Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,19

rotting in my chest for nearly five and a half long centuries.

Katja rolled away first, and I quickly did the same, returning to my creaky bed and flopping onto the mattress with a sigh I didn’t need—never needed, but always felt satisfying to do, some semblance of humanity clinging to me even now. Hands folded on my chest, I stared up at the ceiling, at the thin beam of moonlight slashing in from the window. Odd how the giddy flutter had vanished, replaced instead by a warped feeling of pride, of accomplishment, that I had settled this crying woman.

The crying witch.

Katja.

And even after she fell asleep, her breaths long and even, occasionally hitched, I struggled to close my eyes, finding it even harder to doze off now in the prison’s familiar nighttime hush than I had when she wept by my side.

And frankly—that pissed me right off.

5

Katja

I’d never been this exhausted before. Not when my brothers died. Not after Dad passed. Not in the first year of running a business full-time at the age of twenty-four all by my freakin’ self. At least then Tully had been by my side, fueling me, replenishing me, supporting me with cuddles and purrs and strength.

None of that in here.

And it was only the second day.

The first meal of the second day at that.

I’d been inside Xargi Penitentiary for a good, what, maybe twenty hours, and it already felt like twenty years.

The trio of cellblock guards who’d put us to bed were gone when the alarm tolled this morning. After a quick pee in the world’s scummiest toilet, the little sink above it spewing perpetually freezing water, I’d joined the rest of the inmates in a rainbow of jumpsuit colors at our place outside the cells—right next to the door, standing in the wall between our hole and our neighbor’s. Vampire Rafe glanced my way as soon as he shuffled out into the shadows, sunlight beaming from every cell but his, only I refused to meet his eye. Last night had been one of the worst of my life—and it had been utterly humiliating that he heard me bawling like a homesick schoolgirl during her first year at the academy.

I just… couldn’t face him. Needed some time to, I don’t know, find my dignity again.

And then let go of the fantasy that a peppy host with a camera crew was about to materialize out of nowhere with a microphone that he’d shove in my face after telling me this was all a big joke, a new supernatural prank show that someone had nominated me for…

Because…

Because that was just pathetic. Life seldom worked that way, and as they marched Cellblock C out in a single-file line, wands drawn, I accepted that this was real.

But I couldn’t accept that I was stuck here. I wouldn’t accept it. I was an innocent witch wrongfully detained, and if it was the last thing I ever did, I would breathe free air again.

While we had sunlight in our cells, the interior corridors of the penitentiary were illuminated by long fluorescent bulbs that flickered and tinged at random. It appeared vampires weren’t permitted their usual schedule—sleep all day, up all night—which explained why the prison cafeteria was underground. Down a few winding stone corridors from our cellblock, one guard at the front, one at the back, the other stalking the line with a steely eye, a cruel smirk, and a wand as black as his uniform, we took a hard left into a stairwell.

And went down, down, down, three levels deep before filing into the huge circular cafeteria. With a max of ten inmates per cellblock—judging by the number of cells in ours, anyway—the entire inmate population ate together, called to grab our food by wedding-buffet rules, which meant one at a time, starting with Cellblock A. Last night at dinner, I had counted thirteen cellblocks total: A through M. Roughly a hundred and thirty inmates in one place, thirty-plus guards patrolling the area.

I’d expected chaos.

And compared to the unnerving quiet of the cellblock, it was, but at least it was organized chaos. As soon as we filled our trays with whatever the kitchen crew had prepared, the hair-netted supers behind the counter wearing jumpsuits like me, we had the freedom to sit wherever we wanted.

Last night at dinner, I’d sat alone. That had felt safest.

This morning, with my plastic serving tray and a breakfast of greyish scrambled eggs, a tiny carton of orange juice, and a slightly burnt English