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

The city isn’t the quiet, glamorous nook it was when I left it. It comes to life with screams, women running from house to house in their evening gowns, and children crying.

It’s as if that makeup covering the massive bruise that is the ugliness of this city has been wiped clean. The women run their hands through their perfect hair, sweat and tears drip from their cheeks, and something is very, very wrong here.

I even start to wonder if this was because of me. Are they really that upset over the destruction of the asylum? Maybe the patients have done something horrible.

Aurick meets us outside of the mountain, staring at Dessin in wide-eyed disbelief.

“You are a goddamned con artist,” he grits out.

“Thank you.” Dessin smiles proudly.

“How’d you do it? Huh? Was it fake blood? Did you have mirrors set up for the illusion? Were we all on drugs that gave us gory hallucinations?” It’s hard to tell if he’s angry or just overwhelmed.

“Did you cry in my absence, Aurick?”

“I should have known. You’re this unkillable cockroach. Of course you’d find a way to escape death.”

“You should feel lucky we’ve come back,” I say through the confines of my bared teeth.

Aurick’s icy gaze slides to me slowly, losing all signs of humor and taunting. His eyes flutter in acknowledgment, and the space between his eyebrows creases.

“More than you can imagine.” He glances at the group. “The Vexamen Breed finally infiltrated the city. They’ve abducted several children under the age of two, some of the same they stole last time. Some different. One fell swoop at midnight, and every mother woke up this morning screaming their heads off.”

Dread thickens in my stomach, rising up my throat like bile.

“Have you sent your army to get them back?” I ask, unable to hide the impending doom straining my voice.

“I have. But they’ve already boarded their ship.”

“What do they want babies for?” Ruth twists her hands nervously.

“That’s how they’ve built the greatest army in the world. They remove them from their mother’s breast, raise them without empathy or compassion, train them to kill without remorse, turn them into obedient, emotionless assassins.”

A shiver races down my back. Babies. Without their parents to teach them how to decide right from wrong, how to feel empathy, and how to respect life—humans would be monsters. Trained, highly skilled monsters.

“What’s your plan? How’re we getting them back?” I force myself to stand up straighter.

Aurick gives me a once-over look. “You and Dessin will infiltrate the ship. Come up with a way to overrun them, and turn it back to our shores.”

Oh, is that right? I glare back at him without blinking. “And if we refuse?”

Aurick glances behind him with a cocky glint in his eyes. He doesn’t have to say anything. We all see the many archers hiding in the trees. “One word and one of your friends will be killed. They aim for the head. I’m done playing this game of power with both of you. Respect the line of succession. We can either go to war with each other, or we can save the lives of innocent children.”

A few months ago, I would have cowered behind Dessin, waiting to see how this statement would have pissed him off. But today, that woman that walked through the asylum leaving a trail of bodies and blood in her wake, that woman—no, that dragon—has been stirred from slumber. She comes to a boiling point inside of me, clenching down on my muscles, pouring acid through my veins.

And it’s a knee-jerk reaction, a flex of my body that’s as primal as taking a breath of air. That monster living in my soul finally reveals how to use my abilities for something greater. It’s as if I’m possessed as I take two quick steps toward Aurick; his eyes widen, but he doesn’t retreat, and my hands find the sides of his head. Like a magnet pulling me in.

I don’t know how I’m able to do it, but the feeling rises like the sun in my chest; it tugs his conscience, once, twice, and again until he’s tumbling through the void with me. I can feel his sudden panic, sense his confusion. And it isn’t like the other times. We don’t linger on one memory. I show them all. A fast, strobing slideshow of my pain. Of Niles’s treatments. Of Chekiss drowning. Of Kane’s screams as he watched his family die.

But it isn’t just the memory. No, it’s the feelings that came with it. The childlike terror, the depression, the sting of heartache in my chest. I wrap them all around Aurick’s neck like a noose. And he’s my fucking prisoner in this dark place tucked between both of our minds.

For him, it feels like I’ve trapped him for a century. He screams as the pain swallows him whole. He begs, although he doesn’t know who to grovel to. He just knows that someone has made him a slave. And here I am, pulling the strings of this puppet. Watching him experience the events that have tortured us. All thanks to his family.

Lifting my hands from his temples, I pull us back. The air whooshes around us as Aurick blinks back at me in shock, stumbling backward, tripping over his own feet. His entire body quivers like the last leaf on a dying tree.

“What just happened?” Dessin moves behind me. “What did you do to him?”

Aurick can’t even answer. He’s too busy staring at me like the monster he knows he helped create, trying to understand where he was, how long he’s been gone, and why he can’t shake the feelings of abandonment, relentless torture, and true agony.

“I fixed him,” I say.

A cold gust of wind sifts through my limbs until I’m shaking too. The kind of vibration that comes from deep in my muscles, thrumming through my bones. It’s like standing out in the winter forest without any clothes on. I wrap my arms tightly around my body to contain it.

“You fixed him?” Niles examines Aurick as he stares up at me in disbelief.

“I—gave him—our pain.”

“Baby, your lips are turning blue,” Dessin says, running a thumb over my bottom lip. He jerks his head back to Aurick. “What happened? What’s wrong with her?”

Aurick tries to get to his feet. “She got in my head. She—” He studies me, partly out of fear, partly out of admiration. “Skylenna, have you ever done that to someone before?”

Forced them to endure years’ worth of torture within a blink of an eye? “No.” I shake my head.

He blows out a breath, running his long fingers through his raven hair.

“What’s wrong with her?” Dessin barks, wrapping his warm arms around me.

“How should I know? I’ve never seen a subject do that before! Fuck, it felt like I was in the penitentiary—like I was sentenced for an eternity.”

Dessin presses his warm lips to my cheeks, rubbing his hands up and down my cold arms to build friction. I nuzzle into his chest, aching to be closer, to feel more of his hot skin on mine.

“It’s called the Prison Void.” A sultry, feminine voice awakens behind us, stepping through the tree line.

Dessin and I turn to look at her. High-waisted khaki pants, a loose-fitted black button-down, and a thick braid of burgundy hair glimmering in the sun.

She looks past us to Aurick with ocean-blue eyes, a dark border of black lashes, a freckled, pale complexion, and lips so full they appear swollen and cherry red.

“No…” Aurick exhales.

I’ve met this woman once in a small house arranged by Judas. She introduced herself as Lynn.

“Marilynn Blackforth,” I say.

Aurick’s formerly dead fiancé.