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

It’s been a long, underwhelming week.

The council has kept me from Dessin for “psychosis conditioning.” I’m not really sure what that means. No one is telling me anything other than that. But I get to see him today, and I couldn’t sleep last night knowing that bit of information.

Dessin is not in his usual spot. He’s upright in his bed today, shackled to the posts.

“Breakfast in bed today?” I comment, circling the unoccupied chair to sit down. Dessin looks at the wall behind me as if he is looking through a window with a thousand distractions.

His face is tired, shadows around his eyes like warning signs of danger. His broad chest moves unsteadily, with flexing arms and clenched fists.

“What’s wrong with you…?” I ask cautiously.

Something isn’t right. I blame the council for whatever they have been doing to him.

Finally, he looks at me, causing my stomach to twist. I always thought I loved blue eyes, like Aurick’s. Because they’re piercing and cold, like a jagged piece of ice. But his are like nothing I’ve ever seen.

They speak their own language—a dialect that might take me years to decipher. And I’ve imagined them hundreds of times since our first meeting, never quite capturing them correctly, as if the photograph in my mind smears after I leave this room. But, of course, I know the color. At least, I thought I saw one single, simple shade.

Before, I saw melted chocolate and caramel. But today, they’re the bark on an oak tree, dark and saturated just after a heavy rain.

And his eyes are currently speaking louder than his silence. Something is wrong.

“Dessin, what happened during your treatment?” I ask.

He raises his eyebrows with a side smirk that says, ah, well, you know.

My patience fizzles out, and suddenly, my knee is bouncing while I sit, fighting to remain calm until he gives me an answer. But what if he’s seriously hurt? He’d hardly show it. Perhaps his pride is too great to ever let me know.

That single thought has me surging to my feet, and then I’m kneeling down in front of him. He blinks, eyes wide, and he leans back as if he’s expecting me to attack. My chest is grazing his knees, and I share a glance with him, silently asking for permission to touch him.

I poke his right rib. He cringes inwardly and clenches his jaw. Every muscle on his body is bulging with built-up tension. I search his eyes for an explanation before I take it upon myself to investigate, but he gives me nothing.

I hook my fingers under his white shirt, lifting it just above his ribs.

A nearly inaudible gasp peels from my lips.

His ribs are as swollen and purple as a bulging cloud cascading across the hills and crevices of his muscles. He makes Aurick look like a young boy.

“What have they done to you?” I whisper in shock.

A tremor pulses through me as I gape at his next movements. While keeping his eyes on me, he undoes his shackles and grabs my hand.

“How—” My hand, suspended inside the firmness of his grip, stiffens.

He presses a finger to my lips. “Are you frightened? Any sane person would think they are as good as dead right now, given that I am free from restraint.”

I pause. I try to understand the emotions that are flooding through me right now. Fear is not one of them. Shock is. Confusion is. But not fear.

“Here’s a secret for our little game… I am never truly restrained.”

He’s trying to scare me. He’s trying to give me pause.

“That does not frighten me. What scares me is how you got these bruises.”

The first genuine head tilt of surprise. His lips tug at the corners like he doesn’t know if this bit of shock is enough to make him grace me with his white teeth.

Outside of the door, metal scrapes against metal, a latch being lifted. My hand is released from his grasp, and he quickly secures his shackles, clamping them back around his wrists.

Suseas enters the room, careful to stay in the doorway.

“My deepest apologies for the interruption.” Her smile falls as she notices me, crouched on my knees in front of Dessin. Brows lift. “Explain to me the meaning of this, Miss Ambrose.”

I pop up to my feet, bite my lip, and point at Dessin’s ribs. “He has—” I look back at Suseas as if she can help me finish my sentence. Nothing. I glance back at Dessin for assistance. And to my surprise, he raises his eyebrows and laughs.

“Yes, do explain to us the meaning of this, Miss Ambrose.” He tips his head back to laugh harder.

