He was leaning on his knees, hands over his mouth and staring hard at the wall opposite his bed when Etienne came by to prop up the cell’s door-frame.

Gabe flicked him a glance, then went back to the wall. It had a small stainless steel sink attached to it and a tiny mirror. He had bargained for that, along with the razor, neither were allowed in the cell ( even a dull mind could turn them into a sharp edge) Gabe barely looked at himself these days, but he liked to make sure he was clean-shaven.

He was thinking hard. Etienne had crossed his arms and was looking shifty again.

“So,” he said eventually. “That was the ‘someone’.”

Gabe nodded “If I asked you if this was a test, could you tell me?”

Etienne wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I just do what I’m told, princess.”

Gabe sighed and dropped his hands. “Etienne, I’m sorry about what I said.”

Etienne humphed in reply. Gabe accepted that was as good as it would get. After all, Etienne had been the one to come to him, whether that had been an order or not. Gabe doubted he would ever know, but at least Etienne felt bad about it.

“So who is he?” Etienne went on, as if they hadn’t had a spat.

Gabe chewed his bottom lip, thoughtful. “Someone from way back when.”

When Etienne said nothing, Gabe went on. “He’s trouble.”

Etienne nodded. “Obviously. That guy looks as crazy as a cat in a bag.”

Gabe had to agree. “Yeah, he was always kind of unhinged. I guess time has only matured that.”

He didn’t say how Antoine had been his roommate for the two years he had been Drake’s slave. He didn’t say how Antoine had made every day a hell on earth for him.

Antoine had been his senior by one year, but he hadn’t been popular. And unlike Gabe, he had wanted very desperately to be popular. With his peers, with the clients, with Drake. He would bend over again and again if Drake asked him. But something about him put clients off. Maybe it was that he wasn’t very pretty for a young boy of ten, his dark hair too wiry and his face too sharp. Maybe it was his obsequious desire to please, maybe it was just that inside he was as thorny as a briar and if you touched him you came away bloody.

Gabe had been pretty. So very pretty. Drake had made him grow his hair long so that the gold curls flopped and bounced. He made sure Gabriel got a bath and shampoo every night so that he smelled good. He made sure Gabe got the best of every meal, even if he had to force it down his throat. Clients adored Gabriel, even when he fought and bit and scratched. And when Drake let them tie him up, they liked him even more.

Antoine had hated him for it. In the privacy of their shared room, he tortured Gabriel with anything in his arsenal. He'd had always tried to fight back, but he was small and Antoine wasn’t and he always lost.

Antoine was clever at leaving injuries that couldn’t be noticed; a nick on the back of his head, a cut on the sole of his foot. Making sure Gabriel could never reveal his injury to Drake, who would as likely punish him as he would Antoine, for being weak and foolish. As they had grown older, Antoine had become Drake’s little toady, his errand boy, and his personal pet. Antoine’s adoration of Drake was sickening, but he lorded his paltry ounce of favoritism over Gabriel as if it mattered.

“He’s been sent.” Gabe told Etienne. “Very likely to murder me.”

“Huh.” Etienne replied. As far as people wanting to kill Gabe went, it wasn’t anything new.

Gabe straightened himself, resting his hands on his knees. “I need one thing from you, Etienne. Just one.”

Etienne’s gaze met his, hesitant but willing.

“I need you to arrange a fight.”

Etienne sucked at the gap between his teeth for a while.

“You gonna die?”

Gabe wasn’t sure. It was hard to say, at this point in his life. Did he even want to live?

No, it wasn’t about that.

He wouldn’t give Antoine the satisfaction of killing him.

“No.” he said, sighing to the wall. “But someone will.”