Luna of Rogues

Part 73 - It's All Downhill From Here

"I want to break free," I sang. "I want to breaaak free."

Rhys laughed. "Nice. Next stop, Britain's Got Talent."

Rhodric didn't even deign to glance in our direction. His eyes were fixed firmly on the ceiling like he was having a very frank and very exasperated conversation with the Goddess. He'd been very quiet since we'd been locked up. Eerily quiet. I had a feeling it had something to do with the prospect of seeing Malcolm.

"My ears are bleeding," Fion told me through the link. "Can you at least escape before you sing about it?"

"Ugh, fine," I replied. "We are working on it, just ... slowly."

I looked down at the nylon ropes which bound my wrists to the chair, and I couldn't help wondering if there had been an easier way to do this. I didn't like being tied up.

"You should try it again, Skye," Rhys told me.

"I thought we already established it's not going to work," I sighed. "And I do like having some skin on my hands."

"Just try," he insisted stubbornly.

Rhodric rolled his eyes and Leo continued to stand there looking dazed and concussed, but I heeded Rhys's request, relaxing my hand and pulling it back sharply. Pain lanced up my arm, and the rope scraped over my skin, but to my increasing frustration, the bindings held firm.

I'd clenched my fists when they had been tying me up to make it easier to wriggled free later. Obviously, it hadn't worked. In fact, nothing had worked. We'd been in this room for almost an hour now, and every single escape attempt had failed.

Rhodric had stopped trying to slip his chains only after watching his son dislocate his shoulder. It had been sheer stupidity on his part — some weird assumption that the chains would break before his ligaments did. He was paying the price now, because it would be out of the socket and causing him pain until we did manage to escape and replace it for him. Perhaps that was why he kept nagging me.

It was true that I was in the best position to escape, but I wouldn't consider myself lucky. I was probably in this chair and not chained with the others because they were planning to interrogate me. And why had they picked me for that? Rhys was more likely to blurt things out by accident, and Rhodric certainly knew a lot more. And Leo ... well, I supposed he wouldn't be much use while he was concussed, would he?

Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. I slumped down in my chair and tried my best to look pathetic. I wasn't Skye right now — I was Kara. She was afraid of these people, and for very good reason.

The door creaked open slowly, and two guards walked into the cellar. Between them was a man I recognised only too well. Given half a chance, I would rip his head off his shoulders. Malcolm looked just as smug as he had six months ago outside the feral's camp.

It wasn't me he was looking at. It was someone behind me and slightly to the left.

"Now, this is a treat," Malcolm said. "I heard we had you locked up, of course, but I didn't quite believe it..."

A muscle writhed in Rhodric's jaw. "No tinfoil this time? I'm almost disappointed."

"Well, we've only just moved in," Malcolm said tightly. "There's not been time for that. But now I'm wondering if I should bother. Your little mind games are cheap ... and so easily countered. If their training wasn't effective, you wouldn't be chained up right now. Would you?"

He was very wrong about that. Fion had managed to overpower six hunters at once, so I would say their training was relatively useless. And if she could do that after only a few months of practice, I could only imagine what Rhodric might be capable of.