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

They find us dripping wet on the cobblestone. And they aren’t gentle.

It’s as if finding us is a personal victory. A personal vendetta to make us suffer.

At first, Dessin humors them. Makes a solid effort to look surprised, caught off guard, as if they managed to sneak up on him. He even fights back, putting a tenth of the effort into what he’s capable of in his punches. But they “overpower him,” managing to lock him in a new set of shackles. They’re different, though. Heavier. Thick, weighted brass. The chains lace around his waist, down to his ankles, around his neck.

He doesn’t look surprised that they upgraded. But he fakes a look of begrudging defeat.

That part is easy. The acting rolls smoothly off his broad shoulders and furrowed brow. It’s all part of the plan. An effortless shift in power from Dessin to the five guards.

Until one of them yanks down my wet breeches, revealing a black lace thong from the Nightamous Horde.

“What do we have here?” The guard laughs, turning me around to show his friends—and Dessin—my bare ass. “Has he been dressing you up like his whore?”

My lungs turn to ice. I shift my head around enough to see Dessin’s eyes widen, jaw flex. His eyes dart from my backside to me then back to my backside.

“Stop,” I mutter, half commanding, half pleading.

“Your little boyfriend has made us look pretty bad for letting him escape.” The guard still holding the back of my breeches turns his attention to me with a predatory smile. “How do you think we should punish him?”

The other guards laugh. But Dessin is a towering tree. Unmoving. Unflinching. Godlike as he decides what to do with their meaningless fate.

“Should we,”—he plucks my thong, snapping it over my skin—“play with you in front of him? Show the bastard you’re not his property anymore?”

“No,” I choke out. Damnit. He’s going to have to blow his cover before we’ve even started. I want to swat the guard’s hands away, but my wrists are shackled just like Dessin’s.

The guard glances back at Dessin. “What do you think? Would it upset you to see me play with her pussy?”

I panic. “No!” I scream. My body thrashes against his hold hard enough to knock his hands away from me. But only for a moment. Two guards rush over, holding me steady, leaving Dessin’s side, which, of course, is a mistake on their end.

I glance back at his silent fury again. Though he isn’t moving, there’s a current of feral alpha energy buzzing under his tan skin. A murderous frequency behind his cold stare.

Calm down! I tell myself. They’re not going to do anything. They’re bluffing!

But I sink into a pit of fear as a clammy hand cups my most sensitive skin. The important area that my thong covers. And he’s glaring at Dessin as his hand strokes over the lace.

“Think I can make her come with my fingers, Patient Thirteen?” he taunts, pinching my clit through my thong. I wince, turning my face so Dessin can’t see. “Or should I pull out my cock to finish her off?”

That’s it. We’re done. I wait for Dessin to detonate.

“Unhand her!” A voice of authority booms through the night, bouncing off the cobblestone street. It’s familiar. Stern with an aged tone. The metal clap of a buggy door shutting forces the men to let me go after they pull my breeches back up.

As I turn around, a short figure steps under the light of the nearest streetlight post. Dark skin, short white hair, a pin-striped suit, and a thick wooden cane under his right palm.

Lyoness. The head council member that was the deciding vote for Dessin’s life.

He glares at the guards, one by one, examining the situation. “What might have happened if I hadn’t shown up?” he asks them, voice rough and creaky.

No one answers.

“Get them to Emerald Lake,” he barks. “I’ll deal with the five of you later.”

I don’t miss the quick latching of Dessin’s shackles before we’re herded into a prisoner’s buggy. Despite the terror that had a hold on me moments ago, I want to laugh.

He’s already found a way out of their upgraded security.

~

We’re herded into the hall of the intricate section like cattle that strayed from the farm.

I didn’t realize how it would affect me, being here again, stumbling along the checkerboard tile, hearing the moans through the thick stone walls.

