Chapter 10

Ican’t stop thinking about Cain’s explosive reaction.

There was a pain in his eyes, an agony that emanated in those gorgeous depths. As I stared at him through his brother’s vision, I saw a man laden with pain and suffering. A man on the verge of breaking.

Clearing my head, I allow Abel to lead me down a twisting hallway. I have long since given up on trying to see through his eyes—his gaze is always on me.

“I’m sorry about my brother,” Abel says easily, guiding me around a corner. I try not to flinch when his hand tightens imperceptibly around my upper arm to lead me.

He’s Kai’s friend. He’s not going to hurt you.

But even I can sense the danger lurking just beneath the surface. The untamed beast. Everything about Abel is a contradiction. His golden hair and bright eyes give him an angelic appearance, but there’s a darkness exuding from every pore in his body. What did Cain call him? A trickster demon? Of that, I have no doubt.

“Your brother,” I begin slowly, choosing my words carefully. We stop abruptly, and I hear the telltale sound of a lock being undone. A moment later, Abel ushers me through a door. “Your brother hides a deep pain,” I continue at last. “As do you.”

“Me?” Abel scoffs. “The only pain I like is in the bedroom, Bambi.”

My internal temperature rises a thousand degrees at his words. I may have lived my life in a bubble, but I’m not completely stupid. I have heard the guards talking enough to understand what, exactly, the trickster twin means.

Beneath the embarrassment is something else, something akin to…jealousy. My gut is buzzing like angry bees at the prospect of Abel with another woman.

What is wrong with me?

Maybe it’s because I’m so desperate for love I’m willing to relish in any attention thrown my way.

“I still don’t get why you call me that,” I point out as Abel helps me step over something in the middle of the walkway.

“What? Bambi? We’ve been over this.”

“What’s it about?”

The air in this part of the prison is staler. I half wonder if we’ve ventured deeper into the abyss, though we never touched any stairs. My hand, stroking the wall, comes away wet and sticky. Grimacing, I move to rub it on my dress—before deciding against it and rubbing it on Abel’s shirt.

“Hey!” he protests, and I giggle. There’s a smile in his voice when he speaks next. A genuine smile, not the one he dons like a mask. “I don’t really remember what the movie is about, but I remember there’s a deer. And someone dies. The mom, maybe?”

“What?” I gasp, spinning to face him. “That’s awful. Why would you call me that?”

“Because of your wide, gorgeous eyes,” he replies easily, lifting his hands to caress the skin around them both. Just as quickly, he drops his hands to his sides and steps back. “Just like the deer’s eyes. If you don’t like the nickname, I can come up with a better one.”

My heart is thundering a mile a minute. Did he just…? Did he just call my eyes gorgeous? They’ve been called a lot of things—creepy and ugly, yes, but never gorgeous.

“Is that a thing here?” I ask, quirking a brow. “Nicknames?”

Some of his familiar snark returns. “Only if they’re given by you.”

I smile, remembering snippets of conversation from my time in the Compound. One in particular sticks out more than the others. During a trip from my cell to the torture chamber, we stumbled across a couple in the throes of passion. Her nickname for him comes to the forefront of my mind.

“Okay, you want a nickname? I’ll give you one. Anything for you…Daddy.”

Abel stumbles over his own two feet, curses, and then places his hands on my shoulders.

“No…just …no.”

“What’s the matter, Daddy?” I ask. Does he not like the nickname? At the Compound, the man had been overjoyed to be called such a thing, his moans of ecstasy increasing.

“Goddammit, woman,” he curses, stepping away from me. “We are not going to be doing this shit.”

“Doing what…shit?” I parrot, furrowing my brows. He exhales sharply.

“You know what? Let’s just never talk about this again. Okay, Bambi?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Motherfucker.” With another muffled curse, he intertwines our fingers and pulls me after him down the hall. “Call me something else. Anything else.”

“All right,” I concede with a sigh. “How about…sunshine?”

He snorts, but this time, he doesn’t stop moving. “Sunshine? Why that?”

“Because you’re always sunny and cheerful while your brother is dark and broody,” I surmise. There’s a moment of silence as I’m pulled down another passageway. If I was with anyone else, anyone Kai didn’t obviously trust, I would’ve been terrified. Right now, I’m more excited than anything. It feels as if we’re going on an adventure, like in those books Kai used to read me at night.

“Don’t mistake my smile for what it’s not,” Abel warns me, his tone unexpectedly serious. “There’s more darkness in me than you know.”

It almost sounds as if he’s warning me of something. Warning me away from him.

But I have seen monsters—well, metaphorically, of course—and I don’t believe Abel is one. There’s a darkness in him, sure, but that darkness is nothing compared to the light I sense.

“And there’s more light in you and Cain than you know,” I retort back.

When he speaks next, something dark is in his tone, something that hints at his underlying darkness. And it scares me, but not in a way I can articulate. I fear that, if he submits himself fully to the darkness, he’ll never again experience nature’s ethereal light. I can’t fathom a fate like that, bound eternally by pain and suffering.

“You don’t know anything about us.”

“I know that you’re stuck in the shadows, pressed so far back that you’re incapable of seeing the light. I know that you experience self-hatred, anger, and pain, but I can’t begin to comprehend why. I know you and your brother don’t see each other—or anyone else, for that matter—clearly. Sometimes we have to walk in the darkness. Sometimes we’re left with no other alternative. But we must strive to find our way back into the light.” The words come from deep within me, a part of me I didn’t know existed.

I don’t need vision to know I struck Abel speechless.

“Shit, Bambi, that’s deep,” he jests, but I can hear a slight quiver in his voice that wasn’t there earlier. He places a hand on my lower back, guiding me forward. “Down this hall, we have some of the cells. Rooms. Whatever you want to call them.”

