Page 54 of Caged Kitten

Tall, wiry, birdlike in the way he surveyed his captives, Warden Guthrie could still be bought. Every man had a price, and as soon as I had the means, he could name it and I’d be gone.

Along with Katja, if I could swing it.

Maybeher brooding guards too, but I wasn’t about to push my luck for them.

Without bothering to address us, Guthrie launched into a big speech about the innovation of the greenhouse—the prison’s newest and brightest program, apparently inspired by one of its inmates. He sang its praises, about the rehabilitative properties of working with plants, about the benefits it could offer all us lowly criminals, and the profit it would bring the prison from trade agreements—marked-up prices and all.

Prick. The bastard was a businessman through and through, a warlock I could crush under my boot without this collar. Swallowing a chuckle, I leaned back to whisper the sentiment to Katja, my arms crossed and my mouth sporting the shit-eater grin that had already gotten me punched in here.

Only my words died on the tip of my tongue.

Katja was sheet-white and trembling, her arms folded over her chest like they were snared in an invisible straight jacket. Eyes on the floor, she seemed to be concentrating on her breathing, and a strange, unfamiliar panic skittered down my spine.

What…?

I poked her with my elbow, but she only withdrew further, not daring to lift her gaze from the dirt floor. Confusion ripened in my gut, but when I faced the warden droning on and on again, it vanished. Poof—gone, the reality of the situation painfully clear. Guthrie might have been addressing the suits, gesturing with his arms, his wand, rambling in an aged rasp that probably did it for those lusting after a daddy—but his eyes never left Katja.

Not once.

Master of the ceremony, he conducted this show confidently, yet he couldn’t tear his gaze from her. The other inmates around me shuffled, picked their nails, wiped at their sweaty faces. Most refused to look at Guthrie, but no one shook. No one quivered in their prison-issued flats. No one looked like they wanted to disappear into the earth and never come back.

Without thinking—and without hesitation—I moved. Ever so slightly, I adjusted my stance so that I was right in his line of sight, blocking Katja entirely. Guthrie’s next word might have hitched, but he carried on smoothly, chortling about the price markups of our perfect succulents. Those searching greys tried to dart around me, peer through me, but I made a better door than a fucking window.

At no point did I glare. Fleeting images of my first afternoon came to mind, ones of Katja returning from her meeting with the warden so distraught that she had hid in her cell for an entire day after. Something had happened between them, and obviously the predator wasn’t ready to discard his prey just yet. He wanted to toy with her a little longer before the kill, truly relish the fear.

But he couldn’t have her. Not here. Not on my watch.

And that made me grin. Bold as sin, I stared back, tuning out his bullshit and peering straight into the slate. No fear. No intimidation. I lacked power in this place, but old Warden Guthrie was more breakable than any of the fair folk—and no slip of leather could ever make either of us forget it.

When the show ended, the caged animals were sent back to work. The suits filed out, Guthrie lingering, searching for her in the crowd, but I made it my mission to block his view from every angle. Eventually, he turned away with a scowl; I’d pay for that, one way or another. Negotiating my freedom would be more difficult because of what I’d done, but that hardly mattered.

And as I strolled along after Katja, back to the roses and the clippers and the cheap gardening gloves, I realized that would have mattered before. With anyone else, I would have weighed my options more carefully—not dove into a fight that wasn’t my own without meticulously assessing the pros and cons.

Without determining my gain.

We stopped in front of the same handful of rosebushes we had spent the better part of an hour picking through already, only as I suited up, Katja just stared at the blooms. A pinprick of color warmed her cheeks, but overall, still deathly pale, white enough to give Rafe a run for his money.

“Thank you,” she whispered, fidgeting with her gloves. I shrugged, unaccustomed to thanks that I had actually earned.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Right.” She swallowed hard, the collar bobbing at the midway point of her throat. The base of her braid had started to loosen, and her fingers jumped there next, as if in need of something to fiddle with. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

I plucked a leaf from a stem, folding it over and over again before tossing it on the floor. Ordinarily I’d pry, pick and poke and prod for information that might be useful to me in the future. Instead, I yanked on my gloves with a sigh, then rolled my eyes.

“About what? About what a disaster the warden’s tie was?” I wiggled my brows when Katja’s head snapped my way, her eyes round, her full lips parted with a sharp inhale. Good. She needed the distraction, and I was more than happy to provide one. After all, that tie might have been the finest silk, but it was horribly knotted, all bulbous and uncouth. “I mean, really… You call that a fucking Windsor knot? Pathetic—”

She snatched my hand almost desperately, clawing at the flimsy glove that I wished wasn’t there. Cheeks hollow, the little witch clung to me, gripped my fingers with bone-crushing intensity, as her breath hitched and then fell faster, faster, faster—

Until our eyes met. Until her sapphire blues found my garnet greens. I gawked down at her like a simpleton, like a man who had never felt the touch of a woman before, transfixed, enraptured… caught in a spell. Her spell.

In time, her breathing evened out, chest rising and falling more steadily beneath the purple fabric. When she finally let go of my fingers, the blood came prickling back into each digit, and I ignored the burn, still lost in her.

Katja’s lips twitched in a grateful smile, fleeting but there, beautiful enough that any smile I’d seen before paled in comparison. And then, as the storm clouds crept back in, she returned to the roses.

Strange—to be enchanted by a witch without magic.

I had never protected anyone before. Never stepped up, never stepped in. Never rushed to the defense of another.

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