𝐀 𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐃
Brynn and her friends have just pulled off an impossible heist-just to be put back in the middle of a war. And with so many things on the line, there's no guarantee that they'll make it out alive, especially Brynn. But s...
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CHAPTER I.
Jan Van Eck
Brynn woke up with a start, her head pounding. She was in the dark and her hands were bound behind her back. Then the events at Vellgeluk came back to her in a flash.
A Squaller on jurda parem picking her up, burning the Grisha in the face, falling through the air, then the second Squaller grabbing her, and a sharp pain in her skull before everything went black. Kaz running towards her.
She couldn't see anything in the blackness of wherever she was being held prisoner, a blindfold over her eyes. Brynn tried to wiggle her hands, but they were bound together too tightly. Her rings were gone, too.
When I find Van Eck, I'm going to kill him, Brynn thought.
How long had it been since the skirmish at Vellgeluk? A few hours? A few days? How long until Kaz came for her? Would Van Eck torture her before he did?
Brynn heard keys jingling nearby, turning in a series of locks. The creaking of a door opening came suddenly in the silence of the room. She could see light out of the bottom of her blindfold. How long had she been awake already?
Someone gently took her blindfold off. Brynn blinked, taking in her unfamiliar surroundings from the light of a lantern. There wasn't much in the small, barren room. A concrete floor underneath her, a pile of blankets that she'd been set on top of, walls lined with empty shelves, and a small table and chair a few feet away from her. There were no windows, and the only hint that they might still be near Ketterdam was the damp trace of salt in the air.
A Suli man stood in front of Brynn. He seemed to only be a few years older than Brynn herself, with thick black hair that curled around his collar and black gem eyes framed by lashes long enough to swat flies. He smiled at Brynn, one she did not return.
"Where am I?" she demanded.
He merely chuckled. "My name is Bajan," he told her in heavily-accented Kerch. "Are you hungry? I brought you food."
"Is Van Eck sending his goons to do his dirty work, now?" Brynn scoffed. "I didn't expect any less of the coward."
"It is not smart to speak of Mister Van Eck in such a way," Bajan said.
"Why do you care so much?"
Bajan reached forward, gently grabbing onto her arms to haul her up. He set her down on the chair. "I am a music teacher, indentured to Mister Van Eck. I must care so much."
Bajan untied her carefully, then brought her hands forward to tie them in front of her instead. Brynn decided not to make a move because of the two heavily-armed guards near the doorway that looked like they wouldn't think twice about putting a bullet in her head.
