“Ah, Princess Poppycakes.” I reached out my hand, and he shrank back, so I dropped it. “Well, Princess Poppycakes, it’s only fair that you know my name as well. I’m Hunter. Does your friend have a name?”
“Osmar.”
“Osmar?”
“Cosmo.”
He nodded and stuck his thumb into his mouth. His stomach grumbled loudly, and I glanced at the floor where the food had remained untouched.
One step at a time. It was tempting to dig and dig, asking him all the questions right away, but we had learned one thing. His name, an unusual one. Just like the boy.
“Is your friend hungry, Princess Poppycakes?”
I continued addressing the doll, since he seemed more inclined to respond to that.
He nodded, and his eyes filled with tears. “Daddy feeds me.” He sniffed. “Daddy’s gone.”
I glanced toward the one-way mirror. Was Knight getting all this? Just like I’d suspected, someone else was involved here.
“What do you say I feed you? Would you eat, then?”
“No meat.”
“You don’t want to eat meat.”
He shook his head.
“I see. Let’s get rid of the meat, then.”
I got up from the bed and scraped the meat from the plate onto the tray. I returned to the boy with the plate and his bottle of water. Whoever had prepared the food had made no effort at all to make the meal presentable. The mashed potatoes were now one big cold clump, with a small portion of vegetables on the side.
“Princess Poppycakes, can you kindly ask your friend Cosmo to sit up so I can feed him?”
“Please don’t hurt me,” he whispered, and a lump formed in my chest. Without knowing anything about what he’d been through, we’d taken him and thrown him into a locked room. He already seemed so fragile.
“I promise you that I won’t. No one here will hurt you.”