For a moment, Nita was catapulted into the past, when she was a prisoner in the market, when she had tried to slowly build a relationship with Kovit by asking for small things. A towel. A shower. All a ploy to learn more and get him to let his guard down so she could betray him and escape.

“Did Fabricio ask for a shower?” Nita asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“No reason.”

He didn’t see the similarities. Well, Nita wasn’t going to point it out. Yet. But sneaky little Fabricio had already started spinning his web to escape. He’d already identified the same weak spots in Kovit that Nita had, and was starting to build on them.

It disturbed Nita a little to find that she and Fabricio thought so similarly. She didn’t want to be anything like him. If someone had saved her life, she never would have betrayed them.

But even as she thought it, she wondered. Because if it meant survival, there was very little she wouldn’t do. She just couldn’t see how Fabricio selling her out was a survival tactic.

Kovit interrupted her musings. “I need to say goodbye to Gold before we go.”

Nita resisted the urge to rub her temples. She still wasn’t happy that he was choosing to let a wildcard like Gold go. But she couldn’t think of anything to sway him away from his foolishness.

So all she said was, “All right.”

She followed Kovit as he went into Gold’s room. Gold lay on her cot, gently rubbing pain-numbing cream on her previously dislocated shoulder. She wasn’t bound anymore, so Kovit must have been in here earlier. Nita sighed, thinking of both their prisoners unbound and running around asking Kovit for things and taking advantage of him. Kovit really was a terrible jailor. Nita, of all people, should have known better than to leave him in charge of prisoners.

Kovit shivered as he entered the room, and Gold tensed as she watched him eat her pain.

“Here,” he whispered, taking out his switchblade. “Let me.”

Gold stiffened, but Kovit made a small cut on his finger as he approached her, before reaching over and spreading his blood on her wound. The tension went out of both of their bodies, even though Gold remained wary. Zannie blood was a powerful anesthetic.

Eventually, Kovit lowered his hand and cleared his throat. “I came to say goodbye.”

Gold gave him a bitter smile. “Finally going to kill me?”

“No. Of course not.” He looked away. “I know you hate me, but I still think of you as a friend, May. I’m not just going to throw that aside.”

Gold was quiet for a long moment before she said, “Where do we go from here, then?”