She sighs and lowers her hand.
“Listen. If you know of any way we can get out of here, I’ll take you with me.”
It’s a dumb thing to say, considering if she did know a way out, she would have used it. The woman seems to think the same thing, and she turns her head away.
“Never mind, then,” I mutter, turning my attention back to the door.
My boot hits the lock, which doesn’t give an inch. Next, my shoulder drives into the door hard enough that pain sears down my side. Slamming my other hip against the lower panel does nothing.
Maybe I can at least break these cuffs.
I sink to my knees and slam the handcuffs against the wall. Five strikes, no change. The metal is searing into my wrists now, hot enough to blister. I switch the angle and try again. The bone in my left wrist creaks; I keep going, but there isn’t even a mark on the cuffs or an indent on the chain.
“I know,” I grunt, slamming the chain against the bars separating the cells now, “that you think I’m being an idiot.” Grunt. “But I have to escape. There’s no other option.”
The woman doesn’t reply. She can’t. I know that, but I can’t seem to shut up, if only to remind myself why I’m doing this.
“My mate is out there, you see. We don’t have much time left together. So, what’s left of this year, we have to cherish it.”
I slam the manacles against the floor now, ignoring the pain in my wrists. “I want to leave him with lots of happy memories, just in case. I’m not going to die here. Not like this.”
I let out a shaky breath as I pause for a moment. Tears of frustration blind me, and I try not to let them fall. The sound that escapes me is feeble. “This is—Why is this so hard?”
My lower lip wobbles. My hands are a bloody mess now. They’re throbbing, but the chain is still solid. “Why won’t it break?”
I slam my hands down again before wiping my face on my shoulder to clear my eyes. The mark at my collarbone has gone so far past hot that it is now cold, a sinking heaviness that has begun to spread down the inside of my arm.
I lift the cuffs and bring them down once more. The iron sings. The chain holds.
The woman on the other side of the bars makes a noise.
My head pops up.
The sound comes again.
It’s not a word. It’s a hum from low in her throat. Three notes—for the words she might have said if her tongue were still in her head and she was trying to call out to me.
She crawls over to the bars. Her face presses against the silver-coated iron. One hand is at her chest, fingers closed around something I cannot see, and she is watching me with a steadiness that cuts through the shadows like a lantern.
“What?” I say, my voice cracking on the single syllable. “What is it?”
Her hand opens. Whatever was in it clatters to the ground.
I freeze with my cuffs lifted halfway off the floor.
A fist-sized object has rolled into my cell and come to rest a few feet from my knee. The bars between my cell and the next swim into focus. A thin arm withdraws between them, the bone of the wrist visible through the ragged sleeve.
The thing on my floor is a rock.
I do not understand at first. If slamming them against the wall, the door, and the bars can’t break the cuffs or the chain, how can a rock?
I must have spoken out loud because she points to it, making a different noise this time. With no other options, I crawl over to it and pick it up with one hand. The weight is good, the edges rough.
I maneuver the rock above the chain between my cuffs and slam it down to the ground. The chain holds on the first strike, bends on the second. On the third, it breaks, and my wrists separate. The cuffs stay on, but my arms can move freely now.
I look over at the woman, my eyes wide. “I don’t know how I can possibly thank you.”
She watches me silently, clinging to the bars.