“—Bruises.” I finally spit out. I’d rather not investigate why this is funny to him. But I would be lying if I said that small rumble of laughter in his chest wasn’t making me want to smile back.

“He was flogged…” She looks down and picks at her cuticles. “We can discuss that at another time. But for now, Demechnef oligarchs are visiting the asylum today. This is an annual opportunity for us. They’ve wanted to meet Patient Thirteen since his arrival, but we have never felt comfortable with visitors. At least, not until the progress you’ve made.”

In the corner of my eye, Dessin tenses up.

“I really don’t think that’s wise.” And based on the creasing between his brows, he agrees.

“The decision has been made by the council. Our guests will be arriving shortly.”

I open my mouth to object, but Suseas’s expression quickly morphs, like a flower wilting without the sun or a painting being washed away from a splash of water. And she’s backing into the wall behind her, concealing a breath of horror within her lungs, trembling from head to toe.

I almost ask, Are you having a stroke? But the shadow of a man, standing upright, like a mountain that has just emerged from underground, darkens the floor from behind me. And as he takes a step forward, his full length is displayed. Around six foot four, with wide shoulders and a stern stance. He’s revealed his secret to her.

I am never truly restrained.

The amusement on his face is like a bolt of lightning.

“No…” Suseas’s utters.

“I’ve been on my best behavior ever since Sern’s accident.” Dessin steps toward her, massaging his raw wrists. “Therefore, I can certainly understand that you thought my threats had become empty.”

Suseas’s lips outline the name of God.

“But then, there was that little voice in your head, wasn’t there? Saying, What if his words become actions?” He’s cornered her like a wild animal that has been set free in the asylum, and she has nothing to defend herself with.

His final step is a chain around her wrists. And her complexion is no longer that of peach ice cream—the back of Dessin’s fingers caress her moist, gray cheek.

“You see, I have no intention of entertaining visitors today.” He smiles. Polite, yet masking aggressive intent. “I promise to make this less painful.”

Without even so much as lifting his hands, she faints, body tumbling to the floor like rocks from an avalanche.

The booming sound of the metal door swinging into the stone wall forces a shriek out of me. Two orderlies in gray scrubs widen their stances as they scope out the scene, running their frantic eyes over Suseas’s limp body. But they are not quick enough. Dessin is an arrow in the wind, in two short strides, a guard flies over Dessin’s shoulder and drops unresponsive to the floor, just as the other guard slides down the wall to our left with blood trailing after him.

I’m swaying like a ship in a hurricane, a fine cocktail of adrenaline and shock coursing through my veins. What just happened? Why the outburst? What went wrong?

There’s an echo of jingling bells in my ears. I need to lie down, rest my head, close my eyes until I’m able to make sense of this.

A set of large hands wrap around the backs of my arms.

“I know you don’t understand why, but I can’t be here. At least, not right now.” Dessin has stopped, the motion warping my stability. He’s searching my eyes. Squeezing the backs of my arms desperately.

“But—”

“I’ll come back,” he assures me.

I wait for an explanation, but he doesn’t offer one. I should try and stop him, talk some sense into him after this outburst. And maybe it’s because I know what happened when Sern got in his way, but something tells me it has nothing to do with fear.

I nod, and he practically dissolves into the air.

Chaos forms down the hallway, screams, metal trays hitting the floor, and words of panic and rumor passing from person to person. I decide I should join the other conformists to help calm the tension and help him do what he needs to do so no one else gets hurt.

I sprint, careful not to slip or trip over the orderlies that stood in his way. They aren’t dead, thank God. Most of them struggle to get off the ground as if the air had been knocked out of them.

Council Member Martin exits the stairwell, blasting through the door with hands running through his short black hair. “My God!” His hands reach out as if to touch the pane of glass he’s watching this mess through. “Is there something in the water? What has come over all of you?!”

