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

I left the house with the locket and rings around my neck.

I made camp just outside the Red Oaks. Before I went to sleep, Chekiss found his way to me once more, moving the braids away from my face, and getting me to eat cooked meat and some fruit he picked from a nearby tree. He sat next to me in silence until I finished my food.

Oddly, it was what I needed. What I craved. And he is the only person I feel comfortable being around.

But he left, squeezing my shoulder once, then walking into the night to find his camp with Warrose.

The morning sun blasting over my face is the signal I need to get moving again. My legs carry me to the Red Oaks with caution. Somehow, I know this might hold more missing pieces than I can handle. It’s the moments with Kane that I’ve lost. And I’ll bet the Red Oaks is where he would bring me.

Before he—died… he told me that I was the one he promised to kiss under the waterfall. That thought alone burns in my throat. And without warning, I remember our kiss. The way he held my face, pressing me into the limestone wall. It felt like the moment I lost all control over myself. It felt like… soul mates.

The leaves began to change color, from green to orange to flaming red. The bark saturated from fresh rain, the sky cloudless and beating with the hot sun. Each step sucks me in; without having to touch anything of importance, the area alone seems to change, to morph into a memory. My knees wobble, my vision loses focus, and I can feel the earth tilt.

Reality blends into several memories all at once.

All centered around the bright-red leaves.

Kane, looking about the age of nine, holds Skylenna’s hand as they jump into the lagoon. Then, to my left, around the ages of thirteen and ten, they have a picnic, throwing food at each other and laughing. They climb the trees. They race through the forest. Kane holds Skylenna while she cries.

He kept me happy and busy, but most importantly, he made sure I was loved and protected. My hands tremble at my sides as I watch it all play out in a series of debilitating hallucinations.

My childhood was good. As the memories skitter on around me, I can see that. They succeeded in keeping my mind safe from the experiment. At least, until now.

I walk to the edge of the cliff, watching Skylenna, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, point to the waterfall.

“I’m old enough now! I can swim under it without drowning. I swear,” she argues with Kane, agitated as she treads water.

Kane shakes his head. Older, maybe seventeen. “Nope.”

“Fine.” She tilts her chin up in a challenge. “Then am I old enough to be kissed?”

I think he swallowed his tongue. His silence stretches as he glares at her. Blinks. Opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. For about a minute, he simply doesn’t move.

A smile spreads across Skylenna’s young face, matching my own.

Just mentioning a kiss made him speechless. Wow, how far we’ve come. My smile falls. How far we came.

“Or maybe I should be kissed by someone else since we’re friends,” fourteen-year-old Skylenna clarifies with a blush dusting her cheeks. I raise my eyebrows. Damn, I knew how to push his buttons even then.

“No.” His voice carries through the forest, echoing off the cliff walls. “I mean, no. I’ll be your first kiss.”

“Really?”

He nods, certainty coloring his expression.

“Will it be from you? Or one of your alters?” She watches him closely, clearly not afraid to bring that topic to light.

Kane considers this. “One day, you may find yourself wanting them too, and that’s okay. But I’ll be your first kiss, Skylittle. I am your oldest friend. I am the boy who has watched over you since I was six years old.” He clears his throat. “I will be the first man that kisses you. But not now. When we’re both adults, and you want me as more than your friend. I’ll bring you under that waterfall and kiss you.”

She looks away hesitantly, a little embarrassed that they’re talking about this topic so openly. “Promise?”

He smiles, the one with dimples and warm eyes. “I promise.”

And they vanish. Like smoke dissipating through the wind.

I turn my head to see Kane sitting against the giant red oak tree hovering at the edge of the cliff. Skylenna sits next to him, holding his hand, looking into his eyes with a seeping desire to ease his pain. They look about fifteen and twelve.

“Just tell me what happened to them,” she begs, straightening her white sundress. “I can handle it now.”

Kane stares down at his hands. “Not today.”

“Please. I’ve asked you for years. Something triggered a memory, didn’t it?”

And for the first time in my life, I watch Kane cry. She’s never seen him cry either. I can see it in the panic that widens her eyes and straightens her back. It’s painful, too, the way he gently falls apart into the palms of his hands. A silent sob, shaking his shoulders, cutting deeply into my heart.

He couldn’t tell her about Sophia and Arthur’s death. It broke him. Held him captive. That must be why it took so long for Dessin to tell me. Kane never could.

