Prison Princess (Paranormal Prison) - CoraLee June Page 0,15

thorns. But then again you are the thorn, aren’t you?”

I blinked. What had he said to me? How did he know who I was and…

Cypress glared at the old man. “Don’t talk to anyone. Ignore him, Layne. The Fae will say anything to fuck with your mind.” The old man tipped his head back and cackled as if he found Cypress amusing. The haunting laugh made me tremble all the way down to my bones.

Cypress ignored him and pushed me inside the inn. I took a deep breath, and as the variety of sounds filling such a small space assaulted me, I flinched, nearly throwing myself back out the door. Hell, I might have done so if Cypress didn’t have a hand on me. There were so many...noises in such a tiny space. It almost made it hard to breathe. I grabbed onto my neck.

“What’s the matter?”

I didn’t like small spaces. My cell—my home—had actually been safe. But I knew that getting shoved into someone else’s could be a death sentence. And the cafeteria practically burned with aggression. I’d avoided it, trying to eat alone in the corner as much as I could manage. No, this was too much like that.

I waited for his sharp comment, but none came. Instead, he gentled his grip and walked me forward. “We need to eat.”

“Right,” I replied while shaking my head. “Eat.”

Cypress guided me toward an open table, and I leaned into his hard body, not caring if he thought I was crazy or not. I pressed myself against him as we walked, and focused on the feel of the warmth coming off of his skin to distract me from all the movement.

I hated feeling this way. In Nightmare, seclusion and silence was all I’d known for the last several years. Of course, occasionally I was given the opportunity to chat with people, but it was rare. My perception of normal didn’t match the outside world. Seeing this crowd of people functioning and enjoying the loudness made me feel like a stranger in my own skin. I might have escaped Nightmare Penitentiary, but it still held my mind captive.

“Stop thinking,” Cypress whispered in my ear. It was a heartless command, but I focused on his lack of empathy instead of my fear of the crowded room.

“I’m sorry that I’m not adjusting to your standards,” I snapped.

A Fae woman wearing an apron and carrying a tray passed by, and Cypress stopped her, ordering me a glass of water and him a pint of ale. I was parched beyond belief, and the moment the glass was set in front of me, I guzzled it down. “The shock will wear off, you know,” Cypress said before taking another drink.

“What shock?”

“The shock of being in the real world.”

“And what could you possibly know about what I’m going through?”

Cypress took a gulp of his drink before responding. “You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to be raised in Nightmare Penitentiary. But at the Assassins Guild, I was kept in a cage. I was trained to be cruel. I had my first kill at eight years old.”

I stared at him. “Eight?”

“That’s right. Eight. I thought that was normal for the longest time. That we all lived exactly like that. When I discovered that most of the world didn’t, it came as a little bit of a shock, you might say.”

I blinked. I didn’t want to fall into his story, didn’t wish to escape my reality and hear about his for a while. But I was doing it just the same. “How did you end up doing that? Being with them? Are your parents assassins?”

“I don’t have parents that I know of.” He shrugged as he looked at the waitress and held up two fingers. She nodded. What did that exchange even mean? He didn’t have parents. I hadn’t thought I did either. We also had that in common, the aloneness in the universe. “The assassins go after orphans. They find us on the street. In Fae whorehouses. In barns. Working the mines with the trolls. Whatever. They locate kids before the ages of four and bring us in. That’s what they did with me. I was the street rat variety.”

Two mugs were placed in front of us, and two plates that had chicken legs, something green I couldn’t identify, and a piece of bread on them. I stared down at the offering. I’d never seen so much food. Ever. Not in a single sitting.

“Is that alcohol?” I sniffed