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

It takes me a mile or two before I realize which direction I’m headed.

To Kane’s childhood home.

If there’s ever a place that might trigger my mind to open, it has to be there. When Kane split to Dessin. Where Arthur and Sophia lost their lives. And perhaps, I can learn more about this experiment from his family’s point of view.

The dark pine trees are motionless in the cool night, quiet and peaceful. I walk through them like the dead, like I’m a spirit cursed to travel the planes of this world for all eternity. And I begin to wonder if I’ll ever be happy again. This hole in my chest feels infinite. It has no beginning or end. It lacks a perimeter, no matter how hard I try to build one.

The silver glow of the moon rains down on me with two slow steps out of the Evergreen Dark Wood and into the North Saphrine Forest, and through the cluster of trees, I know I’ve made it to his childhood cottage.

But… I can’t bring myself to go in there; perhaps for a similar reason, Kane couldn’t either. I push my way through the sharp pine needles, inching closer to the cottage.

It’s bigger than I remember. The river rock chimney, the hand-hewn mill sidings. It’s still beautiful but haunting at nightfall. And after a long, sickening moment… I decide to sleep in the shed for the night. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll have the guts to step inside.

My eyes are barely open by a thread as I round the cottage, walking as fast as I can without looking through its windows. I’ve never desired sleep more in my life. Not just because my body is drained of every last bit of energy, but because sleep is that sweet symphony of relief. It’s the only escape I have to stop living in this hell I’m trapped in.

My hand touches the wooden shed door, and before I can blink, I’m sucked into an emptiness of calm, disorienting darkness. My stomach dips, and blood rushes to my head. A tremor of energy washes over me, tossing my body through the air until I’m upright again, looking down at Kane and… me. I’m standing at the door, looking down at them lying near a gas lamp. She’s tucked against his chest as he reads a book. Her foot is propped up and wrapped after it got stuck in the bear trap.

This isn’t a lost memory.

But it is one I cherish. And somehow, I’ve fallen back to it, watching it play out before me as if I’m an invisible third-party bystander.

“Are you going to fall asleep if I keep going?” he asks the woman snuggling against his chest.

She breathes in, savoring his cedar scent. “Mmm. Would that be so terrible? You have a nice voice.”

And as she closes her eyes, Kane smiles to himself, places a soft kiss on top of her head, and continues on to the next chapter.

My chest burns, and a log jams into the back of my throat. I clench my hand around the wooden door until splinters pierce my fingertips. It’s all so real. He looks real enough to touch. To kiss. To hold.

Tears sting my eyes as they pool over my lids. It’s pathetic, really. The way my heart pounds like a set of drums, echoing through my throat and in my ears. How his presence can still make me weak in the knees.

The subject has visual and auditory hallucinations.

My bottom lip quivers at the sound of his deep, soothing voice.

“I hate you—for leaving me,” I say to him with labored breaths. “I hate you for making me feel so desperate to hear your voice again that I’d give in to this delusion. This mental disorder.”

But Kane stops reading and looks down at me—at the other me now sound asleep. Her breathing is heavy and borderline snoring. I wince in embarrassment, but Kane chuckles quietly. He sets the book down, taking a deep breath.

“Who would have guessed that the three-year-old little girl with curly golden hair and squishy pink cheeks would have me wrapped around her little finger for the rest of my life?” He sighs, stroking her cheek with his tan fingers. His brow knits together in affliction or sorrow at the sight of her. “Dessin spent years in that asylum, being tortured endlessly, so much so that new alters had to split off just to endure each sadistic treatment. All for my sweet Skylenna.”

I begin sliding down the shed wall with tears dripping down my cheeks. Anguish rips through my abdomen, bruising my insides, and my grief is energy formed into a dark cloud that hangs over the room. I miss you so much.

“And by the end of this, you’re going to be furious with me. You’re going to hate me for all of the secrets I had to keep.” He rubs a hand over his face, careful not to wake the sleeping woman draped over his chest. “But one day, you’ll be just like me. And in time, you’ll know why I had to keep those secrets.”

He leans down and kisses her temple, wrinkling his forehead like this entire conversation is burning him on the inside.

“It was all for you. So, please forgive me.”

I close my eyes, imagining what it felt like to be kissed again by this man. And as he turns out the gas lamp, I listen to him fall asleep, obsessed and mesmerized by the sound of air filling and leaving his chest. And in this time, I cry in a ball, tucked away in the dark corner of the shed, next to the open door and the whistling winds.

And I allow the pain to consume me.

I wake before my eyes open. And I’m determined to keep them closed. If I can’t see the shed, I can still believe that he’s in here with me. Sleeping, breathing, living.

But the heavy rising and falling of his chest is gone from the air, and his presence no longer sinks into my soul. He’s gone. And I’m all alone again. After what he said last night, I’m determined to learn his secrets. I think that’s why he kept them… because one day, he knew I would be able to go back and remember, learning all of his secrets with this disorder.

