Behind Enemy Lines: From Slave To Luna

A SPY IN A CAGE

"I'll do it. I'll be your spy. Please. Don't let them touch me."

Brian lifted his hand. The guards peeled back without a word, their footsteps crossing the floor, the click of the door sealing the room into a quieter and more dangerous atmosphere. Just the two of us.

He crouched in front of me at my eye level. I could see the satisfaction working through his expression. He thought he had broken something tonight. He had only seen what I needed him to see.

"Red River's monster expects an envoy the day after tomorrow. By noon. Treaty talk." He tilted his head. His hand moved into my hair, brushing through it slowly. The tenderness of his touch was worse than if he were to hit me. "I need eyes inside his walls. You walk in as my ambassador. Smile pretty. Listen to everything Adrian says. Send me weaknesses, guard rotations, who he trusts, who he's sleeping with. Anything I can use to bleed him dry."

I looked at him and let nothing cross my face.

The truth was I had not made this decision in a moment of panic on the mattress. I had made it in the dark of the forest, while still wrapped in warmth that did not belong to me and running the numbers on what survival actually looked like from here.

If I stayed, it was certain. More nights like this one. More of my body being a ledger Brian kept debts in. Leaving was a gamble. The road to Red River could kill me. Adrian himself could kill me. Brian's mission could get me executed the moment someone looked at me sideways.

But a gamble was still more than I had here.

So I had already decided and was only begging for show. I had built him a version of this conversation he would believe, and he had walked right into it.

I swallowed the copper still sitting on my tongue. "What's my cut?"

His smile widened and something greedy moved behind his eyes. "Come back alive with useful intel and you sleep in a real bed. Keep feeding me good information, maybe I'll let you keep that fire you're so proud of."

He was lying. He was lying and he was bad at hiding it. Although I feared what he could do to me, he had confused stillness for surrender.

You will never see me again after this. If you do, It'll be your death hour.

"Aren't you afraid I'd turn you in when I get there?"

Brian laughed but I don't know what he finds funny. He reached out, grabbed a fistful of my hair at the root, and pulled my face toward his. I felt the stretch in my scalp. His other hand found the back of my neck and gripped it hard.

"You don't know where you're going, do you?" His voice dropped to something almost kind. "They eat spies alive at Red River. Betrayal is their worst offense. The moment you open your mouth to confess, they will skin you. Not quickly." He let that sit. "My little pet, you had better stick to the mission. Because even if you escape their claws, I will be waiting to sink mine into you."

He released me. Stood and adjusted his shirt like we had just finished a casual chat about the weather.

"Papers," I said. My voice came out level. I did not know how. "A cover story that holds at the border."

"Done. You leave at first light."

He moved toward the door, then paused with his hand on the frame. Without turning around, he said: "Fail me and I'll make Ben's rejection feel like a kiss."

The door shut.

I lay on the mattress and stared at the ceiling, counting the crack in the plaster above me. My mind needed something small and finite to hold onto while the rest of me quietly came apart in the dark where no one could see it.

Brian thought he was sending me into a cage.

He had never considered that he might be the cage I was leaving.

Red River was unknown territory. Adrian. Whatever he was. Whatever the rumors meant when they called him a monster, is my ticket out of this dungeon. My only hope is that I haven’t signed a ticket to hell.