An orderly approaches Martin from the mass of people running in separate directions and whispers something in his ear. Martin’s face falls, darkening with fear disguised as anger. He reaches under his vest to fetch a double-edged knife, shouting to the orderlies to draw their weapons and retrieve the gas masks.

Gas masks? I’m instantly reminded of the brutality that encompasses the best practices of this asylum. I can only imagine with great hesitation what their process is for capturing a stray patient. I have to quell this now.

I shuffle through the maze of individuals in their navy-blue dresses, pushing past the ones that are standing in shock as they are told that Patient Thirteen has escaped and breaking through the arms that reach for me, desperate for me to share what I know. I use my body as a roadblock to keep Martin from taking another step, holding my hands up in protest.

“Sir, there’s no need to panic. If you can give me a moment to explain—”

Martin’s squinty eyes flash to me in disgust. “You.” He gives me a quick up-and-down look. “Did you have something to do with all of this?”

“No, sir. But I was in the room and saw what happened.”

“Did you set him free?” he accuses, breath expelling foul whiffs of old coffee.

Are you not hearing me? “No… But sir, you need to get everyone under control first, and I can get him—”

He snorts. “You’re telling me how to handle operations?” His jaw suspends in offense, elongating his potato face. “Do you even know who I am? How dare you!” His right arm winds across his body, showcasing the back of his hand before he barrels down to strike.

A powerful scream blasts like a fire alarm from behind me, and a tan arm shoots forward, snatching the back of Martin’s hand midair, just before it makes contact with my cheek.

Dessin broods at my side, arm flexed and veins swelling under his skin.

He came back.

“I’ll thank you kindly to keep your hands off of my conformist,” he says, his rugged voice quieting the panic in the room like a theater. “You wouldn’t want me to lose my temper.”

Martin shares the same look of stress that Suseas had earlier.

I’m gazing up at Dessin’s face, the way one would look through a telescope, admiring the mystery of the stars. He came back.

But in the same moment of my being starstruck, Dessin swipes Martin’s knife from his other hand, spinning around my back to align the blade against the center of my throat. The firm build of his chest pressing against my upper back. Instinctually, shying away from the sharp object against my skin, I lean into Dessin’s body. And like magnets moving magnets, his left arm slides around my waist to pull me closer. The aroma rising from his embrace—cedar and wood dust.

“I need a break,” Dessin announces to the crowd of conformists and orderlies that have formed around us, with faces wrinkled with worry lines. “Tolerating you godless people has turned out to be a full-time job.”

Should I have burst into tears? Should I be trying to fight him off?

Why am I perfectly calm?

“I’m very tired. And I’d prefer to not have to kill all of you—it would only purchase my one-way ticket to hell.”

Martin stretches out his arm to Dessin as if that will pause his movements.

“I can’t let you walk out of here with her,” he says, sweating a ring around his collared neckline.

Dessin chuckles softly into my hair, breathing in the scent of my jasmine shampoo. “You can watch me leave with her, or you can watch her drop dead at your feet.” His words sting. For no reason at all, I convince myself he wouldn’t hurt me. I convince myself this is all for show. “Either way, I’m leaving now. There is no one on this earth that can stop me.”

His words—gospel—set in stone.

Martin fidgets with his hands, eyes dancing around the room as if someone will help make this decision for him. The room itself is so quiet. The sounds of swallowing, breathing, and stomachs grumbling are like music amplified by a grand ceiling in a cathedral.

“Good man,” Dessin says with a smile in his voice. “Now, if we’re followed, I’ll use this knife to dismember the rule breaker that decided to ignore my warning and deliver their parts to their families. Is that understood?” He uses the blade to point around the hall, receiving nods from horrified men and women.

Dessin reaches his head around to the side of my face and kisses my cheek softly, leaving a warmth like a static shock in his wake, a tingle of energy where his flesh met mine.

“Shall we?” he whispers into my ear.