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

“Niles, you’re bleeding.”

I perk my head up at the soft, tender voice of the person kneeling in front of me. Ruth wears a white agronomist’s dress, with a belt around the waist and slits around her legs to walk easier.

My mouth parts seeing her again so soon. We share a look that says we don’t have to talk about how I left things with her. Not now.

I glance down at Niles’s arm, still wrapped around me. And she’s right. His burns are seeping fresh blood. I wince because he’s probably in an immeasurable amount of pain.

“Niles,” I rasp, doing my best to unhook his hands without hurting him. “You shouldn’t be here. You’re supposed to be resting.”

But he came at the perfect time. I wonder how badly I would have spiraled without Niles to pull me back.

He uses the back of my cloak to wipe his eyes.

“I couldn’t rest knowing what you were going through,” he says with a wet, strained voice.

I swallow down the zing of pain that statement brings me.

“You’re hurting too,” I say quietly.

“I tried to stop him,” Ruth adds. “But he snuck out in the night. It took me a while to catch up with him.”

We sit for a few seconds in exhausted silence.

I look down at the burns covering Niles’s right arm. Shiny, raw skin glistening in the potent sunlight. “I’m so sorry.”

He grunts. “It’s nothing.” He shifts his arm away to hide it from me. “At least the asylum was good for one thing. Pain tolerance.”

My eyes close slowly. “I should have never brought any of you into this.”

“We would have come anyway,” Ruth says, sitting down beside Niles and me. “Family stays together.”

“I don’t know how to be a part of a family,” I whisper, my eyes flicking to where Kane and DaiSzek once stood, now hollow of that memory. “I never did.”

“We all have our issues with family. Maybe that’s why we’re so perfect together.” Niles’s hands tremble from the obvious pain he’s braving through.

I don’t respond. This is all a big nightmare, and I don’t even know how to comfort my brother with the pain he’s experiencing. The nightmares he most likely has about being burned alive. I don’t know how to connect anymore.

“Tell us what you’re feeling,” Niles says slowly, cautiously. “Tell your family what you’re going through right now.”

I have the urge to lash out. It’s on the tip of my tongue to give in to that foreign fire bristling through my veins. But my gaze slides from my hands to his gorgeous, close-set eyes. And the sincerity punctures a hole in my chest.

“I—I don’t know how to talk about it.” Where to begin? The hallucinations? Seeing Sophia? My parents? That my childhood was safeguarded by little Kane because our parents depended on him to keep my mind safe from the experiment for some reason.

“Try,” Ruth pleads, rubbing the sides of her arms against a new chill hanging in the wind.

“When I was a little girl, my father used to lock me in the basement,” I begin, letting the heart-wrenching truth guide me. “I remember shivering at how cold it would get at night. There was no summer breeze to chase away the numbness in my nose and fingers, and feet. But the best feeling was the moment I’d step into the sunlight after being let out.”

Ruth and Niles watch me closely, brows knitted together, waiting to understand where I’m going with this.

“My skin would tingle as the cold left my body. It was stepping out of hell and walking into heaven. I could breathe again.” Tears gather in my eyes, and I shift, fighting to keep the log in my throat from corrupting my calm voice. “Well, Kane and Dessin were the sun that kept me warm and safe and happy. They were the sun that obliterated that dark, lonely basement. But now—” My voice breaks, croaking to a pathetic whisper. “—now, there is no more sun. And—I’m so cold. I’m so cold, and I’ll never get warm again. Because my sun is gone. It’s dead, and it’s not coming back.”

I look up at Ruth as she quivers to hold in her silent tears streaming across her olive skin. And Niles tries to wipe his away quickly as if he only just realized he is crying.

“How do I live like this?” I ask them, bile rising in my throat. “How can I survive without the sun? How can anyone go on?”

Ruth opens her mouth to answer but stops herself. Shakes her head with a quivering bottom lip.

Niles’s burned hand reaches for mine, gripping it tightly even though I know it causes him pain. “We are no strangers to the darkness, Skylenna. If hell is the only way out of this, we’ll crawl—or walk—or run through it together.” Niles tries so hard to hold in his cry that he begins to hysterically hiccup between his words. I squeeze his hand back until my fingers turn white.

Ruth reaches to place her hand over ours. “That’s right. If you can’t survive without the sun, then we’ll build a fire.”

Their sentiment chips at the iron wall around the soft tissue of my heart… but I’ve come too far. If I stop to grieve in their arms, then I’ll never get back up. The weight of the loss would crush me. And I’m not done searching yet.

I pull my hand away from them briskly.

“Stay with us,” Ruth begs, trying so hard to keep the tears at bay it nearly breaks my spirit.

“We’ll take care of you.” Niles is sitting up, wincing as he prepares for me to flee.

Take care of me? God, if only they knew how hard I heavily relied on Dessin for that same assurance. Take care of me. Protect me. Keep me happy. I leaned on him, weak and defenseless. He carried every threat, every danger on his back.

And eventually, it broke.

Carrying my burdens as well as his own was too much to bear. I can’t imagine what they did to him. How he coped when he was sitting in that asylum, and I was in Aurick’s house.

I lift my chin, cold determination strengthening the muscles in my back. I will never rely on anyone to take care of me again. Ironically, I’ve known how to fight all along. He gave me the tools I needed to protect myself, but they were buried deep. I won’t be the weak, shy Skylenna that wouldn’t fight Aurick back when he struck me down. I won’t be afraid to fight for my life or the people I love ever again.

I will be equal to or more powerful than Dessin ever was.

I will be the dragon that flies over men.

My legs straighten out as I stand tall, lifting my archer’s hood over my head. “One day, I’ll come back,” I say to them without making eye contact. “But there’s something I have to do. And I can’t come home to you until it’s done.”