23. Chapter 23

Chapter twenty-three

S omehow, I find my way to the office where I had my first debrief session. I don’t bother to knock. I press my new keycard against the reader. The door beeps open. It seems I really am not a prisoner. Surely that should be far more reassuring than it is?

I fling the door open and stride in. Mr Jones looks up calmly from his stack of paperwork. I’m hit with a wall of silence and his assertive confidence.

“I wasn’t expecting you for a few more hours, Mr Robinson,” he says mildly, but I can hear the condescending tone in his voice.

This man may well have ordered all sorts of awful things to be done to Mabon, and here he is acting all polite, civilised and superior.

My teeth grind. Yelling will achieve nothing, except to make me look unhinged. I need to stay calm. I need to keep the Resistance’s trust and respect. They need to think I’m not a threat.

“I saw the medical exam room,” I say. “Is Mabon a hostage or a science experiment?”

There. I think that sounded calm and reasonable. A simple question, as if I’m merely curious.

Mr Jones steeples his fingers. “Which do you want him to be?”

“Hostage!” I snap without thinking. Damn it! This bastard knows just how to get under my skin.

He raises one eyebrow. “After everything he did to you?”

My body recoils. His words hit me like a slap. The renewed silence that follows feels like a punch. My mind is freewheeling. Slipping and sliding and unable to grab onto a single thing.

“It wasn’t like that!” I hear myself say in a strangled wheeze.

“Wasn’t it?” he asks almost pleasantly.

The only response I have is to glare back at him. This guy is a creep and I hate that he has me so flummoxed. I have no idea what to say. I don’t want to tell him the truth. Not that I’m even sure what the truth is. My feelings are a big tangled mess and there has been no time to unravel them.

“Do you wish to see him?”

I blink at him. Is that a trick question? Is he trying to trap me even though we are on the same side? Assuming that we are in fact on the same side.

“Yes,” I say with my head held high, because at the end of the day, I really want to see Mabon. The need for it feels more imperative than oxygen. Regardless of what else is going on in my mixed up head, heart and soul, all and every part of me agrees on this. Seeing Mabon is essential.

Mr Jones nods gently. “He is in room B13.” He returns his attention to his paperwork.

I inhale sharply and leave. The relief I feel as soon as there is a piece of wood between us is immense. Enough to make me feel a little lightheaded.

What the fuck just happened? I am so bewildered right now. That creep is a scary motherfucker. And he likes me. I think.

Imagine him alone in a room with someone he didn’t like. Someone he considers an enemy. Like Mabon.

I shudder and pick up my pace. I look up, and sure enough, there are room numbers above each door. They are tiny brass plates, but I should still have noticed them. My powers of observation are clearly shocking. I was the very worst person to be abducted by the fey. I probably missed a ton of stuff.

But it’s not like I volunteered to be taken. And I didn’t choose anything that happened afterwards either. The only thing I have been doing is trying to deal with the shitty situation. And the shit just keeps on coming.

Okay, time to take a deep breath and figure out these room numbers. These are all A-something, so B must be the next corridor.

I make my way over to the other end of the bunker and, sure enough, these rooms start with a B. It doesn’t take me long to find number 13. It has a small window in the door, like the medical room.

My heart is hammering as I peek through it. It looks a lot like my room. It also looks empty.

Frowning, I press my keycard against the reader. The door unlocks with a gentle beep. I pull it open and step inside.

I see him. There, curled up on the floor, in the corner.

My blood turns to ice. He looks impossibly small. His pretty robes have been replaced with an ugly hospital gown that leaves his legs and feet bare. His horns are gone. His gorgeous hair is all loose and tumbling everywhere. His hands are in it, either pulling it or trying to hold it up.

A dry swallow chokes its way down my throat. Mabon is silent, but his slender shoulders are heaving. I drop to my knees before him. What have they done to him? My hands frantically search his body for injuries. It is awkward with him curled up like this, but I’m determined. He flinches at my touch, but doesn’t try to stop me. He doesn’t stop his awful, silent sobbing either.

I can’t find any wounds or broken bones. But that’s not giving me any sense of relief at all. They have clearly done something horrendous to him. Or scared the shit out of him, at the very least.

“Mabon?” I try softly.

He doesn’t answer. He just clutches his hair tighter. Is that what he is upset about? I’m guessing they took his hair pins so he couldn’t use them as weapons. Which seems fair enough, but I remember how angry Mabon got when I messed with his hair. It was the first and last time he hit me. Or used any type of violence against me.

Guilt swirls low in my gut. Mabon never hurt me, and look at what I have done to him in return. I shove the dark realisation down to deal with later. Right now, Mabon is upset and I need to do something. Anything. Whatever I can.

So I need to think. I’m going to run with this hair thing. Fancy updos were all the rage at court. I never saw anyone with their hair down. Well, apart from Dyfri and Osian. But I think it is still a fashion thing. One that is clearly important to Mabon.

“I’m sorry about your hair,” I say. “I think they didn’t want you killing anyone with a hairpin.”

No response.

I squeeze in beside him and gently pick up some strands of his wonderful lilac hair. It’s going to be tricky to work around his hands, and from this angle, but I think I can do it.

“Let me see if I can tie it up for you a bit. I’m no hairdresser, but quite often on my stall I had to fix ropes. Like the ones holding the tarps to the frame and stuff. Or the handles on the sacks for the veg.”

I’m babbling, but hopefully it is a good thing. The sound of my voice droning on is enough to put anyone to sleep, so hopefully it is having a calming effect.

I’ve reached the end of his glorious hair with my terrible plait. His hair is far too silky for a knot to work, it will just slide undone. I need something to tie it with.

I look around the empty room. One bunk. One scratchy blanket. That’s no good. I look down at my shoes.

It’s tricky to unlace my right shoe with one hand, but I manage it. I probably shouldn’t be doing this. Mabon could use the shoelace to garrotte someone. But fuck it. A piece of string is less dangerous than a bunch of pins, and to be honest, right now I wouldn’t care if he did garrotte someone. They’d deserve it. This is not how prisoners should be treated. It’s not honourable.

“There, all done,” I say as I finish tying off the end of his plait with my shoelace.

Mabon’s shoulders stop heaving. He sniffs. His fingers trace over my awful plait. Oh lord, he is going to hate it. I’ve made things worse.

“You have given me a braid,” he says so softly that I only just hear him.

“I have,” I say.

Suddenly he moves. He turns and climbs onto my lap and buries his face into my shoulder. His hands clutch at my tee shirt and a deep shuddery breath spills out of him.

My arms encircle his back, and I hold him tight. My heart is breaking. Shattering into a thousand shards. My soul is tearing. I bite back my sob and hold him even closer. The floor is cold. The wall is hard. Mabon is nearly as tall as me, so this isn’t at all comfortable.

But I don’t care. I’m not moving. I’m never, ever going to let him go. I’m going to hold him until the last star burns out. It really is the very least I can do.

Regret. Guilt. Dismay. I’m drowning in them and rightly so. This is all my fault. What the fuck have I done? What on earth was I thinking when I thought handing Mabon over to the Resistance was a good idea?

There is only one question on my mind now. The most important question of my life.

How the hell am I going to fix this?