This Shattered World (Starbound #2)(24)

I’m stretching my fingers when I hear footsteps. I slide onto the mattress and put my back to the wall, facing the door. I interlace my fingers behind my head, making my ribs burn in protest.

Nothing to see here, *s.

“You’re not going to try and kill me through the grate, are you?” Romeo. How familiar that voice is becoming. I wonder if it’ll ever not make me long to punch him—though I have to admit it’s better than isolation.

“Can’t make any promises,” I call back. A lantern abruptly casts light into my cell from the grate, and then his face is there. His eyes look so familiar—even more so with the bottom half of his face concealed by the steel of the door. I’ve seen those eyes somewhere before.

“Still alive?”

“For the most part.” I lower my arms carefully. Hurts too much to keep them up. But I don’t really want to give away how badly I’m aching from McBride’s attack. “You can come in, you know.”

“Trying to lure me in so you can hit me over the head and steal the keys?”

I wonder if I’m as irritating to him as he is to me. Maybe it’s easier to feel charitable toward a dead girl walking. Abruptly I’m too tired to make another joke. “Maybe I don’t want my last words with another human being to be spoken through a prison grate.”

The amusement in his eyes dims. His humor is just like mine. A defense. I let mine down, he responds in kind. If only I’d learned it sooner, maybe I could’ve gotten more out of him, information I could use in the future back on base.

What future?

He continues to hesitate, though I hear him take a step closer to the door. “Fine. I brought you some soup anyway, hard to feed you through the grate. Stay back there, will you?”

Part of me finds it funny that he thinks I’m in any shape to do anything to him at all. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The lock slams back and the door screeches outward, awkwardly set on its hinges. Romeo hovers in the doorway, carrying a bowl in one hand and a lantern in the other.

Even knowing his name, I can’t think of him as Flynn. His first name feels too strange, too intimate. I’m not going to be one of those prisoners who starts thinking of her captors as anything other than enemies. This is the guy who’s killed me. Whether he delivers the final blow or not, he’s the one who dragged me here, made it impossible for there to be any other outcome. I have to keep telling myself that.

“So, Romeo.” I lean my head back, waiting for him to make some move farther into the cell. “Why do you keep coming back here to see me? Can’t get enough, huh?”

“Never,” he replies easily enough, stooping to set the bowl down on the floor inside the door. My heart sinks a little, ready to watch him retreat now that he’s delivered the soup. Instead, to my relief, he straightens and leans back against the wall. “I suppose I keep coming back because you’re my responsibility.”

“Your responsibility as in, you’re gonna be the one to bash my head in when the time comes?”

His face shuts down, muscles tensing. He really doesn’t like it when I mention violence—an odd trait for a rebel. “You really are screwed up,” he mutters.

“You’re the one who knocked me out and carried me off into the swamp. If that’s not screwed up, don’t know what is.”

“I don’t know why I’m bothering.” He pushes away from the door, pacing the few steps from one side of the cell to the other.

I look past him at the hallway. It’d only take a few seconds to rush him. A few seconds of agony, with my ribs, with my gash, with my spinning head and rebelling stomach. But then I’d be free. And alive. Just rush him. Just do it.

But one body can only handle so much abuse, and I can only ask so much of it. Maybe I could have done it when my anger was fresh. But I’m tired. I’m so tired, and there’s no one here to know it if, for one moment, I rest.

“Listen,” he says, coming to a halt between me and the door. “I’m talking to them. I’m trying to convince them it’s not worth military retaliation if they kill you. Some of them are listening to me, at least hesitating.”

“Sure.” I snort. “You’re going to single-handedly convince the whole rebel base not to kill such a high-profile prisoner?”

“Yes.” He speaks simply, his eyes on me.

That brings me up short. The smug assurance is gone, the mocking half smile, the arrogant set to his jaw. Instead he looks determined. Resigned. Oddly strong, for someone so goddamn pretty.

Then it hits me.

“Flynn,” I echo. “Flynn—Cormac? Orla Cormac’s brother?”

Orla Cormac, leader of the Fianna during the last uprising on Avon, long before my time. Orla Cormac, the woman responsible for organizing and establishing the base, the one who gave the townie criminals a place to hide. Orla Cormac, executed ten years ago by military personnel acting on behalf of the Galactic Council.

Survived by her only remaining family member, a little brother ten years younger. A boy named Flynn, who fled to the swamps to avoid being shipped off to an orphanage off-world.

And I’d recognize Orla’s face anywhere—we all learned about her in basic training. How to stop someone like her from ever happening again. No wonder I thought Romeo looked so familiar.