I groan as I use the wall to sit upright. My body tingles and aches from sleeping on the floor, curled up like a baby in the womb. My neck is stiff, my joints have hardened into solid concrete, and my muscles might as well have been replaced with jelly. But it doesn’t bother me at all. No, it distracts me from the agony radiating from deep in my heart, down to my core.

I look through the open shed door at Kane’s childhood cottage. In the sunlight, it’s like this home was plucked from a fairy tale. No one would ever guess, as they walk through the front door, it once held a horror story unfit for children.

With a grunt, I pick myself up and walk toward the cottage. I don’t think I should go straight to the kitchen… which is where it all happened. I’d rather start smaller. My eyes scan the sides of the house, deciding which of the two windows I should climb into first. I see the reflection of a mirror in the first window, a glint of light from the curtains being partially left open.

A bedroom.

I hoist myself up with the little strength I have and lift the glass open. Stale air whooshes over my face, filling my nostrils with the scent of old books and mothballs. Staring into the bedroom, I freeze, with my waist halfway wedged on the bottom of the sill. Time has halted here. It’s a pinhole into the past. A mahogany wardrobe filled with dusty gowns, a matching vanity with glass jars of perfume and night creams for the lady-doll regimen, and a queen-size bed made neatly with a pink silk comforter and several fluffy pillows.

This must be his mother’s room.

I gulp down my hesitation and continue wiggling through the window. I use the nightstand to step on as I tumble from my perch. My knees hit the soft maroon carpet, absorbing the painful impact.

I’m not entirely sure where to start. This disorder might very well be exclusive to only my memories. But it’s worth a try. If there’s even a slight chance that it will work, that would bring me steps closer to understanding his world of secrets.

I’m instantly drawn to the vanity of perfumes, jewelry, and creams. My fingers glide through the thick layer of dust, and I nearly flinch at the woman staring back at me in the grimy old mirror. Matted, tangled golden hair, sunken eyes and cheeks, and lacking the usual tan shade of my skin. I’m as white as a ghost. I look ill, close to death. It’s exactly how I feel on the inside.

I snag the round glass perfume bottle filled with light-purple liquid.

“Hello, Sophia,” I whisper, unscrewing the lid and bringing the small vial to my nose. One whiff of roses and pears, and I’m sucked into that dark river, falling through a void that fills my head with delirium. I hold my stomach as I gasp loudly. And it throws me into a tunnel until I’m standing again, staring at a clean, fairly new vanity mirror, no longer holding the bottle of perfume.

A woman stands next to me, staring at her own beautiful reflection. She’s an inch shorter than me, with soft brown hair tied in a loose bun on her head. She’s wearing a white lace nightgown and robe, dabbing the contents of the perfume on her wrists, then gingerly spreading it to her neck. Her sad caramel eyes blink emptily, trapped in her own thoughts.

“You’re breaking my heart, Wyatt,” the woman utters, a collection of tears gathering in her warm eyes.

It’s one thing to hear about his mother. It’s another to stare into her eyes, see her face up close. She was stunning. Devastatingly gorgeous. I find myself fidgeting with the laces on my archer’s dress, inferior to her delicate beauty.

Wait… Wyatt.

I turn around to see Kane’s father leaning against the doorway. He’s tall, maybe the same height, but not as strong. Sure, his shoulders are broad, and his hands are large. But he’s thinner, lacking the muscle Kane has. Had. He wears a solid black tuxedo, loosening the tie around his neck.

“I’m loyal to country before family. You knew that when you married me.” His deep, monotone voice is both calming and patronizing.

I gawk at him in horror. The man that betrayed his family and led them to slaughter.

“Don’t trust him, Sophia,” I find myself saying to her as though she can hear me.

Wyatt removes his hands from his pockets, rubbing a hand over his face the way Dessin did when he was irritated. His eyes are dark and cold, like the endless void I fell through to get here. And yet, he is unnervingly handsome. He has Kane’s strong jaw and full lips.

“If I’m to have twins… could you really go through with it? Just to please Vlademur? You’d really harm your family?” Sophia fights to keep her voice even, but the emotion of his future betrayal tightens her face.

Vlademur. Aurick’s father. The head of this operation. The leader of Demechnef.

“You’re getting worked up over nothing, wife. The probability of you having twins is one in a million. Why trouble yourself worrying about something that will never be?” Wyatt takes a step closer to his wife. But she flinches away as though he might hit her.

My gut twists with protective instincts.

“Fine. I’ll let it go for now. But if we find out we’re having twins, hear me now… I will go to the ends of the earth to protect them, husband. Even if that means stepping on you to do it.”

