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

I lie awake all night, palms pressed into my bedsheets, eyes drawn to the canopy over my bed posts, yet I haven’t left his room.

In that chair. Hanging on to his lavender words.

Dessin.

My nerves spring back to life at the thought of his gaze—knowing, studying, observing. His face resonates with me like an old soul, a long-lost friend, and a favored memory.

Peeking through my bedroom door is a soft flickering glow from Aurick’s study. I figured he would have gone to bed by now, but he’s been cooped up since I got home. I decide we could both use a little company from our sleepless night, wiggle my feet into my slippers, and saunter over to his office.

He’s hunched over his desk, hovering a magnifying glass over a long map stretched over other papers.

“Is geography really more important than sleep tonight?” I say.

Aurick smiles down at the map before looking up to where I stand in the doorway.

“That depends on your level of fascination for history.” He waves me over to sit on the other side of his desk. He taps on the map with his magnifying glass. “Do you know anything about the manifestation from Alkadon?”

I shake my head and lean in to peer down at the map. From what I can tell, I’m looking at two small continents, side by side, then a massive continent about two thousand miles east, followed by several islands scattered nearby.

“This is where we are… Dementia”—he points to the first small continent, north of its twin—“and the one below us is Vexamen. But over sixty years ago, we traveled here from a country called Alkadon—that large eastern continent over there.” He taps on the massive continent to the right.

“What happened to Alkadon?” I ask. Something must have caused our grandparents to leave and settle here.

“Nothing happened to them. It’s what happened to us. They banished our grandparents and forced them to seek out new land. Alkadon had five royal families and four sons of those families were banished, along with their followers for acts of disturbing the peace.” Aurick removes a leather book from a locked cabinet. The book is worn and thicker than three regular-sized books on his shelves.

After setting it on top of the map, he flips through dusty pages until he finds the painted portraits of those families.

“The two sons that settled into Dementia were Abraham Demechnef and Orin Blackforth.” He points to their pictures, one with a bowler hat and black hair, and the other with dark-red hair and bifocals resting on the bridge of his nose. They look off into the distance with their chins raised in front of a large fireplace.

“Their roles in Alkadon were upholding societal and architectural appearances. Unfortunately for them, Alkadon did not see their vision for flawless women with the highest standards for society as a whole. After gaining followers on this topic and causing internal feuds, the rulers of Alkadon had to banish them along with those who sided with them.

“The other two exiled were brothers, Malcolm and Maxwell Mazonist.” He flips a page to reveal two grinning twin brothers, arm in arm, standing on a cliff overlooking the sea. “Their discretions were the most offensive. Alkadon is known for having the largest navy and military force in the world. The Mazonist brothers were in charge of that. Trained generals. But because they were so young, early twenty’s, they were overly ambitious for growing and strengthening that force. They abducted children to train into even greater warriors than they already had, ran experiments on the human mind, and eventually were caught. To this day, they are still alive in Vexamen, doing far worse than training children.”

I shudder and don’t dare ask what is worse than training children.

“Why’re you looking into all of this?” I ask between yawns.

He closes the book and smirks. “Am I boring you with my research?”

“Not at all. I never learned any of this growing up.” Truthfully, my father never saw world history as a useful parenting tool.

“Well, most people don’t like talking about it. We are a disgraced nation in many eyes around the world.” Aurick gives me a once-over, drums his fingers on the desk. “How did today go?”

Today, or yesterday, as it is now past midnight, I finally made it into that room.

“Intense.” I shrug. “This patient that I got to meet—everyone’s afraid of him. At least, everyone that knows of him.”

Aurick tilts his head. “Why?”

“A number of reasons. They think he’s a genius and a murderer. But truthfully, I don’t think there’s a word yet for what he really is.” I trace my index finger over the map between us. Aurick watches, waiting for me to continue. “And I wasn’t even afraid… isn’t that strange? I was more fascinated than anything else.”

“How did he react to meeting you?”

That wise, all-knowing face. That look, like he was waiting for me.

“Calm. And he knew things—” But a ward goes up in my mind. A metal wall that secures my thoughts from forming on my tongue. I can’t reveal anything about this man. For whatever reason, I know he must be protective of all information about himself. Why else would he have checked himself in?

“What kind of things?” Aurick inquires.

I shake my head. “I have to be up in just a few hours. Promise you’ll get to bed soon?”

He sighs, smiling up at me with a reassuring nod.

I pat his shoulder before walking back to my room, only to sit on my windowsill, watching the trees rustle in the wind, and waiting for the sun to rise so I can see him again.