The Pawn and The Puppet (The Pawn and The Puppet series Book 1)

I could not sleep last night.

I tried to count the days we have left, but it doesn’t matter. We had a breakthrough on both of our ends. I showed him the ugliest side of me. And he lifted that veil, that cloak of mystery, for me to see his past. It wasn’t ugly at all. But it did make my heart twist and ache.

Instead of sleeping, I crawled out of my window and sat on the roof of Aurick’s mansion, looking up at the sky in search of Dessin’s stars. And as I stared up at the abyss of clouds blocking the moon and the empty atmosphere, my future became abundantly clear, as if the sun came peeking out at midnight, smiling at me.

There is no future left in this home.

This extravagant piece of architecture was never my happy ending.

It’s nearly time for me to go.

This has always been about fulfilling my sister’s dying wish, but it has turned into so much more. I’ve built friendships. I’ve created a bond with Dessin that I can’t break. And it’s evident that the asylum will never let them go. They will rot within those walls, decay into the foundation as if they never existed.

That only leaves me one choice.

Arriving late to the asylum, I step through the doors to hear my name being used in the dining hall. “Skylenna will throw a fit when she hears.” A whisper between conformists having breakfast. Immediately, I think something happened to Dessin. I take off running to his room. I pass Ruth, who flusters at the sight of me in a sprint. “What’s wrong?”

I ignore her. Almost to the door. Past Chekiss’s room. Past Niles.

I unlock the thirteenth door with a thrust of aggression.

Sitting in a chair, he raises his head to greet me.

“You look rested. ” He gives me a once-over. I sigh loudly, panting to catch my breath. “God.” Whispering under my breath, I place my hand over my forehead and hunch over to fill my lungs. I half expected him to not be here at all or to be pinned down and tortured again.

He’s standing now, concerned. “I was being sarcastic. You look terrible,” he says.

“Lovely to see you too.” I spit out a laugh.

“What’s the matter?”

I smile. “Nothing.” Deep breath. “Nothing, I overheard someone saying I was going to be upset when I heard about something, and I thought they were talking about you. I… I had a bad feeling.”

He narrows his eyes. “I need to ask something of you before the day is over.” He crosses his arms and raises his chin, detached and serious.

I stand up straight.

“Do you feel a bond between us?” His jaw clenches. Humor gone from his eyes.

“What?” I try to step back, but he tugs me toward him, hooking his hands around my arms with tender pressure.

“A bond. The kind that is familiar. The kind you can’t reach out and touch, but you know it’s there. A bond that you’ve never felt with anyone in the world before. A bond that is unbreakable, even through death.”

I widen my eyes. “Dessin—”

I know the bond he speaks of. The kind that would send me into a forest fire to be with him.

“Yes. I’ve felt that bond to you since the moment I stepped foot in this room.” Since the moment I saw your smile.

He’s become my best friend and closest ally in a short amount of time. And there’s something buried deep that I trust, a shelter I never want to leave.

“Would you abandon your whole world for me?” he asks. In those brazen dark eyes, I can see that this is his most dire question. One that he has been waiting to ask me.

There’s a sharp clinking sound, and the door is thrown open. Martin, in a power stance, wearing a suit with a white button-down and suspenders. He rolls up his sleeves and leads a large team of military men—wearing merlot-red wool blazers with bronze tassel linings. Demechnef. Belts of blades and weapons hanging from around their hips.

They’ve come for him.

“We’re in the middle of something,” Dessin purrs casually. “You can come back in—a couple of years.” He winks at me as if he simply does not care that the air has shifted and we’re outnumbered.

Flooding the room in vast numbers like a swarm of cockroaches, four of them hook their hands around his arms and bind them in shackles. He lets them. Standing at ease, calm and collected, like he knew this was coming.

“What are you doing?” I shriek. “Let him go!”

“Skylenna, did you really think you’d get away with your little rendezvous last night? You signed an agreement. One of the clauses is that he is clearly not allowed to leave the premises of the asylum. You knew that.” Martin was born with this sneer on his round face. He places a hand on my shoulder. “Time is up. We gave you the time. The patient hasn’t improved. He is to be publicly executed at dawn.”

My heart sinks into the earth. “No…” is all I can muster. I failed him. I failed… He’s going to die. Executed in front of my eyes. The thought of living and him not being on this earth anymore is unbearable.

I watch, blood draining from my face, as they usher Dessin out of his room. He watches me with careful eyes, and I wish I knew more than anything what he is thinking. Why he isn’t fighting back.

In the midst of him being dragged from my grasp, I make eye contact, and the entire world stops spinning. Even the particles in the air take pause. I look into those soft-brown eyes that have consumed me from the first day I met him. The same eyes that made people cower in fear of him, the same eyes that made me feel safe when my surroundings told me to run. From the moment I met him, I felt what it was like for the first time to come home. I can’t let him go. I won’t say goodbye.

