I was mentally, spiritually and emotionally prepared, and I wouldn’t put it past my unlucky self to find my ending in a drake camp, tied to a metal pole.
“Good morning,” the male voice arriving towards my direction addressed me, pulling me from dark thoughts that had started to gather.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t even look at him and made a point to turn away from Dahr and lie in the wet bed, forcing the most comfortable position I was able to put together at a moment’s notice.
“Do you maybe want to move away from the rain?” his commanding tone reverberated through the tent, holding a competition with the echo of the clouds.
I pressed my lips together and shoved my face even deeper into the mattress, trying to cover as much of my wet hair and damp clothes as I could. I didn’t even dare breathe too loudly until I heard steps creaking away from my general direction.
I heard him say, “as you wish, March,” before the outside noise covered whatever else he had to say to the people he met there, making my rage towards him expand more than the storm clouds did for the rest of the day.
Allowing my spirit to embrace the possessed rage that overtook my senses, I launched into the rest of my day with a single word on my lips: no. Anything that came from the lying leader of this camp or his cohorts received an automatic negation. Did I want breakfast? No.
Did I want to be moved out of the rain? Reluctant… but no.
Did I want lunch? Again, no.
Did I want a fresh set of clothes? Yes, a million times yes, but the answer that my mouth let through was another… no.
Begrudgingly, I even said no to Karisha’s visit and felt terrible about pushing her away and sending her back out in the rain, but I was also proud of myself for keeping my mind fast and steady.
I had decided that, after all, I would soon be dead anyway, so I might as well make a statement and show them that I could not be treated like this. My existence as a prisoner didn’t bother me as much as they did while playing tricks on my mind and disparaging my intelligence so easily.
I would have expected at least a conversation, some sort of briefing with regards to my current situation and an action plan that I would be expected to follow. Instead, I had been tied to a pole and treated like an animal, whose only basic necessities were food, water and a place to relieve itself.
Unfortunately for them, they had made a mistake in picking me if they were planning for a docile prisoner. Not that I had any expectations of surpassing my status as captive and running into the camp by myself with heroic hopes of saving my town, but I could at least do my part to become a large inconvenience and a thorn in Dahr’s side.
“No, thank you,” I said by instinct as soon as the tent flaps opened to probably reveal another attempt at either offering me food or fresh clothes. “As I said, anything that comes from Dahr will receive a ‘no’ from me.”
“And why is that, March?” The man made himself visible inside the tent, sporting what I assumed was his usual uniform, a black leather vest and leather pants, his hair and body dripping with both rain and remains of blood.
His arrivalmade me stop for a beat, my eyes too focused on his presence, on the way rain and blood mixed and poured down his tense biceps, adorning his tanned skin with a violent glow. How his wet hair spilled over his nape and tickled his jawline, small curls wrapping around his ears and how his heaving breaths made the entire surface light up with tension.
His chest rose up and down in strong and determined breaths, the after-training tension and need for release obvious in his body language.
I had stumbled on my words because I was involuntarily in awe of such displays of masculinity. Even though I had been studying representations of the male body all my life, the one in front of me seemed more truthful to what the artists intended to portray as god-like than any other I had seen before.
“Well?” He took a step closer to me and leaned in just slightly, towering over me enough to allow his head to be rained on through the cracked seams in the roof of the tent.
“Because that is the conclusion I have decided to be in my best interest,” I said pointedly, yet still struggling to take my eyes off him. The last thing I wanted was to lust over my captor, no matter how my insides tensed in his presence. It was a natural reaction, I told myself. One that my sex-deprived body expressed as a biological need when brought in the presence of a fine male specimen. That was all. I willed more blood to go towards my brain than towards other parts in order to help me continue this conversation.
“Forgive me if I reached my own conclusions while enjoying my prisoner status, you will have to admit that you weren’t much of a conversationalist,” I pointed out and lifted my chin to display my full bravado, lest he think my words were dominated by fear.
He pursed his lips for a second, taking in my admonishment and dipped his chin just slightly, the highest sign of agreement I would get. “That is true,” he said with no particular tonality. “And what sort of conclusions did you reach?”
“That you made a mistake,” I immediately jumped into action. “That you are the leader of this camp, and you clearly underestimated me when thinking that I would simply sit here tied to a pole and beg for your mercy.”
The press of his lips this time looked slightly different. Even though the corners of his lips curved, they were quickly pressed together by his mouth preventing the full motion.
“And what will you do now, March?” he asked with a challenge.
“Make sure that I put all my remaining breaths and effort into hating you. Into making your life as miserable as I possibly can, just like you plan to do with my people.”
When his eyes widened, I replied with a snarl. “Yes, I know. I know that you are planning to attack Enderflagg at the end of the month. If you didn’t want this information to be revealed, you should have told your soldiers not to brag about it every other minute.”
I must have been feverish from the rain and caught some sort of cold that affected my brain and gave me hallucinations, because this man couldn’t possibly be smiling at me. With…pride.
“I’m impressed,” his gaze twinkled with the acknowledgement I no longer wanted. “And I assume you already have a plan that will induce this… plague upon my destiny?” he said, barely avoiding a chuckle. It was obvious for the both of us that I did not present a physical challenge to him, but he didn’t have to be so presumptuous about it. Even enemies could respect each other, but we were clearly past that frontier.