My entire body trembles, because why wouldn’t it? This establishment—this prison—was frightening enough when I conducted the treatments. Now I’ll be a victim of them. I’ll endure the abuse daily, keep my mouth shut until we get what we need from Judas. At least there’s that. If I still have that magic touch, this shouldn’t take long, right? But what if it does? What if I can only speak to Judas on a rare occasion? What if he doesn’t budge?

A knot twists in my stomach, growing thorns that stab vital organs.

I don’t think I will last long. Dessin clearly has alters that front when he can’t take the pain. Like when the Nightamous Horde was going to burn him, torture him, a new alter took his place. An alter that seemed to enjoy the pain.

I’m not armed with that kind of defense. But I can’t let him down. He has to start looking at me like an equal, even though it’s clear that he holds all of the power here, and I’m merely a helpless marionette in this game.

I try to look back at Dessin, but instead I’m greeted with a boot to the back, launching me through the air until my face smacks against the checkerboard tile. A sharp sting vibrates across my cheekbone, pressurizing behind my right eyeball.

“Ugh!” I groan, lying flat like a pancake.

Dessin growls behind me, rattling his chains in protest. “When this is all over,” he snarls. “I’ll make sure I take my time with you. You’ll beg for a quick death.”

There’s a believing silence from our audience. A sense of consideration because they know he is true to his word. They must have a suspicion that he could get out of this.

But they shake it off. “Up! Now!” the guard orders me, snatching a fistful of my honey hair, yanking me to stand upright.

If I thought my body was shaking before, it’s a full-on earthquake now. My teeth are chattering. My intestines burn as we move closer to the twelfth room.

No. I don’t think I can. It’s like—I start panting like a dog—like being locked in a basement. A cold, dark basement. I’m wheezing, looking for an escape, for a way to stall until I’m ready.

“Wait,” I blurt out. “Just wait a second!”

But they only jerk me harder to the door that will be the source of nightmares for me until the day I die.

“Dessin!” I shriek, digging in my heels to buy me some time. “Dessin, I’m scared!”

I only catch a glimpse of his face as they open my door. A look of strength. Perseverance. But also a dark glint of roaring agony.

I’ve got you, he mouths to me before I’m thrown into my new home, chains and all.

The room is dim with flickering sconces, and the iron-framed bed is on the right wall instead of the left. I slump a little. At least we’ll share a wall when we sleep. But how many nights will that be? Only a couple of days? Weeks? Months? I guess that all depends on me. On my ability to learn what Judas knows.

I take another look around. The small bathroom. The rusted sink. The stained white sheets. The crumbling foundation, gray ceiling, unswept floor. It’s exactly like a basement.

But I chose to be here. I chose this.

The knowledge doesn’t stop the tears from spilling over my eyes, staining my cheeks and neck. I don’t hold it back this time. I remove the leash from my grief and allow it to run free, just for tonight. Because I can’t change out of my wet clothes and I’m cold and alone in a room that reminds me of nights locked away, curled in a tight ball at the age of six. I want to go back to the forest. I want to see Asena and Garanthian again.

It’s on this night I allow myself to feel weak and afraid. Like an injured animal, I curl up on my creaky, hard bed, shivering without a warm blanket or dry clothes or the crackling of a fire to soothe me to sleep.

At least Dessin isn’t here to see this. To see me splitting at the seams. To see how weak I really am in comparison to him. He would be better off without me dragging him down. Another sob rattles my body, clutching my rib cage.

I place my damp hand on the wall I share with Dessin. On the other side, I imagine him lying in the small bed parallel to mine. I imagine he’s planning the demise of this hellhole. Plotting the methods of unfathomable torture he’ll use on the guards.

And strangely enough, that brings me comfort.

This will end with his wrath.

~

“I wasn’t aware you were still alive.”

I flinch in my frigid wet clothes that only dried a little while I slept. But that’s a gray area, isn’t it? I didn’t really sleep, not soundly, anyway. It was a delirious loop of drifting close to sleep, then waking in an icy panic. I was relaxed enough to close my eyes again, yet I never even heard my door open and shut.

