“Would you mind if we—” I said. “What I mean to say is—”
He surprised me when he spoke at first and finished my question for me.
“If we take it easy tonight? Of course. I assumed that would be the case. It’s not every day there’s a riot in this prison. We were lucky to have survived through it. I still feel a little tired myself.”
After his fight with the gang and his other battle in the fighting pit, that should certainly have been true, but his eyes seemed very bright and his movements were not sluggish or slowed with exhaustion as I’d expected.
He stood up and rubbed at his wet hair with a towel.
I leaned back, relieved he didn’t mind us not having sex tonight.
“You look surprised I said that,” Trayem said.
“I just thought…” I said, shaking my head. “Never mind.”
“I guess most fighters would have refused. But I’m not most fighters.”
No, he wasn’t. I was quickly learning that to be the case.
He stripped off his clothes and, quite comfortable with his naked form, stood before me, his muscles hard and toned, his body built for fighting.
Among other things.
He really was a fine specimen. The other prisoners were built too but they lacked his grace. Then there was his kind eyes and gentleness to contend with.
Perhaps, in another time and another place, something might have happened between us.
But not here. Not now.
I gripped the edge of the blankets and pulled them up for him to slip into the bed beside me. Doing so revealed the long black T-shirt and pants I’d borrowed from him.
A grin curled his features and he burst out laughing.
“What?” I said, looking down at my clothes. “I’m comfortable.”
“Would you like a couple of padlocks to make sure I don’t take advantage of you in the middle of the night?”
Okay, so I might have gone a little overboard with my preparations to ensure we slept and nothing else happened but my current getup really wasn’t much different from what I usually wore when I went to bed alone.
He climbed into bed beside me and immediately wrapped his arm around my head so I could sleep more comfortably across him.
“Did you hear anything else about the riot?” I said.
“Some of the prisoners got killed, some survived, some of the gangs extended their territory, some lost it,” he said with a shrug. “Pretty much what you’d expect.”
I ran a finger around his purple nipple and wondered how much of the recent developments in the Prize Pool I ought to share with him. It was entirely possible he knew something about Ivy or Agatha’s whereabouts.
“Three of the other girls went missing,” I said.
“During the riot?” Trayem said.
“They wouldn’t dare go missing otherwise. One was called Ivy. She was in a relationship with Kren, the former champion. They disappeared at the same time. Apparently, the Supervisor’s shuttlecraft disappeared too. It got some of us wondering if maybe they escaped.”
“It’s possible,” Trayem said without commitment.
What else did I expect? He was a regular prisoner. There was no reason to think he would know anymore more about it than I did.
“Wait,” Trayem said. “Ivy? Did you say she was claimed by Kren?”
“Yes. He chose her every day.”
Trayem’s chest rumbled. When I looked up at him, I saw he was chuckling to himself and shaking his head lightly.
“What is it?”
He waved a hand.
“Nothing. I thought… Never mind. I don’t know if they escaped. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out. If they’re gone and the supervisor’s shuttlecraft went missing, and they happened to be in his apartment when all those things happened… I would say it’s pretty much a shut case.”
I had barely allowed myself to believe she had escaped. I hoped it was the case but from the very first moment, I had long since learned hope was not a valuable commodity in this place.
It made me grin to imagine Ivy somewhere out there among the stars, her fated mate at her side, leading the kind of life the rest of us could only dream of.
Now, I was the one chuckling to myself.
“What’s wrong with you now?” Trayem said.
He ran a hand over my arm soothingly, sending goosebumps prickling my skin.
“Nothing,” I said, snuggling in closer to him. “It’s just a nice thought.”
“What about your other friends?”
“What other friends?”
“You said more than one of your friends went missing.”
That’s when my good feelings subsided.
“One…” I said, finding it hard to say the words. “The thing that almost happened to me actually did happen to her. She… She didn’t survive.”
Trayem was silent for a long moment.
“What about the other one?”
“She disappeared. Her name’s Agatha. She was always kind. I sure hope they don’t find her cut up into tiny pieces.”
“I’m sorry you’re here,” Trayem said. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out better for you.”
“Things didn’t work out well for anybody in here. That’s why they’re here. Everybody’s a prisoner.”
“Yes, but they deserve it. They’re guilty of one thing or another. Even if they weren’t guilty of the crime they were eventually banged up for, they must have done something to deserve being here. They don’t just send anybody to Ikmal prison.”
“What about you? Why are you here?”
Trayem was silent again. I’d never asked another prisoner about their past before. They fought in the fighting pit and if they were victorious, chose their prize. The reason they did that was to forget about this hellhole for a while.
I never wanted to make them angry or break that illusion. But things felt different with Trayem. I felt like I could talk with him about anything.
“Wrong place, wrong time,” he said. “The same old story.”
I wouldn’t ask him for more detail. It was one thing to ask a question and quite another to keep prodding at it.
I ran my foot up and down his hairy leg and tucked myself tighter around him. He was so warm, so strong. He
