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CHAPTER EIGHT: that's bold darling, even for you.
"I THOUGHT THEY WERE going to shoot you."
Alina paced the fabric outline of their tent, wringing her slender hands together as if she was imagining herself throttling her sullen friend for her recklessness. Given her recent track record, Mercy could hardly argue.
She had remained captive for two more days. Apparently, His Royal Highness had decided that forty-eight hours was enough to quell the most fervent of homicidal rages but what did a prince know of murder?
An hour, seventy, a hundred. Her vows didn't need time. Only an opportunity.
Of course, there was always the matter of her escape. A futile attempt if Mercy had ever heard of one. Getting past the iron bars that encaged her would be almost effortless. The real problem would lie just outside the curtains because not even the wildest of pirates could entertain the possibility that they could fight an entire battalion of First Army soldiers and still live to tell the tale.
And then there was always Alina.
So Mercy stayed, obedient, like a trained dog until the third dawn, when the Sun Summoner herself parted the curtains and heralded in a new day.
"Come now, Saint." Mercy threw off her tattered shirt with a groan. Her undershirt hadn't fared much better. The smell clung to her - it was disgusting. " It would take more than a bullet to kill me and we both know it."
"Fifty bullets?" Alina teased. Despite the unspoken mistrust between the two, Mercy was grateful for just a tiny shred of novelty. Even if they were hurtling towards their doom.
"Now we're getting somewhere."
Alina threw herself onto her makeshift bed with a sigh. With little room in his camp to spare, His Most Royal Majesty had delegated them to a tent in the centre of camp, guarded day and night by brooding soldiers who did little to hide their desire to run Mercy through with one of their ugly longswords. It was one of the better welcomes she had received in her time.
"What?"
Mercy didn't have to look up from her dirtied palms to know Alina was staring. Her gaze was, unsurprisingly, hot. It made the hairs on the back of Mercy's neck stand up, as if they recognised the immense power that flowed within the Shu girl's veins.
"You're looking at me strangely." The pirate quipped.
The Sun Summoner watched her through narrowed eyes, studying her as if she were a painting. "This is the first time I'm seeing your real face, can you blame me?"
"I suppose not." She propped a dirt-crusted hand on her hip. "Like what you see?"