“I thought he would have killed you. Maybe raped you first, then carved your heart out slowly. Perhaps he would have found a way to keep it attached to all major arteries, scooping it an inch above your breastbone, just to show you it to you before he ate it.” Meridei sits in the conformists chair in the middle of the room. Her raven hair still short, styled in a neat bowl cut around her head. That godforsaken navy-blue uniform dress. Her black, soulless eyes.

My dry eyes widen as I process what she’s saying. What she’s crudely implying. She figured Dessin would have done away with me when we ran away.

“Otherwise, I would have volunteered to help lead the hunting party that went looking for the two of you,” she purrs, pleased with the malice of her words, like a cat who’s just had its milk.

I try to sit up but forget my wrists are bound in brass shackles. I forget about the throbbing pain under my right eye, splintering across my cheekbone.

“You two have really been living off the land, haven’t you?” she asks, eyes snaking down my outdoor attire. “You’ll need to be hosed down.”

Fantastic.

“It’s a shame I don’t get more time to play with you. Three days until you’re executed next to your psychotic rebel. That isn’t nearly long enough for me to play with you.”

Three days. Not likely. Unfortunately for me, Dessin will be asking for a priest right about now. His right under oath of the asylum.

A shiver vibrates up my spine at the thought of being Meridei’s pet for any length of time.

Two orderlies collect me from the sodden clump I’m in on the bed, hooking their hands under my arms and dragging me to the hydrotherapy room. I nearly sigh in relief. Even though being blasted with cold water isn’t fun, at least it isn’t Chekiss’s treatment. Simulated drowning.

I can do this. I already know what it’s like after the first time I subjected myself to it as a way to get Niles to trust me.

I miss them, terribly. But at least they’re no longer suffering within these vicious walls. By the hands of these insidious men and women.

Two doors away from our destination, my elbow is yanked out of the way to let an orderly pushing a wheelchair past. But it’s who’s in the wheelchair that has my jaw hanging open.

Sun Ravendi. The patient with the obsessive disorder. The woman with no hair, raw lips, and sunken eyes. A mother without a child. Her mouth is blue, veins bulging from her neck. And she doesn’t even see me. She’s dead behind the eyes. Another chair binding treatment.

Another inch closer to death.

My eyes fall closed. I couldn’t help her. My efforts to make a better place here were lost when I left with Dessin.

And now I’m going to pay for it.

We keep moving, and I’m in a daze. A protective instinct to distance myself from these next experiences.

“Strip her,” Meridei commands the orderlies as she unwinds the hose.

The room is colder than I remember. An ice chest. My boots are ripped away from my feet and I glance down at my naked toes wiggling in a puddle on the chilly tile floor.

My oversized white tunic is thrown to the corner of the room with a wet plop, then my pants. I’m left standing like a trembling baby tree in the dead of winter. Left in nothing but my black lace brassiere and thong, courtesy of Runa.

You know, compared to Meridei, I suppose I kind of like her. I suppose I’d rather be in her presence, flirting with Dessin right about now. I’d take the burn of jealousy any day.

With a rough tug down my legs, the lace drags over my skin, soundlessly dropping to the floor. Because my hands are bound, they don’t try and lift my brassiere over my head. It’s ripped off from behind.

And… I’m naked, chained, and shivering in front of this small audience.

I’m shoved in front of the drain, my backside lightly touching the wall. Maybe Judas will hear my screams, like last time? Maybe I’ll only have to be in here for a single day. One conversation alone will tell me all I need.

“It’s strange being back in the spot, isn’t it?” Meridei muses, aiming the head of the hose at my face. “I couldn’t let you really have it back then, though. I had to let you make your point to that patient. But now,”—she cracks her neck—“now I stop this hose when I feel like stopping.”

It’s the only warning I get. The only moment to close my mouth and shut my eyes. The lever is pulled, and it only takes half a second to whack me in the face, bloodying my nose and sending my head flying back to knock against the wall.

