Page 9 of I Regret Nothing
Especially if we successfully broke out of Silverhold. I read up on current events in Egypt once I figured out the magic box computer. Things had changed since they arrested me. If I went back, I’d probably end up in jail again, and I never wanted to do that.
Rei looked far away.
“I was adopted. My adoptive parents won’t tell me for sure, but I think my family is from Japan. I got to visit on a job, and it was pretty much amazing. If my mentor weren’t in the States, I’d move there permanently.”
Mentors were never a good thing when you needed a thief to break you out of prison. Especially if they taught you how to commit felonies. There was usually some sort of honor code in there, and I needed Rei to be bad enough to want to break us out. If she was close with her mentor, she might not want to go on the run and actually serve her time here.
The dinner bell started ringing, and she jumped because it startled her. I grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet.
“That bell means food. It’s gourmet compared to Scorchwood food, but it’s still shitty. Eat with me. Until Faust gets your commissary up and assigns you a job, it’s the only food you’ll get.”
She let me lead her out of her cell and to the mess hall—step one, complete. Introduce myself to the Silver Fox. Onto step two. Figuring out if I could trust her.
Chapter 9
Rei
A
s far as prison friends went, I was glad Dakarys introduced himself. I was wary when he said he transferred from Scorchwood, but after everything that recently hit the news, I wasn’t surprised people may have ended up there because money exchanged hands or their government was trying to make an example of them.
It didn’t hurt that Dakarys was massive and bloody gorgeous as well. He was easily as big as Faust with bright green eyes, olive skin, a full, kissable mouth, and blond streaks in his black hair that looked natural instead of out of a box.
He was friendly and could probably help me figure out how to survive here with Faust’s attention on me. It wouldn’t hurt to have a sphinx watching my back with Venus here either. I had a feeling the gangs here went by species, and she was going to rile all the witches and warlocks up here to come at me. She was petty enough to have other witches do her dirty work, so her sentence wouldn’t get extended. Because I bit her to steal the amulet, I got caught, but honestly? She would have done that on her own. She didn’t disable the security cameras or the alarm and had guards chasing her. They would have caught her before she made it out of the parking lot. I had been hoping to catch her first, and that was my big mistake.
There was nothing I could do about that now. I was in prison. Now, I just needed to make some allies to make sure I survived Venus and Faust. Especially if inmates tended to go missing around him. Venus wouldn’t have her magic, and neither would any witches she joined up with. Faust didn’t rat me out about my handcuff. He could have easily hauled me back in there and gotten an answer about what I was with a blood test. He was clearly fucked in the head if he wanted to leave me in prison with magic for the shits and giggles of figuring out what I was on his own.
The mess hall was vast, and the line was long. Dakarys pulled me straight to the front and skipped everyone in line. No one beat him or complained. No one said anything about the new girl going directly to the front either. I leaned into him.
“How did you just do that and not get both of us killed?”
Dakarys just smirked at me.
“Computers and television may have been invented while I was rotting in Scorchwood, and I thought they were magic, but they kind of are. We got assigned to the mailroom, and the Silverhold black market is now booming. Honestly, I’m shocked no one pulled it off before I got here. No one lays a finger on Rajack and me because they know we’ll cut off their supply of whatever their little black hearts want in prison they can’t get at the commissary. Do you want something? Because I can get it.”
Well, fuck. Now I was even more grateful Dakarys wanted to be friends. No one would fuck with me except Faust if we made friends. And he was just lovely. I grabbed my tray and started eyeing the food.
“Silverhold 101, Rei. You don’t get medical treatment unless it’s an emergency. Some food will fuck you up, but you can use it. Stay away from anything with peanut butter in it. You won’t shit for days. If you absolutely need it or they are serving a peanut butter dessert, eat something with cheese. I don’t care how much you like cheese. You won’t like Silverhold cheese. It’s bright orange and doesn’t taste like normal cheese. If you overeat, you’ll be peeing out your ass for days. The meat is all mushy lumps, and they cut it with breadcrumbs to make it go further. It’s not properly seasoned, and we have no idea which animal it’s from. It’s disgusting but eat it anyway. You need protein in here in case anyone comes at you.”
My hand paused over the mac and cheese. It was pretty much my favorite food ever because it was hard to mess up. They had fucking weaponized mac and cheese in here to give you the trots, and prison just got a million times worse.
“How much of this can I eat before I have to live in the bathroom?”
Dakarys winked at me.
“A risk-taker. I can dig it. A serving isn’t going to do anything to you, but I wouldn’t do seconds. If they do peanut butter sandwiches with the mac and cheese, you can eat all you want because they cancel each other out. Sometimes, they give us this peanut butter pie that’s not half bad, and it cancels the cheese out too, but they don’t set it out often because they know we like it.”
This was the grossest looking mac and cheese I’d ever seen in my entire life, which kind of shattered my notion it was an impossible food to fuck up. Even cheap boxed mac didn’t look this bad. It made this squelching noise when I dumped it on my plate.
The cheese was this neon orange, but it looked like everything else they were offering us was gray. The mushy peas were gray, and so was the mystery meat. I wasn’t the best cook in the world, but I could manage better than this. Still, this was prison, and I knew the food was going to be bad. I spooned some peas and slapped some gray meat on my plate.
Dakarys put his hand over mine.
“Use the gravy on everything. It’s the only thing they put seasoning in. It’s just salt and pepper, but it’s going to save everything on your plate. Grab a pudding too. They hand those out if we don’t get something sweet cooked. The pudding is decent, and people have gotten beaten for the butterscotch.”
I slipped a pudding on my tray and followed him to a table. No one was sitting there except an utterly beautiful man. His skin was the color of black coffee, and he had silver eyes. He was even bigger than Faust, and he had the top of his jumpsuit off. He was seriously cut in his undershirt, and he seemed to know who I was because he gave me a friendly smile when I sat down.
“I take it you found the Silver Fox?”
