The Puppeteer and The Poisoned Pawn (The Pawn and The Puppet series Book 3)

Skylenna

Each patient door is opened.

I stand off to the side, nodding my head at each of them as they race for the exits. There’s Samantha, the patient with severe OCD. She limps past me with spindly limbs that have been deformed in the chair binding treatment too many times.

There’s Ray, the young man that only has severe depression and yet was treated for not conforming to the society. He shouldn’t even be in this section.

I watch the rest pay me grateful looks before disappearing. But whoever is in the second and third room doesn’t come out. I take a cautious step toward room two’s doorway, peeking inside, careful not to spook them with my appearance.

A young woman cowers in the corner of the room, clutching her knees to her chest. Shuddering with each small breath. I raise my eyebrows as I recognize that copper hair, long and wild. It’s the girl that was buried alive in the North Saphrine Forest. The girl that we’ve already had two run-ins with. How the hell has she ended up here?

She looks up at me with a dark, haunted gaze.

“Do you remember me?” I ask, approaching her like a cornered animal. I don’t bother asking how she ended up in this tight spot. With a city this strict, it was probably something small.

Her hopeless gaze fills up with tears. She nods once.

“You’ve had a lot of bad luck lately,” I comment, gesturing around the room.

She scans my bloodied patient’s gown in horror.

“I’ve had bad luck too.” I look down at the evidence covering my arms and legs. “I guess this was my way of getting even… for all of the bad luck I’ve received.”

“What happened to you?” she asks hesitantly. Her soft voice is hoarse, probably from screaming during her treatments.

I attempt to smile down at her, but my face remains cold and hard. “I lost the only man I’ve ever loved.”

She lifts her chin in understanding, then glances behind me with wide eyes. At someone who has approached. And it’s stupid. So fucking stupid. The way my heart leaps. The way I think, just for a moment, that Dessin is standing right behind me.

He isn’t. I turn to see the man she’s been traveling with. “Niklaus,” I say. Curly black hair that reaches his shoulders. White shirt and pants. He towers over me.

He gives me a once-over, jaw hanging to the floor. “Shit,” he breathes. “Are you what happened to the hallway?” He nods his head at the orderlies swinging from the ceiling.

I don’t answer. Just stare blankly.

His throat bobs before he redirects his attention to the girl still shuddering in the corner. “Hey, spitfire.” He kneels in front of her. “Ready to get the hell out of here?”

She nods with a quivering bottom lip, wrapping her tan arms around his neck in a hug.

Niklaus looks back at me hesitantly. “Can we leave?”

“Yes.” I take a few steps backward, ready to keep going. “But you should run. This place won’t be standing for much longer.”

For the next few minutes, I release every patient in the women’s wing. The ones that don’t meet societal standards like extreme dieting, keeping sinless skin, or dressing and acting the right way. This is the wing that starves, brainwashes, and creates conditioned responses for women to hate the sight of carbs and get nauseated at the taste of sugar.

After the battered prisoners of this castle file out of every hallway, I find the door of the last patient I’ve been waiting to see.

The door creaks open, unmasking the woman who has been waiting years for this day. The woman who has kept up the ruse of insanity. The woman that kept Dessin’s secret.

Sern.

She doesn’t look at me as I take my first step past the threshold. Her weary, round eyes stare into a haze that isn’t quite the wall in front of her but in that general direction.

Sern is as still as a stone statue. A posture that may be from the habit of this act, or perhaps she’s detached from this body altogether. Something I can relate to.

I stand in front of her, wondering if the blood dripping down my arms and neck will grab her attention and snap her out of this trance.

“No more hiding,” I say with a scratchy voice and dry mouth.

She blinks, readjusting her focus to the vibrant contrast of bright red staining my white cotton gown. Her full lips part, only a fraction of a centimeter, and she meets my eyes. A moment of lucidity, a flash of the sane woman that was never meant to live in a place like this.

“Do you remember me?” I ask.

Sern nods, gulping as her eyes scale down the horror show of my body.

“They’re all dead. You can go home now.”

Her eyes snap up to mine again. “What did you say?”

“Go home, Sern.”

She glances out the door, deciding if it’s a trick or not, but her gaze lands on the other open doors across the hall. The patients running for the stairwell.

“You did this?”

I just stare at her.

She rubs a trembling hand over the back of her arm. Sighing. “He said you’d become like him one day.”

I don’t have to ask. I know who “him” is.

“I have been waiting a very long time for this day, Skylenna Ambrose.” Sern shakes her head, smoothing the hair around her neat bun. “He told me that the day I would be liberated would be by your hand. That—”

But I don’t need to listen anymore. I can hear his voice now; the memory of what he said echoes around me.

“She’ll be far more powerful than I can fathom. If she uses this place to channel her rage, get her a message for me. Tell her to keep going. This is far from over.”

“—this is far from over,” Sern finishes just after Dessin’s voice disappears from my mind.

I swallow down the lump lodging in my throat. Nod my head. There are glimpses playing out around us of Sern caring for Dessin over the years, being kind when there was no kindness left, and withstanding the pressure of Aurick’s father, Vlademur, to spill Dessin’s secrets. They even threatened her family.

“Take your children and your husband into the North Saphrine Forest. When you see a pack of white wolves, you’ve found it. Tell them Skylenna sent you for refuge. And warn them that there is a war coming in only a few months.”

Sern stands now, grasping my bloody hands with fierce gratitude. Tears trickle over her lids, and that firm trumpet of a voice spills past her mouth. “I owe you my life, Skylenna Ambrose.”

She bolts out of the asylum with a new purpose and excitement that she probably hasn’t felt in a very long time.

And with the last patient gone, I do what Asena said I would be able to do one day.

I breathe fire.

Knocking the gas lamps from the walls, the flames spread like a flesh-eating virus. The rooms go up in unconquerable flames, scaling up the walls, swallowing the beds whole. Heat drenches my body in sweat and dried blood.

With each unhurried step I take through the hallways, knocking each gas lamp from its post, I remember the way Scarlett’s house went up in flames. A symbol of my grief and all I had lost. This fire is the end. It’s releasing the pain of those who have suffered, those who have lost their lives in these walls, those who were treated like wild animals. And any conformist or council member still alive will perish by fire.

By the time I open the front doors, the cool air washes over my red cheeks, filtering through my stringy hair.

I walk away without looking back.

This is for you.