearts want in prison they can’t get at the commissary. Do you want something? Because I can get it.”

Well, fuck. Now I was even more grateful Dakarys wanted to be friends. No one would fuck with me except Faust if we made friends. And he was just lovely. I grabbed my tray and started eyeing the food.

“Silverhold 101, Rei. You don’t get medical treatment unless it’s an emergency. Some food will fuck you up, but you can use it. Stay away from anything with peanut butter in it. You won’t shit for days. If you absolutely need it or they are serving a peanut butter dessert, eat something with cheese. I don’t care how much you like cheese. You won’t like Silverhold cheese. It’s bright orange and doesn’t taste like normal cheese. If you overeat, you’ll be peeing out your ass for days. The meat is all mushy lumps, and they cut it with breadcrumbs to make it go further. It’s not properly seasoned, and we have no idea which animal it’s from. It’s disgusting but eat it anyway. You need protein in here in case anyone comes at you.”

My hand paused over the mac and cheese. It was pretty much my favorite food ever because it was hard to mess up. They had fucking weaponized mac and cheese in here to give you the trots, and prison just got a million times worse.

“How much of this can I eat before I have to live in the bathroom?”

Dakarys winked at me.

“A risk-taker. I can dig it. A serving isn’t going to do anything to you, but I wouldn’t do seconds. If they do peanut butter sandwiches with the mac and cheese, you can eat all you want because they cancel each other out. Sometimes, they give us this peanut butter pie that’s not half bad, and it cancels the cheese out too, but they don’t set it out often because they know we like it.”

This was the grossest looking mac and cheese I’d ever seen in my entire life, which kind of shattered my notion it was an impossible food to fuck up. Even cheap boxed mac didn’t look this bad. It made this squelching noise when I dumped it on my plate.

The cheese was this neon orange, but it looked like everything else they were offering us was gray. The mushy peas were gray, and so was the mystery meat. I wasn’t the best cook in the world, but I could manage better than this.