He finally leveled a stare at me. Heavy and cold, it made my skin crawl.
“I won’t have to kill you,” he said gravely, his every word falling into the room like a stone. “There’re plenty of others who will if you don’t give them what they want.”
“And you’ll do nothing to stop them?” I asked, my voice low and thin. I could have guessed the answer already—he didn’t care.
“I hope it won’t come to that,” he said evasively.
“You hope? Why do you even think I’ll go ahead with your plan?”
“If you have any brains in that head of yours, you will.”
“Brains are the last thing required for what you want me to do,” I muttered, glaring at him. “I’m not going to do it.”
“You will. If you want to live.”
He held my gaze with his, his yellow irises especially bright and unnerving.
“Or you’ll starve.” He suddenly snatched a cookie from my hand.
“Hey!” I leaped back, hiding the remaining two cookies behind my back.
Turning to fully face the room, he kept his gaze on me. His gloomy expression had smoothened out, giving way to calculation and...interest.
“You’ll get to eat only after you cooperate.” He suddenly looked annoyingly pleased with himself.
“Are you serious? You’re going to starve me until I comply?”
He shrugged. “Whatever worked for a madhi, should work for a human, too, I imagine.”
“Did you starve your pet, too?”
“Starve? No. I used food as motivation to train him. Lesh proved to be smart enough to learn quickly what’s best for him—to do as I say. He never starved.”
“So, you’re hoping to force me into obedience, too?”
He shrugged.
“I can only hope you’re as smart as a mahdi?”
I seethed with resentment at the indignity of it. He stared straight at me now, but I remembered the signs of his unease ever since he’d entered this room. I stepped aside, and his gaze followed me, as if glued to my face.
“How about these two?” I waved my hand with the two remaining cookies in front of me. “Aren’t you going to take these away to increase your bargaining power?”
His gaze shifted, and his focus seemed to slip along with his composure. His self-indulgent smile disappeared. Confusion, mixed with genuine fear momentarily distorted his strong features. He grabbed on to the metal panel, turning sideways again.
The warm umber of his skin paled on his cheeks. His chest moved rapidly with shallow breaths.
Understanding dawned on me.
“You’re afraid of this room, aren’t you?”
“Afraid? Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed.
Afraid might not be the most accurate word, but something about staring straight into the glass room or the lights beyond it made Wyck uncomfortable, and judging by his reaction, severely so.
“Yeah? Then prove it.” I took another step back, holding a cookie out to him. “Come and get it, big guy.”
He wouldn’t look at me.
“Come on,” I taunted, dangling the cookie in my hand. “You want to starve me. Start now. Take this away from me.”
He didn’t move. His huge hands balled into fists at his sides, his jaw muscles tensed. The rest of his body stilled, as if packed with compressed power that threatened to explode.
Suddenly grabbing the metal corner strip, he roared, the deafening sound rolling under the glass ceiling. Muscles bulged like boulders in his arms. He yanked off the metal rail that protected the corner of the wall in the entryway and bent it in his hands.
His deep roar rocked the room and reverberated through my chest. The cookie dropped from my fingers, weakened by the terror of witnessing the crushing power of his temper and the graphic demonstration of his strength.
Now, I hoped whatever it was that prevented him from entering the glass room was strong enough to keep him from lunging after me in retaliation for taunting this beast of a man.
He yanked on Lesh’s chain, threading it through the loop he had bent the metal strip into, then tied it to it.
“Lesh is staying here.” He tossed a glare at me over his shoulder. “No more food for you from now on.” He shoved the door open, tipping his chin at the last cookie in my hand. “Make that one last.”
The door slid closed behind him.
Lesh’s left head quickly swiped the cookie I’d dropped off the floor.
“You’re in it with him, aren’t you?” I narrowed my eyes at Lesh as his left head gleefully chomped on my cookie. The central head licked the crumbs off the muzzle of the left head.
“A bunch of thieves,” I mumbled under my breath, moving away from the beast just in case, though he didn’t look that threatening at the moment. My cookie, settling in their joined belly, must’ve felt nice, mellowing the fierce expression of all three heads. “You’re no better than your master,” I told him.
My stomach still rumbled hungrily, and exhaustion weighed me down, along with a depressing feeling of utter hopelessness. I wandered off to the far end of the room.
“I’m not looking after your dog!” I yelled toward the door. Not that Wyck would hear me, but yelling seemed to release some of the frustration pressing heavily on my chest. “I’m not giving him any water either!” I turned to Lesh again. “I bet that cookie made you thirsty, didn’t it? Too bad your owner doesn’t care about you.”
Wyck obviously didn’t care about anything or anyone.
I glanced at the very last cookie in my hand.
“Make it last.”
What for? With the future that awaited me, it might be better to starve than ration this last pathetic little bit of sustenance.
Taking a big bite of the cookie, I examined the contents of the room.
A clothing rack with ridiculously bright, embellished long gowns and a small table on gilded rollers were the only furnishings. Behind the rack, I found a roll of blankets. They seemed clean enough, though I was so tired by now, I wouldn’t have cared much even if they weren’t. I took them as far away from the door and Lesh as I could and set up a bed for the night.
Wyck’s beast sat down on his haunches, bringing to mind Cerberus with his three heads. All three moved in sync, following my every move. The three pairs of black beady eyes watched me intently.
The fact that the animal made no sound creeped me out. Completely silent, he appeared even more like an eerie creature from the underworld.
“You want water?” I asked. The middle head growled at the sound of my voice while the other two hissed. “You know, you three should be in an agreement whether you’re thirsty or not—you look like you share a stomach after all.”
I walked to the bathroom, getting a drink for myself. The cookie had made me thirsty, too. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be a water shortage in this place. It ran freely from the faucet in a wide continuous stream. I filled a large, empty soap dish then brought it over to Wyck’s pet.
He got to his feet as I approached. All heads lowered to the ground with a joint hissy growl as the eyes glowered up at me menacingly.
“Great, now you’re in agreement,” I mumbled, setting the dish down. “All three of you unanimously hate me.”