“Dessin, run,” I breathe the words, push them into existence. I would rather him be alive and safe than leave this earth permanently. Martin spins around to look at me and to make sure he heard right. I was giving Dessin the okay to fight back. To escape for good.

Wide eyed and beside himself, Martin stares into Dessin’s stoic being, examining him as if waiting for a dormant volcano to erupt.

Dessin phases into a full moon, cold and emerging from darkness, an expression I have recognized as the animal inside of him, going on instinct to do what needs to be done to escape fatality. But the men of Demechnef came prepared. Before he can make a move, they secure us in his room by bolting the door shut. They remove gas masks from their belts and release canisters that spew fog into the room. I watch them strap the black crow’s masks over their faces, one by one taking a fighting stance as they wait for Dessin to retaliate.

But he does not move. Only a mere glance at me as Martin covers my nose and mouth with a small half mask.

The fog lifts, and I jerk backward, realizing what they’re doing.

Why isn’t he fighting? He doesn’t have a mask. Dessin! I try to wiggle free, but Martin is holding me from behind, keeping the mask firmly over my face.

“Lemmego!” But my scream is muffled. And the smoke rises to Dessin’s face, thin like a puff of steam from a cup of tea. Cover your face!

But that dazzling smile glistens through the fog, claiming ownership of the situation. My shoulders relax, and I stop fighting Martin’s hold. Of course, he knows what he’s doing. And as theatrical as he is known to be in moments of panic, he takes a deep breath in, letting the gasses slip into his nostrils, inhaling into his lungs. And nothing happens.

The men take hold of the weapons on their belts, looking back and forth between each other, confused as to why he didn’t collapse to the floor.

“Hello, gentlemen,” Dessin says calmly. “Have you missed me?”

Martin ushers us to the back wall away from the tension building in their stone faces, rising in their testosterone levels. And right on cue, the man with honey-blond hair, directly across from Dessin, draws what looks like a handful of darts from his belt, plucking them one by one and flinging them at Dessin, his arm extending then drawing back to snatch another dart. The ends are pointed with a needle dripping with red residue. A tranquilizer, perhaps? But his impressive quickness and precise aim are no match for Dessin. His body dodges the flying darts like the crack of a whip. The other men seek out their own weapons of choice, a maul, hand axes, daggers, a triple-bladed knife, and of course… The sickle.

My heart sinks in on itself. The weapon they forced on him to slice into his own mother. The weapon that obliterated his childhood. His family.

And the collision of the twelve men swarming in on one man whirls together in a heap of sweeping movements. It’s a strike of thunder without sound. The metal from their weapons clinking against each other, but in the center of it all, Dessin uses his bare hands. Deflecting blows by intercepting wrists, breaking arms, and whipping a stiff leg through the air, taking out three men at once.

It’s in this tornado of fists and elbows and grunts of agony that I catch a glimpse of blood splattering to the floor. Four men are unmoving on the ground, but only one with a forehead gashed open and a stream of blood flowing into his right eye.

The rest take turns swiping their blades at Dessin in what could only be described as a choreographed performance, like assassins being instructed at a ballet. Dessin takes a man’s head into his hands, using it as a handle to throw his exhausted body into two others, collapsing them to the floor like a house of cards.

It’s clear they’ve come from the same training. They know Dessin. They anticipate that he’ll overpower them. Yet, they have to put up a fight. They have their orders.

This is the first time I witness Dessin’s honed physical skills. If a stranger saw him swarmed and attacked by twelve capable men, they’d already assume Dessin’s fate was sealed. My chest vibrates as if an avalanche has fallen, and my heart thumps like tumbling rocks down a mountain. He’s down to one man. The one with the sickle. And I can see in his satisfied glare and the inferno under his flesh that he saved him for last, to take his time, without any distraction.

With a launch like a lion in the hunt, Dessin climbs up the wall behind the middle-aged man, spinning through the air to strike the last man with his bare knuckles three times against the jaw, the cheek, the bridge of his nose. And it’s powerful, like a shooting star crashing into a small meteor. His blows are violent yet sharp and contained. It’s a matter of calculation for him, measurements of where to hit, the angle, the power and passion to let explode from his body.

But it’s not enough. Not for the man wielding the sickle. He’s building up to the final decisive movement. He gyrates in the air with his leg extended, forcing a fatal blow to the side of the man’s face. It’s swift, without warning, and he falls to the stone floor, cracking his cheekbone like an egg.

Dessin hovers over him, seizes the sickle from his limp grasp.

“It’s time to come home, Dessin,” the man chokes out, spitting a string of clotted red saliva to the ground.

Home. I hope he doesn’t believe that to be true.

“How many of you must I kill until you comprehend? I cannot be controlled.” Dessin spins the sickle handle on his index finger, watching the hook of the blade rotate.

“You can be as long as she’s alive,” the man hisses through his bloody mouth.

The sickle stops spinning, and Dessin’s body tenses. A wicked smile with more edge and supremacy than a strike of lightning. His muscles bulge from his arms, revealing the indentations across his toned biceps as he presses the edge of the sickle across the man’s throat, pointing it there, showcasing what he could do if he wanted.