Suddenly, the sky swarms with bulbous dark clouds and the rain floods the Red Oaks, drenching me head to toe in earthy scented water.

The sight that catches my attention in the midst of the red trees stops my heart. Flutters in my lungs. Fills my eyes with sudden tears.

Kane, wearing a white shirt and suspenders, looks about nine years old; Skylenna, in a long red sun dress, maybe six. They spin, twirl, laugh, and dance in the pounding rain.

I—remembered. The time we played in the fountain in the Chandelier City. I saw flashes of this moment. I remembered.

The urge to cry is powerful. A twisting sensation in my gut.

The way Kane chased me around, both times. I watch the children splash in the mud, slipping and cackling. And I can’t believe I could have ever forgotten these precious moments. I hardly had any time with Kane, Dessin, and the other alters. And the time I did have, I’m only just remembering.

This is cruel. It’s painful. It’s being just out of reach of the only thing in this world that I truly want. I truly need.

But the memory disappears again, and I have the floating sensation like I’m levitating to the next.

I’m ten, and Kane is thirteen.

“Hands up, Skylittle. You know this,” Kane barks, legs shoulder width apart in a fighting stance.

That nickname. Something warm and gooey sticks to the bottom of my belly.

“It’s no use!” Skylenna throws her arms down, pouting. “I’ll never hurt my daddy! When he gets mean, I just… close my eyes.”

Kane’s arms fall to his sides. “I know,” he breathes. “But one day, you’ll be strong enough to use everything I’ve taught you. You’ll be strong like Dessin.”

“I think you’re making him up. He sounds like an imaginary friend,” she taunts.

Kane laughs. “I wish. You’ll meet him when you’re older.”

And before I can blink, they’re fighting. Ten-year-old me moves fast and exact, swinging her leg out, barely missing his head as Kane drops to the dirt.

No fucking way.

I sit back against the tree in shock. She’s—I’m—amazing. Skilled. A trained warrior at the age of ten. Was he really training me as a small child?

It hits me. The time Dessin tried to teach me how to defend myself and give a good “right hook.” He must have been testing me. Seeing if I remembered what Kane taught me all of those years ago.

“Skylittle,” Kane huffs in frustration. “If you’re not strong enough, and they succeed in breaking your mind the way they broke mine, then you’ll become like all the others!”

Skylenna crosses her arms stubbornly. “What happened to the others?”

“Female subjects became catatonic. Suicidal. Do you know what that means?”

She shakes her head.

“Unresponsive. Like being awake and in a coma at the same time. And…” He runs a hand through his hair. “Desperate to end their lives.”

“I don’t like to hurt people,” she mumbles, kicking at the dirt.

That statement has always been true. My entire life, I would rather be hurt than hurt someone. I didn’t know Kane knew it, too; from an early age, he’s been trying to strengthen me, shape me to fit the harsh world we live in. Demechnef. The experiment. My father. And one day, Aurick.

Kane furrows his brow. “What if you need to protect me one day? Or DaiSzek?” He signals a hand to where a young, skinnier version of DaiSzek is sleeping in the shade. I jolt upright, not having noticed him before. “Would you fight for us?”

“Yes.” She doesn’t hesitate. “I would.”

Like watching a drop of ink spread through water, the memory clears. I’m suddenly on my feet, following a six-year-old Skylenna and nine-year-old Kane running through the Red Oaks. A straight path, sprinting with purpose.

“Over there!” Little Kane points to a tree next to a rabbit hole. “It’s getting louder.”

I strain to hear whatever they’re running toward. A subtle whine. High pitched.

Skylenna makes it to the tree first, gasping as she gazes down into the rabbit hole. Kane falls to his knees to get a better look. The soft whimpering sounds get clearer as I hover above them.

“Oh, Kane,” Skylenna coos. “A puppy!”

Kane scoops a small, black mass of fur from the hole, dusting it off and cleaning mud from its snout.

My jaw drops. Not just black fur. But russet red covers his chest, snout, and all four paws. Little rain boots. I fall to my knees.

Baby DaiSzek.

It’s true, then. We found him together. He was always loyal to us both. Never to Dessin more than me.

“Not a puppy,” Kane says cautiously, looking around. “He’s a RottWeilen.”

Skylenna continues to make sweet, baby noises to the little ball of beast in her arms, not concerned with what the name RottWeilen means.

“Can we keep him?”

