The Master and The Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet series Book 2)

After getting far enough away from Demechnef mountains, we stop so I can quench my thirst.

I drop to my knees at a skinny creek trickling over shiny pebbles and rocks. Maybe it’s all in my mind, the dehydration, the sandpaper mouth. Maybe it’s a side effect of the chemicals. But I’m not ladylike as I scoop the water into my hands and lap it up like a dog on all fours.

Those brown eyes burn into my back, watching me slake my thirst. It’s in his silence that tells me he knows this feeling all too well. He’s been starved. Beaten. Convinced of his imminent death. He can relate as I slurp from the source, dipping my mouth into the stream.

Once I’m finished, I look over my shoulder with cold water spilling down my chin. Dessin’s shoulders stiffen.

“Why did you do it?”

“Do what?” I ask, drying my hands on my gown.

“Why did you lead them to you? I asked you to hide…” This might be the first time I’ve heard him struggle to get a sentence out. Normally, he’s confident and collected. But now, he looks at me like I’ve plunged a stake through his heart.

“You took too long. I wanted to make sure you’d get out safely.”

He leans down in front of me, uses his thumb to wipe the water from my chin, letting it linger below my bottom lip.

“I had it under control. I had everything under control.” His jaw tightens, hand falling away. “You had no right to go rogue like that. If you would have just stayed hidden and waited patiently for me… none of this would have happened!” His words are soaked in oil and fire.

“I just wanted to help—”

“Do you have any idea what it did to me? What it did to Kane? To hear your screams as you were hauled away from us?! To know what was going to happen to you when Albatross got a hold of you?” He steps away from me in a fluster. Veins bulge from his arms. Brow tight and clenched together.

“I—I’m trying really hard to understand how you could be the one upset right now.” I lock my jaw and hold my breath. Trying to contain the river of frustration.

Dessin paces in front of me, shaking his head. The sunset hovers over the horizon behind him, a deep golden orange, like the start of a forest fire.

“After everything we’ve been through, you didn’t believe I’d make it back? Jesus, it nearly destroyed us to see you like this!” he shouts, pointing to my bloody, bruised face.

I flinch. Every muscle, cell, atom, and fiber—flinches.

His face falls, all anger and resentment sliding from his cheeks to his chest, tucking itself back into the toxic space of his heart. He blinks slowly, relaxing all features, including those hickory-smoked eyes, smothered in warm butter.

It’s the slack look, the emptiness that tells me he’s dissociating again.

And as the darkness clears, he walks to me, a heaviness in his steps, a defeat and a longing that bows down to me. With the weight of his shoulders, he lunges into me, lifting me off of the ground, arms tied around my waist, his face tucked into the side of my neck. And his lips caressing my cold skin.

“Kane?” I choke out, my chin resting on his shoulder and my chilled hands grasping his neck. “You should let me know when you show back up.”

“Why would I do that?” he hums into me. “You recognize me before I get the chance to tell you.”

I relax my face, closing my eyes, inhaling his woodsy scent. “It was bad,” I confess.

“I know,” he says, understanding that even though for him it was four hours, for me it was four months. “I’m hurting with you, honey.”

“It was horrible. It was so horrible.” My voice cracks, ripping down the middle. The pieces fall to him in heartache.

“You’re safe now.”

“I just wanted to come home.”

His hand finds my hair, comforting me with its gentle caressing. Before he says what’s building in his mind, stirring in his thoughts, Kane pulls a rag from his pocket, swiping it through the stream.

“Chin up,” he whispers, hovering the dripping cloth over my right eye, asking for permission. I nod, swallowing down the stumble my heart makes.

With soft dabs, Kane cleans the blood from my cheek, under my nose, the clotted cut over my left eyebrow. I wince yet melt into his gentle touch. There are so many things I want to say. Why don’t you feel the same way I do? Why did you kiss me? Why did Dessin make love to me? What does it all mean? And how—how can you look at me like this? Like I’m your most valued piece of treasure. Like I’m the beating of your heart. I’m the flowing of your veins.

“Can you tell me something?” Kane asks. “Dessin says you thanked DaiSzek for saving you in your cage. You said he took you to a safe place. What did you mean?”

I’m reminded of the great shadow of DaiSzek, hovering over my defiled body in the cage. In the bizarre darkness, climbing onto his back and him carrying me away to the meadow. Where young Kane sat with me until it was all over.

“When I was blinded and left to go mad in the darkness, I was in a paralyzing panic, I think I was in shock. I think I became delusional. I saw DaiSzek in the cage. He took me somewhere far away into the forest. It was a beautiful meadow with purple flowers. And… you showed up,” I tell him, refusing to let go of his embrace.

“Me?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t who you are now. It was you when you were thirteen years old.” I sigh into his shoulder. “You were smarter than me even at that age.”

Kane leans back, holding me an arm’s length away by the caps of my shoulders.

“Did you learn a name for that place?” He searches my eyes for the answer he’s looking for. Wait… does he know what it’s called?

“How did you know it has a name?” I ask cautiously. I thought I made it up in my mind. I thought it was as fictional as a dream? A hallucination?

He smiles like the answer is obvious. “Ambrose Oasis.”

“What?” I gasp, stepping away. “How did you know that?”

“Because I’m the one who named it.”