The instinct to cover my face is quick but useless. The water juts past my wrists, shredding my cheeks, my throat, my lungs. So I turn around, face the wall, allow my back to take the hydro-beating. And Jesus, it’s so cold. Tiny needles stabbing my flesh with a vengeance. But the worst part isn’t the ice, the shock, or the devastating pressure. Nope, it’s the panic of not being able to breathe. I had almost forgotten that part. With water shooting at my face in ten different directions, it’s nearly impossible to suck in a wholesome breath.

A true fight for survival. Basic. Primitive. Terrifying.

I start to choke. If she would just lower the hose to my legs or my lower back…

But it’s useless. She knows what she’s doing. I smack my hands against the wall as a plea to stop. My throat burns with the need to cough up the inhaled droplets, but I can’t. I try. My rib cage coils together, attempting to suck in enough air to cough, and I do, a little, but it’s not enough. My lungs will fill up. I’ll drown. I’ll die.

And as a natural human response, my eyes fill with tears. And animallike gagging noises combating the jet of water smacking against skin and tile.

I’m dying.

Stop, Goddammit!

My naked body splats down on the floor after slipping on the puddle of water and losing my balance. The water stops but the sensation of being beaten by a spiky club remains, prickling all over my body, flooding my ears and nose.

I don’t even have the strength to look up. But I can hear Meridei snickering. My eyes follow a stream of dirty water, circling around a drain by my face.

This is a great first day.

“Get up,” she orders. “Or I’ll start again.”

Suddenly my strength is revived. I peel my wet, heavy body from the floor, using the wall as leverage to hoist myself up.

But as I turn around to face her, my stomach collapses on itself.

The door is open and Dessin (along with five other orderlies) is watching the hydro-show. His chin is lowered, but he’s staring up at me from under his thick lashes. The only movement is his chest rising and falling heavily.

There are nine people now staring at my naked body. But only one set of eyes has me scrambling to cover my front with my shackled wrists, narrowing my arms to lay over my breasts.

“Don’t worry,”—Meridei nods at Dessin—“this won’t be the only treatment of hers you get to watch.”

His knuckles turn white, tightening around his chains.

“I can handle it.” I’m looking at Meridei but pointing my message at Dessin. He needs to know. It will take one wrong phrase, just one, and he’ll lose his grip on control. A volcanic eruption. An asylum apocalypse.

Meridei laughs. “We’ll see.”

~

My only saving grace now is that I am back in my room with fresh clothes.

A white patient’s gown that smells of bleach and elderly body odor.

And best of all, Meridei is forced to leave my room to attend an emergency meeting with a priest and the council. Dessin did it. He bought us time. I should be thankful, but truthfully, nothing makes me want to vomit more.

Time in this place is exactly what I don’t want.

I sleep most of the day and the rest of the night. No one comes to bring me food. But I don’t mind. The thought of eating anything makes me nauseated. At least I have a sink to drink from until they decide to start giving me basic human rights again.

The next morning I’m woken by the chanting of an elderly man. Through the fuzzy slits of my sleepy eyes, I see a black robe with a white collar.

Rosary.

The priest.

He’s waving the cross over my body, reciting verses from the Bible. Welp, that does it then. Dessin did his part. Now, I have to do mine.

“Amen,” the old man says, bowing his head. “You may inject her now.”

As he steps away from my bed, I notice the wide hands holding down my shoulders, then another set of hands on my ankles. Meridei kneels at my bedside with a wicked, alarming smirk on her face. A twitch of her thin lips that says, I’m going to enjoy this.

She waves a syringe in front of my face, ensuring I see what’s about to happen.

What is that?

You may inject her now.

“What—” But the needle is already halfway in my neck. I wince at the sharp sting that lingers under my skin, even after she pulls it out.

“We’ll get those demons out of you, child,” the priest says loudly.