“No. Put him down. If the mother comes back and finds humans touching her baby, we’re toast.” Kane scans the forest frantically.

Skylenna makes a face. “No, he was crying.”

And, Jesus, I can see it all over his ten-year-old face. The way his expression melts at her pout. The sigh his chest moves to. He would do anything for this little girl. For me.

“Let me scope out the area and see if I can find her tracks. Stay here.”

I walk with Kane through the trees, watching him follow a set of massive paw prints in the soil. He jogs as they stretch out to longer strides. And it isn’t until we reach the end of the forest line that Kane stops abruptly, his entire body stiffening at a sight in the weeds.

I look on, searching the moss and too-long grass for whatever has him frozen.

Oh, no.

“Is that…?” I ask no one in particular. We gaze down at a few grown RottWeilen corpses. Their fur and some skin melted off.

Chemical warfare.

Kane pinches the bridge of his nose. Sighs.

I remember Dessin telling me this story. Kane found him just after he was born. His small pack was one of the last hunted down over a decade ago. His mother dug a hole for him to hide in until his pack was killed off.

Chills ricochet down my spine. Dread knots in my chest. DaiSzek, just like Kane and me, is an orphan. I don’t know why it’s taken seeing his dead pack to let that sad fact click in place.

“What am I going to tell her?” Kane asks the unoccupied forest.

I consider answering. Selfishly, for my need to talk to him again.

“No, it’ll break her heart, Dessin.”

I flinch. Is he… talking to Dessin aloud? I know he’s always spoken to him in his mind. They would go back and forth, judging by the way he would get lost in a silent argument.

He seems to settle on a decision on how to break the news to little Skylenna. But first, he buries each fallen beast. Eyes glossy and red rimmed. I sit by their graves as he prays over them.

“Father God, please take care of this RottWeilen pack. They left behind their baby. And I know you wanted me to find him for a reason. If it’s your path for me, I will always take care of him.” Kane looks down at each filled hole. “I’ll take care of him for you. On my word.”

I rub the back of my neck. This sweet boy was honorable from the day he was born, wasn’t he? He was kind from the beginning. And I hardly had any time with him as an adult.

We rise and walk back to young Skylenna. The sun has started to set, and Kane is dirty and exhausted from digging and burying the pack. He plops down, watching DaiSzek nap in her arms.

“Well?” she asks.

“We can keep him.”

Six-year-old Skylenna does a little shimmy.

“You can name him,” Kane adds, lying on his back, stretching one arm up to pet the small animal. She doesn’t seem to notice the despair creasing his brow.

Skylenna thinks on this. “Remember that story about the warrior fae and elf?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“What was the boy’s name? The fae warrior?”

Kane grins, wiping his hand across his sweaty brow. “DaiSzek.”

“DaiSzek,” Skylenna repeats. “We’re family now, baby DaiSzek.”

I watch our childhood unfold with sore eyes and a throbbing heart. I can’t seem to look away from the fun we had. The laughter. The bickering. The summer days swimming in the lagoon. The winter mornings with hot apple cider and a warm outdoor fire.

It numbs every inch of me, hardening my soul into solid stone.

Why couldn’t Dessin tell me any of this? I would have believed him. I was aware of the spotty amnesia. Why the obscene secrecy? The worst part is I can’t even ask him about it now. He was my best friend. The man I could tell all of my secrets.

Now, all I have are the broken memories that kept me sane. Ironically, they’re now the hallucinations that are driving me to madness.

The kids are now sitting on the massive red oak by the lagoon, legs dangling from a thick branch supporting their weight. Young DaiSzek stands guard at the edge of the cliff, keeping a close eye on the perimeter.

Wood shavings sprinkle down around my feet, floating through the air from where Kane hovers above my head. He uses a pocket knife to carve a small chunk of wood.

“But why?” Skylenna asks, voice high and fairylike.

“Do you know what a beacon is?” Kane blows away a cloud of wood dust, cleaning around the edges of his work.

She shakes her head.

“It’s a guiding light that helps a ship return home. It’s for—both of us. I don’t know what this experiment will do to me in the long run—or to you. I don’t know if I’ll get mean or harmful. I don’t know if you’ll lose your kind spirit. But, maybe… these beacons can help us find our way back to who we really are. To each other.”

Skylenna nods, but it doesn’t seem like she understands. I get up from my seated position to look at what he made from the wood of this tree.

