Page 68 of Son of a Witch

Her brows came down hard. “Is this something I should know about as team lead? Did something happen with your family?”

Knoxe’s jaw rippled, and his shoulders bristled.

Astra got in to save the situation. “It’s a man thing. Tor needs help in the men’s room and I’m not strong enough.” She made the leave pronto eyebrows at Knoxe, and the stubborn asshole finally took the hint.

“Excuse us, Selena.” He glared at me. “I’ll be right back.”

“Of course.” She stepped back to allow us room to move.

Eyes burning, Knoxe came behind me and wheeled me away roughly. I felt every jerk over stone rattle through my body.

“This better be fucking good, Tor,” Knoxe growled. “We were devising a strategy to find the escapees based on research into the veil distortion.”

Translation: he was trying to impress Selena, hoping for her to put in a good word to the warden to get him reappointed as a team leader. That was all he seemed to care about. Him and his vendetta to kill Styx and get us out of here. Meanwhile, we had to negotiate fucking asteroids like we flew a craft in space.

“It is. I promise.” I crushed the uneaten candy in my hand. “Get P-Man and meet us in the men’s showers, Supergal.”

“Be right back.” Astra gave me a cute salute.

Moments later, the four of us huddled in the men’s bathroom for an emergency team meeting. One of the few places where we had privacy. No cameras. No watchers. The worst place to get shanked or beat up.

Knoxe cranked on the shower to suppress any sound, his pissed-off expression returning with full force. “How’d it go?”

Astra glanced at me and went behind him, sliding her arms around his waist, running her palms over his chest. Her way to lower his temper when I delivered the bad news.

Pascal picked up on Knoxe’s mood and played a dark melody on his fingers.

Grief curled through my chest and wound around my ribcage like a thorned rose vine. “Good. I don’t want to talk about that.”

Knoxe’s irritation scaled up one thousand times. “Then what the fuck did you bring me here for?”

Helplessness seared my veins as I met his furious gaze. “They’re trailing my family wherever they go. To school, the doctors, grocery store! They’ve got vans watching them from outside their house.”

Game fucking over. They were going to hurt my family. The knot behind my ribs squeezed the last of my hope, and it snapped.

“Fuck!” Knoxe smashed the shower stall with his fist.

“Knoxe, calm down!” Astra was at his side, clasping his hand, inspecting his bleeding and possibly broken knuckles.

Pascal’s fingers wiggled musical notes across his prison shirt. “That’s great. We know where they are. We have to go after them.”

Knoxe thrust a hand at Pascal’s chest. Knoxe threw an arm over Pascal, and he twitched as he got dragged closer for a huddle. “No, we don’t. We have to think about this carefully. This is a set up. If we go after them, our families are dead.”

CHAPTER24

Astra

Damn.I wasn’t sure how I would pull this off. Inventory that wouldn’t be easy to get. I could use my bursary to pay off the guards to smuggle me in some items, although most of the guards on Tor’s take were injured or dead.

That left me crawling to the warden to beg. No way would he approve all this. The plan in general, yes. Not everything that went along with it. Plastic swords? Come on!

Trust me to go hard or not at all for a double celebration: Tor’s release from the infirmary and a cheer up party. Watching him in training, miserable and defeated, was pure hell.

Defeated, I scrunched the list in my hands. I glanced up at the breakfast crowd, stuffing their depressed faces with eggs, toast, and cereal. Drudgery. Routine. We all needed a break from it.

Knoxe glanced over at me. “What are you hatching up?”

Shut the hell up. Give it away, why don’t you?

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