I take the moment to slip into his eyes and survey our surroundings. We appear to be in a worn-down cellblock, rows of concrete gray cells lined up on either side. The one we stop in front of consists of a set of bunk beds, a bookshelf, and a scattering of clothes. The twins’ room.

“Our…friend group resides in these cells,” he continues, voice stumbling over “friend group,” as though he actually wanted to call it something else. “Blade’s—I mean, Kai’s—cell is to the left of mine, near the door. Bronson’s is across.”

“What about Damien’s?” I ask. I count at least four dozen cells expanding the length of the room. As we walk farther, I spot what appear to be female cells, stray bras and underwear thrown about. For some reason, that makes me furious. I don’t want females so close to…

So close to whom, Nina?I ask myself. Kai? The twins?

Other male cells are spread intermittently throughout, some devoid of any memorabilia and others decorated with pictures and novels.

“Damien sleeps at the end of the hall.” Abel points to a heavy metal door located opposite the rest of the room. “He doesn’t like when people disturb him.”

“What about the one cell I found?” I ask as Abel pauses to peer at a picture pinned to the wall. It shows an older man with graying black hair, his arm wrapped around a petite female. Two children stand in front of the smiling couple.

“What cell are you referring to, Bambi?” He glances away from the picture to stare at me intently.

“I…” For some reason, I feel stupid admitting that a cat led me there. No doubt, Abel will think I’m even more dense than he already believes. “I stumbled upon it when I first arrived here,” I admit at last. A half-truth. I found that I’m better at telling half-truths than full-on lies.

I pull out of Abel’s head when I begin to fidget, turning away from the intimidating man to run my hand over the metal cell bars.

“There are some shifters who are not a part of our…friend group,” Abel admits at last. “They have a friend group of their own, scattered throughout the Labyrinth. With the maze always changing and twisting, we gave up on trying to find them all.” Suddenly, Abel is in front of me, his hands once more on my shoulders. I stifle my scream at his sudden movement, closing my eyes to fight off the impending panic.

“Nina,” Abel says slowly, seriously. I can feel the caress of his gaze on my forehead and cheeks. “How long did you stay in the cell?”

“What?” I manage to gasp.

He won’t hurt you. He won’t hurt you.

“Did you touch anything? Get your scent on anything?” There’s an urgency in his voice, an urgency that belies his laid-back exterior.

“I… I slept on the bed,” I admit at last, finally gaining my wits. The panic abates to be replaced by something far colder.

Fear.

“Shit,” Abel murmurs, his nails digging into the skin of my shoulders. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit on a fucking duck.”

“Why would you want to shit on a duck?” I ask half-heartedly, waiting with bated breath for Abel to explain what has him so worked up.

He takes a deep breath and then another one, his muscles relaxing slowly.

But even then, he can’t quite dispel the tension tightening his body like the string on a bow.

“We should find you a place to sleep.” Abel changes the subject, pulling me with him once more. “But Kai’s going to probably want you to sleep with him.”

I want to prod him for answers, demand that he tell me what has gotten his panties in a twist, but I keep my mouth shut. I’m not the greatest at speaking out of turn, especially around men.

“How long have you been friends with Kai and the others?” I inquire again, remembering he didn’t quite answer me earlier, as we stop at the largest cell, sporting a queen-size bed, two dressers, and an assortment of novels and magazines. Kai’s smoky scent surrounds me, comforts me, and I inhale deeply.

“We’re not exactly friends, Bambi,” Abel admits at last, nudging me forward. “Now, do what you need to do to familiarize yourself with the room. Touch everything or whatever.” He pauses, staring at me intently. Through his eyes, I can see my head tilt to the side inquisitively. “You know, for a blind person, you’re awfully good at walking and shit.”

I snort at his ignorance. “And for a seeing person, you’re awfully good at being a condescending prick.” The words escape me before I can take them back, and I brace myself for the inevitable hit.

Abel surprises me by throwing back his head and laughing.

“You got me there. My momma said I came into this world calling the doctor an asshole.” Once his laughter finally subsides, he adds, “But I meant, you seem to know your way around pretty good.”

That’s because I can see through your eyes, I think but don’t say. I’m determined to take my secret to my grave. If the Compound’s reaction is any indication, the less people who know, the better.

“What do you mean that you’re not friends with Kai?” I ask. If he can change the subject, so can I. “Why would he leave me with you if he doesn’t trust you?”

My heart breaks at the thought that, maybe, I don’t mean as much to Kai as he means to me. I had always thought our reunion would be joyous and exhilarating. Stumbling into a warm house after trekking through a frozen tundra for years. Instead, he had left me as quickly as he found me. I thought losing him had been the worst pain imaginable, but this might beat it. He scratched at a wound that hasn’t quite scabbed over, drawing blood before it could heal properly.

“He left you because he knew we could protect you,” Abel says at last. He perches on what sounds like the edge of the bed, and after a moment, I use my hands to find one of the chairs I spotted earlier before pulling out of his head.

“What do you mean?”

“He has stuff he needs to do to make this prison safe, safe for you. He left you because he loves you enough not to be selfish,” he continues, almost reluctantly. “I don’t like the guy, but we have an understanding. He knows we will protect you and take care of you until he can return.”

“Abel,” I whisper, my voice barely carrying across the small expanse of the room. “I’m very confused right now.”

“I know you are, Bambi. But I promise you, no harm will come to you while you’re here.” He places a hand on my knee, and I jump, startled, before relaxing into his touch. A strange heat emits from his hand, and I have to wonder if it’s a product of his demon blood.

“I don’t belong here.” The words are sluggish, as if being dragged through tar, and cause tears to prick at my eyes.

“I know.” He squeezes once before releasing me. “And we’ll find a way to get you out.”