Shit. Dessin had to plead reason of insanity was demons. What was the injection for? Is there actually a vaccine for demonic possession?

“Dear Meridei injected you with a couple of viruses, child. When your body fights it off, I pray that it will also fight the evil. The fever will burn it out. We can only hope it doesn’t kill you in the process.”

Nice. So I’m going to die from a disease. I’m more than tempted to ask what the success rate of this is, but I’m sure it will only result in more treatments throughout the day.

“Thank you, Father,” I mumble.

They leave me alone for a few hours and I start to wonder if they injected me with a sedative, because my world grows fuzzy and unclear. I sleep as though my eyelids weigh a ton, and my dreams are wild, foggy, and all over the place.

A cold splash of water over my face and chest jolts me awake. Sort of. I’m groggy and disoriented. But I recognize the priest again, hovering over me, with a dubious look on his face.

With a flick of his bony wrist, another splash of water sprinkles over my face.

I gasp at the temperature, so cold. Like being pelted with hail.

Meridei rests a hand over my forehead. “She’s burning up, Father.”

Am I? My legs rub together to make friction under my white sheets. I would give anything for a big fluffy blanket from Aurick’s mansion. No… I’d give anything to be wrapped up in Kane’s arms. He’s always so warm. A traveling furnace at my side.

I must have a fever, because the inside of my mouth is bitter and hot, along with my throbbing eyeballs. The rest of me, however, is freezing. Trembling from the inside out. My organs are thick and achy. My limbs, muscles, and joints must have all taken a beating. A gruesome, quiet mauling.

Another sprinkle of water.

I groan. But the Father continues. “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty…”

The voices around me are under a tank of water, sloshing against my ears, increasing the pounding drums of searing pain under the shell of my skull.

“My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

I slip under the current, plummet away from the priest and his cold water, away from the people watching me, away from the smell of bleach and basement walls.

It’s like floating on a leaf that has detached from a tree, whirling along the stream of wind, and I let it take me. Up, up, up… far away from this death ditch. I won’t die here. No, not in captivity. I’d rather go somewhere under the trees. Yes, that’s what I think I’ll do. Float away.

And I am. Flying, that is. Soaring over a meadow, surrounded by long, flowing wisteria trees. I’m tempted to land. To sprawl out in the grass, maybe call for DaiSzek to join me…

“Eyes open, child!” A bark of an order. Old and gruff and shaky. “Don’t let the devil lure you away.”

At this point, I could either laugh or cry. If the devil were luring me somewhere, it would be right here in this bed. Not to a pretty meadow.

“I wanna see him.” My words come out in a floppy slur. At least, I think I’m the one who spoke. It sounded like my voice.

Meridei laughs. “I’m sure he’d ask to see you too if he weren’t currently being drowned over and over again.”

A moment of lucidity. Dessin. The simulated drowning.

“You’re lucky. Another priest is trying to flood his demons out of him.”

God. What is wrong with these people? My stomach lurches at the thought of him gasping for air. On his knees. Thrashing against the tub.

My head flops to the side of the bed and I vomit. A loud splash of bile and water spilling across the floor. The priest leaps out of the way, gasping at my sudden bodily explosion.

“It’s working,” he declares with a sense of victory.

But I have to get this out. “No. I need to talk to…” I drift off for a moment, a splash of water and louder chanting snapping me back into reality. “Judas.”

Meridei scoffs, a wet choking sound. “And what makes you think he wants to speak with you? A traitor? A whore? A demonically possessed woman?”

“Do not taunt it,” the priest snaps.

It. I’m an it now, huh?

“Judas,” I say again, louder this time.

“Just because you asked so nicely…” Her tone is too soft. Too sweet. “I’ll make sure he never steps foot in this room. Because it looks like I’m getting my wish after all. Since a priest is now overseeing your treatments, no more death sentence.”
I tremble violently under my sheets, clanking my chains together over my lap.

“Which means… more playtime for me.”