The cell felt smaller now. As if the information had swollen the space, pushed the air out, and left only the weight behind. My thoughts stumbled over each other, each one shoving the next as if it were the most urgent — and all of them wore the same face.
Thalia.
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to mentally reconstruct every street we had passed through, every place we had stopped, every face that watched us a second longer than it should have. It wasn't paranoia. It was calculation. And every second lost in here was a move handed freely to the enemy — whatever that enemy might be.
I needed to get out.
The problem was… how.
I lifted my head and stared at the cracked ceiling, as if some answer might be hidden between the veins in the stone.
"Thinking about how to escape?" came the voice of the most useful idiot in the city.
"Thinking about not killing you before that."
Mordrek feigned a wounded smile, but he was far too used to that kind of response to be fazed.
