Free Darkness Wanes by Susan Illene

poked my wooden spoon into it and struck a chunk of burned beef. My stomach turned. It was going to be like chewing on leather, but I had to eat, or I’d only get weaker. I braved a bite. The salt content must have been worse than the Dead Sea. I gagged my way through half of it before I couldn’t stand it anymore and shoved the bowl away.
    “Tired of the stew?” Eli asked from the cell next to mine.
    “A rat would probably taste better—if they had them here,” I said, leaning against the stone wall dividing us.
    “It’s almost over. Soon we’ll be able to eat whatever we want and this will be behind us. You must try to remain positive.”
    I snorted. Was that the best the psychologist could do for a pep talk? “Easy for you to say. At least they give you bread with your meals.”
    “That’s because I don’t fight them every chance I get.”
    “I can’t help it.” I knocked my head against the wall. “Most of the guardians here are sadistic fools who need someone to stand up to them.”
    He sighed. “You run at a problem like a bull in a china shop. A little subtlety would go a long way.”
    “Yeah? And exactly how much have you accomplished here?” I asked.
    “I’ve helped you, haven’t I?”
    “Right,” I muttered under my breath. It was a waste of breath talking to him. If I had anything better to do, I’d have ignored him, but the current guard on duty didn’t care if we talked. It was a rare chance to get out of my own head for a little while and distract myself from thoughts of Lucas and Emily. Thinking of them put me in a dark place full of despair. I tried to save those emotions for solitary where no one else could see the torment of their absence tearing through me.
    “Why do you bother speaking to her?” Sabelle asked Eli. The blond nephilim who hated me so much was in one of the cells across from us and could watch us both from her vantage point. “The sensor still thinks too much like a human and doesn’t understand our world.”
    “Which is why I’m trying to help her,” he replied.
    “I have no idea what Lucas sees in her.” She glared at me through golden eyes that had seen more than a thousand years of living. “She’s far more trouble than she’s worth.”
    “Melena is honorable. You’d do well to learn from her,” Eli replied in a diplomatic tone.
    I didn’t know Sabelle well enough to say if she was honorable or not, but she definitely had a mean streak when it came to sensors. For a while, I couldn’t figure out why she directed so much venom my way. It was hard enough being in a place where the guards hated me, but having most of my prison mates look at me with malice and distrust made it even worse.
    Then one day Eli explained she’d lost her nephilim mate during the supernatural war. A sensor had called on an archangel to kill him. The severing of their mystical connection—similar to what Lucas and I had—nearly broke her. Eli said she hid herself away for decades until she managed to get a hold of her grief. Since hearing her story, I’d tried to be patient with her, but she didn’t make it easy.
    “A woman like her can’t possibly have honor,” Sabelle sneered.
    “Don’t go there,” I said, meeting her eyes. “We could always discuss your behavior toward the guards—who should be our enemy.”
    Sabelle had no problem sucking up to them. She’d do whatever it took to make her life a little more comfortable. I couldn’t say I hadn’t considered it, but not if it meant being friendly to the bastards who enjoyed dumping ice water on us in the mornings. Sabelle had befriended two of the worst. How she’d managed it, I’d never know.
    “Enemy?” a nephilim named Udo said with indignation. “You and all your kind are the enemy. It is the sensors who curry the archangels’ favor. Out of all of us, you’ve committed the most crimes, yet your sentence is somehow no worse than ours. Don’t bother to act like you’re one of us because you’ll