Blaze of Secrets (Asylums for Magical Threats 1)

Part of her wanted to laugh at the highly improbable situation, while the other half wanted to cry tears of joy at finally escaping. Her future was far from certain, but, at least for now, no one was going to die simply because she was still alive.

And while she didn’t want to get her hopes up, there was a small chance that she might not have to die.

Tears started to form, but Kiarra took a deep breath to help get her emotions under control. She couldn’t afford to fall apart right now, so she forced herself to rely on her most effective weapon: her logic.

She looked around the room, hoping to find something that would not only help her better understand her kidnappers, but maybe help her think of a way to escape.

The room was a small, mostly blue bedroom with a plush chair in the corner, two windows off to the side, and a mirror above a dresser. There were also framed pictures of far-off places scattered across the walls. The room was the opposite of her sterile, cold cell. One could almost call it homey.

But the most important difference from the AMT was that instead of fluorescent lights, sunlight streamed through the windows. Kiarra stretched her neck until she could see the clear blue sky through the windows, and longed to feel the warmth of the sun on her cheeks.

It’d been fifteen years since she’d last seen the sky or felt the sun on her face. The AMT had stolen those years from her, and while she’d never get them back, she would make the most of the freedom she had now.

Of course, how long her freedom would last depended entirely on her kidnappers.

She still wasn’t sure what had prodded her to warn the men about the tranquilizer guns. But when it had come down to it, her gut had told her that taking her chances with the intruders had been the better of the two options. Time would tell if she’d made the right decision.

She tried to sit up, but material dug into her wrists and ankles, preventing her from moving off the bed. Considering her attacks on the man in her cell, coupled with her attempts to stab herself, it didn’t surprise her that they’d put restraints on her arms and legs. At least they were material and not metal, like the ones inside the AMT examination rooms.

Thinking of the AMT brought back the researchers’ conversation about using her blood for tests on other inmates. Were the men here going to do the same thing? To be honest, she had no idea why else they would want her. Ransom was useless since Kiarra’s family had disowned her years ago, and the AMT would simply send enforcers to retrieve her rather than try to negotiate for her return.

Her only real concern was that the men might hurt her. Especially now that she didn’t have any special protections like she’d had inside the AMT, and there was nothing to stop them from beating—let alone raping—her.

Fear started to grip her belly again, so Kiarra inhaled deeply and willed her mind to push aside the fear and approach the situation rationally. After years of waking up in strange examination rooms, and being poked and prodded for days on end, finding herself in restraints was no big deal. While she knew almost nothing about the men w

ho’d broken into the AMT, freaking out about what they’d do to her would serve no purpose.

She needed to take advantage of the time she had now, alone in this room, to try and plan escape routes. Especially since the longer she stayed here, the greater the chance that the AMT enforcers would find her.

Just as Kiarra started to calculate how far off the ground she was based on the height of the trees outside her window, someone knocked and opened the door, revealing the tall, lean frame of the green-eyed man who had broken into her cell. He was dressed in a new set of black clothes, with a nude-colored bandage wrapped around his left bicep.

She was going to pay for that.

The man noticed her gaze, looked down at his arm, and then back up again. “Take a good look at your handiwork, because I assure you it won’t happen again.”

His voice was deep and slightly lilting. She wanted to know what country he was from, but that was low on her list of priorities. If she were going to chance asking a question, she would think of something more useful.

The man continued to stare at her as if he was waiting for her to say something. Fine. He hadn’t been rough with her back inside her cell, but she wondered if he would smack or verbally abuse her as the AMT staff had done in the past, when she hadn’t follow the rules or been complacent.

There was only one way to find out.

Kiarra gathered her courage and tried to keep her voice even. “You aren’t the first to underestimate me.”

She waited for him to strike her, like the AMT guards would’ve done, but he kept his distance and said, “What’s your name?’

It looked like he wasn’t going to hit her, at least for now. She answered, “F-839.”

“Not your bloody serial number,” he growled. “What’s your name?”

Kiarra blinked and looked away. Each AMT prisoner was given a serial number and learned to respond to it. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had used her actual name, and after so long, she wasn’t sure if she wanted this stranger to be the first one to call her by it. The act seemed intimate, as if the use of her name would transform her from a prisoner to a person with rights and opinions, and she wasn’t sure if that were a good idea. She didn’t know what the man wanted with her, and hope was a dangerous emotion for any AMT prisoner.

Kiarra had learned that lesson the hard way.

She looked back at the man, his eyes trained on her face, and resisted a shiver. He wasn’t looking at her with cool disinterest, as if she were nothing more than an experiment subject to be discarded when things went wrong. No, it was almost as if he acknowledged that she was a person, not something to be cataloged with a serial number.

The man maintained eye contact as he took a step toward her. Kiarra’s heart raced as she battled her nerves to stay calm. Inside the AMT, people had only come near her to punish her or to experiment on her, which had conditioned her to hate it, and she didn’t have adrenaline or a life-and-death situation to override her fear.

And her commitment to logic only went so far.