Surprise flashes over Wyatt’s stone-cold face, but it’s quickly replaced with an arrogant smirk. “You’re a woman in the world of Demechnef.” He removes his cuff links slowly, keeping his cold dark eyes plastered on her. “Which means—your threat holds no weight.”

The last thing I see is the look on Sophia’s face as she holds her pregnant belly. The look of a woman that is ready to go to war.

And win.

After falling back into my reality, I search Sophia’s room frantically. Desperate to find something that will pull me under again. I need to know what he knew. I need to be brought back out from the darkness that Dessin kept me in.

Maybe then I can accept his death.

I rummage through her drawers, wardrobe, and nightstand without being triggered. My brow becomes moist with sweat, and I get desperate.

There has to be something else.

Like a wild woman looting the place, I turn over the mattress, pull out her wardrobe, and yank the drawers of her nightstand free.

Something rattles as the last drawer gets stuck. I pull harder, jerking it around until it slides free. I pat around on the inside, and the act reminds me of the time I went looking for a clue from the abandoned Demechnef building.

My hand traces over what feels like leather. I tug it free from the back of the nightstand.

It’s a leather journal, aged parchment on the inside, bound with a single string to hold her thoughts together. I flip through the pages, mostly blank or torn out, but one jagged edge rubs against my finger until I’m back again. Sitting on the bed next to Sophia, no longer pregnant, writing frantically in the leather journal.

She sniffs, rubbing the tears away before they have a chance to trail down her cheeks. I rush to her side, eager to see what she jots down.

The first words at the top smeared ink from a trembling hand, causing my blood to freeze in my veins.

To The Leather Man.

I nearly fall back on my butt. The letter Dessin had me find. The clue. I was right! It was from Sophia. His mother was writing to a friend. But what did it say? I can already tell this is a different letter. I read it as she writes.

She told me more about the prophecy today. I know she must have made a stop at your house as well. What am I to do? Let fate decide the future of my boys? I tried to run with them already. You saw how far that got me. They are everywhere. Not just the men that rule this city, but the ones that rule elsewhere. I think I have a plan… meet me in the red at midnight.

Her pen hovers over the parchment, a moment to decide if that’s all she has to say before she tears out the page and folds it into an envelope.

Sophia’s bedroom door bursts open, causing us both to flinch. In comes a little boy with brown hair and warm-chocolate eyes. He smiles at his mom, pleased with himself that he managed to scare her. I glance back at Sophia, who is wiping her eyes of the remaining tears.

“Kane,” she says, sniffling.

Kane. He can’t be older than the age of six. My heart instinctively curls in on itself, trying to protect my soul from shattering at the sight of him.

“What’s wrong, Momma?”

She holds her arms out to him, pushing the leather journal away. Kane wastes no time as he soars into his mother’s arms, hugging her tightly as she kisses his head.

“Momma’s a little sad right now, sweet boy. I’m going to need you to grow up very quickly, and it’s not fair. It’s not fair at all.” Her voice is soothing, like warm milk after a nightmare.

Kane nuzzles in her arms. “I can grow up fast.”

God, that voice is so innocent. So small. He was just a child. A sweet little boy.

Sophia’s beautiful eyes well up with tears again. “Skylenna and Arthur are going to need you. To watch over them. To take care of them. It’s a horrible burden I’m leaving with you.”

My stomach drops, twisting into a painful knot. Skylenna and Arthur are going to need you. He had this burden at such a young age. The responsibility to protect me. To always be at my side.

Kane leans away from her embrace, using his little hand to wipe the tears dripping down to her jaw. His small face tilts up, showing her a look of strength and determination.

“I’m going to marry her one day, Momma.”

Sophia’s soft eyes lighten, and she begins to smile. “Is that so?”

Kane nods once. “Yep. I’ll protect her and take good care of her until we’re all grown up. Then I’m going to marry her in the Red Oaks. And you and her daddy will be there too. And and and… we’ll have babies! And they’ll be twins too!”

Sophia’s brow wrinkles. “Does little Skylenna know about this plan of yours?”

“I bet she does.” Kane sits up, nodding his head to her bookshelf. “It’s like the story of DaiSzek and Knightingale. The fae and elf warriors who ended the colonies’ war thousands of years ago. They were soul mates.” He smirks to himself. “Skylenna is my soul mate.”

The muscles in my jaw tighten as I attempt to jam my emotions back down my throat.

“I’m sure she is.” Sophia caresses his cheek with her trembling thumb. “That’s an important story to remember. It isn’t fiction. It’s the history of these seven forests that surround our city. They were at war with each other. The dark elves, fae, snow elves, nymphs, druids… DaiSzek and Knightingale were warriors that sacrificed themselves to open the veil long enough to let those magical beings cross back over to their own world before they could accidentally destroy the humans with magical warfare. They left behind their descendants, those born without special gifts.”

