Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,103

with confusion and anger and injustice. To Fintan’s sharp tongue and laughing eyes, always capable of breaking the tension even when the rest of us were miserable.

Only we didn’t take the usual winding corridors back to the shittier side of the building. As instructed, the warlock with a death grip on my arm led me through unfamiliar hallways, up and down spiral stairwells. I didn’t find my bearings until we passed the prison shop, which always reminded me of a shanty liquor store with its huge open doorway and goods locked behind bars, the teller in a caged dome at the back. We blitzed by it so fast that I couldn’t pick out the faces of the inmates doing a bit of predinner shopping, but the flash of a red jumpsuit made my heart skip a beat.

Made the marks on my throat tingle like they were fresh and sore.

We finally stopped—seemingly out of nowhere—just around the corner from the commissary, Cooper jerking me back when I stumbled forward with the momentum of our march. He positioned me in front of an ordinary door with Supplies scratched into the wood, and everything inside me stilled, a cold fear taking root. Because… Well, not exactly the most professional signage, some crude lettering carved into the panels with, what, a knife?

“Uh, what are we—”

Cooper shook me hard enough to jostle my neck and make my teeth chatter, then grabbed the brass knob and turned it. Flung open the door to reveal…

Deimos.

Constance.

Avery and Blake.

A little Cellblock C reunion.

The four loitered around the tiny closet, a space that really did look like a storage room with cleaning supplies and dingy rags piled on the shelves. I planted my feet, eyes widening, adrenaline soaring, but Cooper still managed to shove me inside.

Then the bastard closed the door behind me, the click of a lock making my heart sink.

Okay. I swallowed hard, battling with the lump in my throat. Okay. A high-pitched whine erupted, slicing through my skull and growing louder by the second. Okay, okay. None of them had access to their powers—all the collars were still firmly in place. Okay, okay, okay, don’t panic.

Back to the door, I looked to Deimos in his black jumpsuit, scenes of grotesque torture tattooed over every bit of exposed flesh, creeping all the way up to his chin. At some point since I’d arrived, someone had carved 666 into his temple—so original.

No, pleasant thoughts only. He knew I despised him—I never tried to hide it—but right now, I was also at his mercy. All by his lonesome, the demon sprawled across one whole wall of shelves directly in front of me. Constance giggled to my left, the air thick, and swung her legs from her shelf-perch midway up the wall. Avery and Blake, meanwhile, stood to my immediate right, arms crossed, silent and waiting.

“Deimos,” I started, then staggered back into the door, hitting the wood with a noisy whump, when he pushed off the wall and stalked toward me. I held up my hands, defenseless, every synapse firing as I searched for just the right words to defuse this. Only adrenaline made my mind frantic and scattered—made my limbs shake and my extremities numb. “W-wait—”

He swiftly closed the gap between us, then gut-punched me with the force of a charging bull. My diaphragm absorbed the hit, all the air whooshing out of my lungs, and, gasping, I folded over without meaning to—I just couldn’t stay upright—and Deimos shoved me the rest of the way down. The tinny whine between my ears rocketed up to deafening when I hit the ground, thrust into the middle of the space on my hands and knees, and a blow to the side from someone’s foot knocked me over.

It all happened so fast, so furious, that I didn’t have time to lash out or strike back. I’d never been in an actual fight before, and as all four closed in, laughing and jeering, whatever words they hurled at me muffled against the screechy whine, I just curled into a ball. Protect the important bits: face and brain. My fingers crunched when someone stomped down on them. My back arched and bowed at the unrelenting blows. Someone—Constance, based on the scratch of talons up my neck—grabbed a fistful of my hair and spun me around in a circle, the maenad’s cackles girlish and savage.

To my credit, I didn’t make a sound besides the odd whimper and cry. No screams—I refused to give them that. No