Harper
The cell smelled different this time.
Less feral, more concrete. The new welds on the door had cooled. Two extra guards stood post outside. Whatever they'd done to clean him up in forty-eight hours, it had worked. Almost too well.
He was sitting on a steel chair bolted to the floor, wrists and ankles cuffed to the frame, a third chain running from a ring at his collar to a plate in the concrete. His hair had been pushed back behind his ears. Wet, like someone had made him wash.
I saw his face for the first time.
High cheekbones. Sharp jaw. An old scar splitting one eyebrow at the inside corner. The wildness was still there in the bones of him. Underneath, the lines were impossibly clean. The kind of face you noticed twice.
The gem at his collar sat at a steady, banked red. No