“I enjoy a challenge.” And he stomps on the blade, crushing it into the man’s trachea and slicing it down the bone of his spine. His arteries burst like the city’s fountains at midnight, spraying like broken pipes across Dessin’s white clothes.

Martin’s arms harden around me as we both stutter on a painfully broken gasp.

But it’s still not enough. He stomps on the blade once more, severing the spine and decapitating the man. His head, with a gaping mouth and glossy-blue eyes, rolls toward us. And in a ritualistic trance, he plucks a rusted knife with a wooden handle from his pocket, proceeding to stab him in the chest three times.

I’ve been standing with locked knees and clenched shoulders for long enough that I might as well be dipped in wet concrete, turning into a block of pavement. I can hardly take in a breath, barely wipe away the tears gathering in my eyes. What did I just see?

How can I unsee this? After everything, does he deserve to be executed? What kind of man is he? The thoughts are polluting my mind like a giant storm cloud carrying the makings of a tornado.

The guiltless pool of hot crimson fluids spills in spurts around the man’s severed neck. Dessin drops the sickle next to the head, staring at it, reliving tragedies, visualizing his other kills. Although I’m not certain of the last part—but it fits in like a puzzle piece with that haunted glazed look of his eyes.

My mind trails frantically back to the fight, to the men all lying helplessly at our feet, locked in this room with a genius executioner. It peels back my strength, unveiling the soft, gushy parts of my humanity. And it simply slips out. A piercing, guttural scream.

Dessin looks back at me, suddenly aware once more that I exist and that I was among the audience of two for the massacre. He takes a step toward me, avoiding the puddle of blood still growing in size. But he stops before taking another step, eyebrows rising as he analyzes my face—and there’s a question waiting on his lips, frozen in fear. Are you afraid of me yet? He wants to ask it. His brow creases in debilitating anticipation.

I want to scream at him—Yes! Yes, I’m terrified! This was nothing short of monstrous. But I gave him permission. I urged him to run to freedom. And even though this was like watching a tsunami wipe out an entire small section of civilization—I cannot be afraid of him. It would be like being afraid of the sky because at any moment, it could rain hail or fire. It’s intelligibly his nature, like a volcano.

As he opens his mouth to speak, Martin’s arms tense around me. I hold up my quivering hand to stop him. “Go see the stars,” I say weakly. If he goes to our secret place, at least I’ll know where to find him. At least I won’t have to suffer the idea of never being able to see him again.

He looks at Martin and back at me. Tilts his head to the side, doubtful, visibly rejecting the idea of leaving me.

“Leave,” I say between my gritted teeth.

But his eyes burn like two suns into mine.

“Get out!” I scream, and my body shakes with an internal sob. Venomous tears swell in my eyes, clawing over my lids.

The muscles in his shoulders go rigid. You have to leave. They could send more men. He’ll never make it out fast enough with me. I’ll only slow him down.

“I said get out! Get the hell out!” I fire my words off like arrows slicing into his flesh. Heat spills over my face and chest, burning under my skin as I thrash against Martin’s hold. My world burns around the edges, blisters from the hot rage I release into the thirteenth room to get him to walk away. Save yourself, damnit.

“I said leave, you bastard! I hate you!” It’s those last words that strike us like the sickle. He stumbles back toward the door, repeatedly blinking like he can’t process my indignation. A short choppy breath as he forces the door open, never taking his eyes off of me. Please, go. I beg with a river of tears. As he disappears from the doorway, I split at the seams, suffocating on my own sobs. Oh God, I’m never going to see him again.

With groaning men around me on the floor, cursing, panting, still trying to understand what happened, Martin grabs my forearm and walks me out of the room into the hallway. “You’re coming with me.”

I don’t object. My heart and soul are still in shock, standing in the mess of blood, waiting for Dessin to come back for me. I know my actions in causing his escape will have repercussions. I know I am to pay for letting him leave, but I am not bothered by that. The only thing I care about is that he is safe. That I saved him from being executed.

Prancing down the hallway with my elbow locked in Martin’s sweaty grasp, Ruth exits Chekiss’s room, closing the door behind her.

“Skylenna?” She gasps, and my reflection is a mess of sweat, gray tears, and blood splattered across my legs and shoes. “What is this?” she shrieks at Martin.

“Out of our way, child,” he grumbles, blustering past her.

“Unhand—her!” Ruth stumbles behind us. “Skylenna!”

Goodbye, my friend.

He whirls around to face her, bumping me into a wall in the process.

“Another word out of you, and I will have you thrown from the premises, leaving your penniless family to grovel in the Bear Traps outside this city, where your names will be forgotten.” His predictable sneer is back. Ruth has suspended her steps forward, watching me with pain-stricken eyes.

“Tell them I said goodbye,” I say. I don’t have to point at their rooms for her to know. Chekiss and Niles. Take care of them.

She nods slowly.

I’ll come back for you, soul sister.