Four carved figurines. A cross, a wolf, and—

My stomach does a flip. The basement. Dessin had me hold these beacons and tell him what I felt. I think back to that day, swallowing down the unsettling emotions rising to the bed of my throat. Holding them again unscrewed the lid on my bottled depression. Pain. Heartbreak.

The beacons must have triggered feelings from my missing past. They reminded me that I’ve lost something. I lost Kane. I lost the memories of him.

A deadened agony pangs through my middle.

Before I can determine how much more of this I can withstand, a fifteen or sixteen-year-old version of me stands on the edge of the cliff facing the lagoon.

But… I remember this. It was after I went to live with Scarlett, after my father put me in the infirmary. Something was missing. I was suffering a horrible loss—grieving, mourning, suffering. I absentmindedly went searching for it. My legs carried me to the Red Oaks, where I stood over the lagoon, tears dripping down my cheeks as I searched the open fall forest.

I couldn’t understand why I went looking there. Why my mind was drawn to that one spot… until now. I was looking for Kane. For the boy I lost when my memories faded.

I focus on younger Skylenna until my attention is pulled to the far right. Deep into the trees, I catch a swift movement. Maybe a trick of the eye. But I follow it, standing from my post to race past the trees. A magnetic pull tugging me in that direction, guiding me to a spot in the shadows of the heaviest cluster of red oaks.

A pair of large cinnamon eyes watching the lost, hopeless Skylenna. DaiSzek crouches low under a low-hanging branch, fixated on her every move.

I wonder why he isn’t going to her—

A large hand reaches down to stroke the top of DaiSzek’s head. Bronze, smooth skin, and a light dusting of hair going up the strong forearm. In the shadows, Kane, the age of nineteen or twenty, lingers. Eyes welling with tears, jaw flexed, and chest moving up and down with great frustration.

I make a noise, a cross between a whimper and a squeak. He’s so close to the age I last saw him. Less stubble, but it’s the same man. My Kane. And he’s—devastated watching me. He knows what I’m looking for. Why won’t he go to her? To me?

“Why did you waste so much time with me?” I ask him, my tone shriveled and weak.

He doesn’t hear me, of course, only the sound of the fall wind and the water brushing up against the eroded cliff wall. He doesn’t hear me calling to him from years ahead of his time.

“I would have believed you!” I raise my voice, the inevitable cry rising in my lungs and draining my heart of any happiness left. “We could have spent your last months talking about these moments. Sharing stories of how you’d rescue me from the basement. Telling me about our picnics and dances in the rain. About the time we saved DaiSzek. About how you buried his family. I could have loved you sooner or realized”—air whooshes from my chest—“I’ve loved you my whole life!”

Those words, like poisonous daggers piercing my core, rupture the last bit of restraint I had on my tears. They flow without a beginning or end now, enough to fill a bowl. I gaze through blurry sight into those warm, welcoming eyes and scream. Like I’ve never screamed before. A blind annihilation takes root beneath my surface like an explosion has gone off in my body.

I buckle down in front of him, holding my waist as if to keep my rib cage from scattering around me. My bellows seem to come from every pore, every particle of skin, pumping into the air like a toxic storm of rage and fire.

He took care of me. He sheltered me from the evil around us. He guarded me when there was no one to protect me. And now he’s ruined me. Thrown me into a hurricane where I’m hurled around the sea, desperate to stay above water, yet drowning slowly.

“How could you leave me?” My throat burns from the viciousness rising from my middle to my mouth.

Kane remains still, except one fist is now pressed to his mouth, like he’s suppressing a cry merely from the sight of younger Skylenna wandering the Red Oaks alone. Desperate to find what she lost.

“I hate you!” I wail, falling to the soft dirt with a thud. Fists pounding the grass without purpose. “I fucking hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”

A pair of determined arms wrap around my waist, carrying a thick scent of woodsmoke and a salty ocean breeze. I struggle, jostling against their hold with the dangerous goal to seriously harm whoever is trying to restrain me.

But through my tears, I catch a glimpse of the discolored, morphed skin of their hand and wrist. Bright pink and—burned but healing. The man sobs against my back, holding me for dear life as he waits for my breakdown to dim.

I recognize his moans muffled by my cloak immediately. Smell his burned, recovering skin. Feel the aura of a chosen brother surrounding our embrace.

My screams turn to gasps, my gasps turning to strong, silent sobbing.

And Niles doesn’t let go.