Eleven
Present
Savage
On a whisper, he asks, “Did you come for me?”
Her eyes are glassy, her lips trembling as she answers, “No.”
No.
She did not come for him.
His chest constricts, and a pain flits through him.
Dropping his hand from her throat, he tears his gaze away from her and begins to pace the room. It’s just been cleaned and he’s fucking up the white tiles with his bloody footprints. Small things like this bother him; it makes him feel like he’s a fucking animal in a pen.
Why would she come for him?
Why did he believe for one second that he was worth enduring this shithole for?
He feels wild with madness.
His sanity fled him long ago—
Maybe years?
He stopped counting the months when the fights stopped following a pattern, when his disobedience had him forced in a black cage for endless nights, the punishment of his own company equivalent to a slow death.
“I didn’t know,” she says, her voice so light, he almost doesn’t hear it. He stops and turns to look at her. She stares back, her face bearing a heavy emotion he can’t understand. He used to be able to read her with just one look. He used to be able to dig into her mind and see all her thoughts laid to bear simply by staring into her eyes.
She’s a stranger now, and it isn’t what it once was.
Nor ishewhat he used to be.
“Savage,” whispers a familiar voice, pulling him out of his dark thoughts, but he doesn’t look away from Skye. She’s startled, staring around the room like she’s noticed it for the first time. The cell is like a suite, fully functioning and comfortable. The circular living area she’s standing in has rooms branching off around it. The rooms belong to three other fighters: Jojo, Owl and Caleb.
Jojo is the newest arrival, and while muscular in his own way, he’s thinner and shorter, his body unmarred from the scars of this dark world. He steps out of his room, looking wary of Savage, whispering, “Don’t hurt her.”
Hurther?
When had Savage ever laid a finger on the Golden Birds?
But hurting isn’t always physical, he reminds himself. The worst pains are inflicted within.
Savage’s face cools as he continues to stare into Skye’s eyes, replying, “Too late.”
Her face falls, and as she stands there, awash with shock, a new hurt emerges. “You didn’t have to do it, Hunter.”
He didn’t have to do it? Did she really say those words? He feels like he’s been slapped by the past. Oh, how it fucking lingers, its teeth always digging into some decaying piece of him, and now its jagged teeth are clinging to those rancid parts for dear life, shaking the past before him now, reminding—fucking remindinghim of what he wants to desperately forget.
“Hunter’s dead,” he hisses back, looking her over again because he, too, is not coping with this new development. He’s startled once more by her appearance. He’s forgotten how tiny she is. How fragile. “You shouldn’t be here, Skye.”
She’s pressed hard against the wall, looking over his bloodied body with caution. Sheshouldbe frightened. And her silence is unsettling him. He starts to pace again, glaring at Jojo who is inching closer to her. “Step away,” he growls. “You don’t touch her!”
Jojo goes still, and this time his face contorts to confusion. He’s questioning Savage’s sudden possessiveness, because this is unlike him. “Do you know her?” Jojo asks.
Savage doesn’t answer. “Leave us, Jojo.”