Page 60 of Ensnared
Sammy’s non-sarcastic gratitude makes Axel smile, so that’s a relief.
“Gideon’s the best. I’m glad he’s not dead,” Sammy continues.
Apparently, hearing Gideon’s the best does not make Axel happy, but his pronounced frown on the heels of his smile makes me laugh.
Luckily it’s already pretty late in the day, so after eating—which is uber awkward when the servants show up to bring us our meal—I’m able to muddle through a bit of interaction here and there and then I shepherd everyone toward their rooms.
“You can have the room downstairs,” Axel says, upending all my plans.
“But that’s the master,” I say. “It’s the biggest room in the house.”
“Right,” Axel says. “I’m being polite.”
“It’s clearly yours, when you’re here.”
“I don’t sleep, remember?” Axel looks at the stairwell. “I’d rather he not be upstairs with you and the kids.”
“I think they’d be safer with me there.” Gideon leans against the wall. “Don’t you?” He’s looking at me.
Axel answers before I can. “If someone’s going to keep them safe, it’s not going to be you. Liz already has hundreds of soldiers just like you at her command, and she keeps them all across the street where they belong.”
“I’m not like any of them,” Gideon says. “Actually, I’m unlike any other human you’ve met.”
“I don’t know. You seem just as stupid as all the others to me,” Axel says.
“It’s fine,” I say. “We’ve been safe all this time without anyone here. If Axel wants you to sleep downstairs, just sleep there. The bedroom’s bigger and it has its own bathroom, and if any bad guys show up, they’ll have to get through you first.”
“If you’re worried,” Axel says, “I can work upstairs, right outside your room.”
Has he gone insane? “I’m not worried. It’s fine. Go do what you always do wherever you always do it.”
“What’s that?” Gideon asks. “Slaying humans along the border?”
“The border?”
Gideon frowns. “Houston’s been overrun. Dragons and enslaved humans are all that’s left inside their earthen walls. Everything inside 99 is under their command.”
“You put up walls?”
“You don’t even know that? They fly over them easily, of course, but the wall—mounds of earth tightly compacted—is at least twelve feet tall.”
“I made that,” Axel says. “Or at least, my troops did.”
Earth dragons. Makes sense.
“They’ve got the gulf locked down too,” Gideon says. “And even the humans we’ve found refuse to be rescued. They voluntarily head back to the interior.”
“They’re being controlled by the ensnared humans,” I say.
“Like Liz,” Axel says.
“She doesn’t seem to be ensnared to me,” Gideon says.
Axel sits on the sofa and kicks up his feet. “I let her do as she pleases, because she does better work that way.”
“How many of your earth blessed treat their humans as well?”
“My troops don’t ensnare humans,” he says. “That’s the strike blessed and the water blessed.”
