The Wolves and the Vipers

Chapter 48 - Brokering

I eyed the feral from across the table, trying to decide how to begin. I had Jace in the back of my mind, distracting me with a reel of questions he wanted me to ask. I took note of them, but I also decided very quickly that it would be better to disguise the interrogation as a friendly chat.

"Okay, let's start with the boring stuff, shall we?" I asked him. "Does your father know you're here?"

"Can't say for sure," Rhys said. "But he does seem to know everything at all times, so ... it's very possible."

I felt Jace's worry keenly through the link and tried to shut it out. "Will he be coming to rescue you?"

"Oh, I doubt it."

This time, Jace wasn't so easily ignored. His derision and scepticism flooded across the link, and I found myself saying, "I don't think that was an honest answer, was it?"

The feral eyed me from across the table. "I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about."

There was some tension in those words. Right. Well, that was the last time I listened to Jace. There was a reason that it was me in here talking to him, after all. Neither rogues nor ferals got on well with Alphas.

"Will someone else be coming to rescue you?" I tried next.

"I sure hope so. No offence," he said. "Well. Some offence, I suppose."

He was wearing a slightly rueful grin. Strangely charming, for a feral. Was it just me, or did he seem a decade younger now that Jace and Jaden were out of sight? He was seeming to relax the longer I chatted to him.

"You're doing really well, Emma," Jace told me through the link. "He's letting his guard down. Ask if his father would be willing to negotiate, if we were to go down that route."

I deflected that by half-closing the bond. He could still see, but he would have to concentrate on listening now, and there would be no attention spare for more interruptions. "Yes, I'm doing well, not you. So pipe down and let me do this at my own pace. Unless we're in any great rush?"

His silence answered that well enough.

"You're willing to answer my questions," I observed aloud, "but you weren't willing to answer theirs. Why is that?"

Rhys shrugged as much as he could with his hands cuffed behind his back. "You're a lot prettier than they are."

"Ah, so it's pretty privilege."

"Sure," he said. "Can you open the packet? I'm talking — I figure I should get some now."

I reached for the walnuts with a faint smile on my lips. "So you do like them.

A shake of the head. "Not massively. I'm just hungry."

"Have they been feeding you?" I asked him, because I remembered my own brief stint in this prison all too well.

"They bring me food, yeah," he said. "It comes with more spit than I'd like."

That gave me pause. I didn't do a very job of hiding my dismay. He had said it so casually — like he didn't care, like it was to be expected — and that made me a feel a little ashamed of the fighters.

"Well, if you keep talking to me, I can bring you lunch personally. Spit free," I told him eventually, and that earnt me a smile. "In the meantime, I'll open these, but I'm not sure how you're going to eat them without the use of your hands."

The smile became a grin again. "Chuck it up in the air."

I tried it, and he missed the first one but managed to catch the second. And the third. And the fourth. It was clear to me from the way he ate that he was starving, that he hadn't been touching any of those meals, and that I needed to talk to Jace about his guards' conduct once again. The prison shifts seemed to attract the crueller members of the fighters — the ones who enjoyed the power dynamic and were willing to abuse it.