She adjusts his brown suspenders. “Every great war needs two warrior saviors like DaiSzek and Knightingale. It’s a prophecy.”

The jerking sensation of falling backward catches me by surprise. I suck in a sharp breath as I sway back into the old, forgotten bedroom of Sophia Valdawell.

He believed I was his soul mate as a young boy. My hands clutch at my chest as I try to control my lost breath. But there was something else. Sophia told him the story about DaiSzek and Knightingale to remember. She said it was prophecy. Could she have heard that from the colonies of the forest? If so… could it be the same war Judas warned us about?

My head is spinning with more questions.

I need to find the receiver of her letters. The Leather Man. She said to meet her at midnight in the red. My fingers drum against my chin. The Red Oaks?

When Dessin first brought me there, he said it meant something to Kane’s past too.

I stumble through the bedroom door to the hallway, determined to find more pieces, more clues, more of anything I can make sense of. But as my hand touches the glossy wooden wall, I freeze. The sounds of a woman screaming soak through every cell of my body. A boy crying. Men grunting. It surrounds me like a storm cloud. It’s as if my soul is being shredded, tossed into a spar of clashing swords. I double over, holding my stomach, preparing to vomit across the dusty walnut floors. The agony in the air hangs on my heart like cement blocks.

It’s happening, isn’t it? I can’t go in there. I’m not… stable enough to watch the worst day of Kane’s life.

My body jolts at another wounded shriek. I race back into the bedroom, covering my ears as I hyperventilate. Before I reach the window, a small movement in Sophia’s wardrobe shifts my erratic focus. I turn as my hand reaches for the sill.

A little boy hiding under the length of Sophia’s gowns. Shaking like a leaf. Clutching a toy… rabbit to his chest.

My eyes sting at the sight.

No. It’s Arthur.

Please, no. I can’t watch this. I have to get out of here. But before I can spin on my heels, I hear the soft sniffle and whimper of Kane’s baby brother. My throat shrinks, and I’m frozen with a choice hanging over my chest.

Stay or leave.

Arthur shivers, holding that rabbit close, kissing it on the head as if he’s responsible for keeping that stuffed toy calm. Anguish flows through me like a forest fire, blackening my lungs, charring my heart.

Even though this is only a memory… how can I leave Kane’s little brother alone? How can I abandon him moments before his death?

I drop to my knees in front of him, unable to rip my eyes away from this sweet, scared little boy. “I’m here,” I tell him.

Little Arthur is dressed in dirty overalls and tiny penny loafers. He looks down the hall through oversized glasses, wiping his nose and fidgeting with his cow-licked brown hair.

The screams pierce the cottage like a violent strike of lightning. We both jump, gasping at the sound of a woman in great distress. Arthur covers his mouth, sobbing into his hand.

“Momma,” he whines, muffled by his palm.

“It’ll all be over soon,” I murmur, tears flowing freely down my cheeks. “You’re going to a better place, Arthur. One where you and your momma won’t be afraid anymore.”

We cry together in that little wardrobe, listening to the awful sounds of Kane’s sobs and his mother’s cries.

“Your brother loved you.” I stroke his soft rosy cheek, my voice cracking like frozen glass. “I’m sure he was so happy to see you again in heaven.”

My sobs are cut off by two men tunneling through the bedroom door, lunging into the wardrobe, snatching baby Arthur by the elbows.

“Out you go,” a giant man with dark-brown skin and a shaved head says, lifting Arthur from his hiding place.

“No!” I scream.

Arthur wails. “Momma! Help!” He chokes and hiccups in a fit of uncontrollable cries.

I reach for him, even though I know there’s nothing I can do. I still reach for his hands, yell and curse at the evil men.

“He’s just a baby, you fucking bastards!” My voice is a long, tormented howl. A release of pent-up anger, betrayal, and utter devastation.

But no one hears me. They leave the room with Kane’s little brother.

And I can’t stay to hear what happens next. My body lurches for the window, tripping over items I flung around the room until I’m heaving myself over the sill, wiggling my body through the tight space until I’m falling into the grass.

I run like a madwoman. My legs take charge of the situation, getting me as far from this house as possible.

But the connection is still there, strong, like a rope I can’t cut. It follows me through the forest. Voices fill my head. Sophia, whispering with urgency.

“Protect her, Kane. You must keep her from the trauma until she’s ready. Keep her from the abuse. Be her sanctuary.”

I fall into a bed of weeds, scramble to my feet, and keep running.

“There are bad people in this world. Ruling nations like ours. One day, you’ll be stronger than all of them. One day, Skylenna will be strong enough too.”

I cover my ears, screaming to drown out the voices.

“I’ll take care of her, Momma. Jack will be proud.”

The forest blurs around me, wind and branches whipping across my cheeks. Words and promises and conversations lace together in my head, echoing in my ears, pounding like war drums.