The Master and The Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet series Book 2)

He will come for me. He will come for me. H e w i l l c o m e f o r m e.

My pulse is so quick, so loud, it beats against my jugular, a drum of battle in my ears. I’m woken up by a dull throb of hunger only to feel the shock of lying still in complete darkness again. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. I don’t even remember falling asleep. How long have I been here? Is it weeks now? Dessin would never let me be held captive this long. Something must be wrong.

Being all alone in this long stretch of darkness makes me want to scream for help, kick the cage until my teeth rattle. I want to fight to escape. But what if Albatross breaks another bone? What if Absinthe force-feeds me again? I’m torn between doing what would make Dessin proud and cowering in fear of the unknown.

I try to stay calm. There is no need to overreact now. That’s probably what Albatross wants. He wants me to go into hysterics. This must be a tactic of his. Use isolation to make me go insane. Let the darkness turn into hallucinations. Wait me out until I’m begging for company. A stiff chill like a set of long jagged fingernails drags down my spine.

I won’t give him that satisfaction… Yet. I can only breathe like a jackrabbit caught between my lungs. It bounces around furiously. This reminds me of my time in the basement, the cold, hard concrete floor, the way the walls would start to breathe. My small child mind would conjure up new and unimaginable terrors that would lurk all around me. My heartbeat knocks against my skull, stomping on the arteries in my brain. My palms remain pressed firmly to the bottom of the cage and they moisten with single, microscopic drops of sweat.

I blink desperately, silently begging the lights to come on. My stomach twists, gallops, and lurches forward.

Please Dessin, don’t let me go through this again. Come save me, Dessin! I don’t want to be here anymore! I promise to listen to you next time! I’m sorry I didn’t know what I was doing! I swear I’ll do what you say!

A drop of sweat drizzles down my neck, tickling the center of my chest. And I hold my breath, biting down on my tongue to distract from the panic. My bottom lip quivers while my teeth grind together.

Somebody help me!

Terror is suffocating me with a feather pillow. It’s wrapping its chains around my back and chest. It’s locking me in this cage forever.

I might never see the sun again.

I curl into a small ball; my knees jammed against the bars, and my feet ice cold against the metal floor. My mind does strange flip-flops as I try and make sense of being locked in this cage like an animal, of being force-fed, of having believed my bones were breaking. If they only want Dessin to realize he isn’t all-powerful, then why would they want me to suffer?

~

I think several days passed in the darkness. I’ve waited in fear, every hour, that these shadows will never end. The silence will make my ears bleed. I’ve waited for Albatross’s voice to show up once more, giving away more useless information, and talking to me like a small child. I’ve waited for food, water, crumbs—anything to keep me alive. Perhaps they’ve forgotten about me, perhaps they’ve lost interest and are simply waiting for me to die.

With the black scenery becoming all that I know, I wonder if I made Albatross up? Maybe when I was captured, my mind created moments. Maybe my mind gave me a source of entertainment to distract me from all-consuming darkness.

I try to sleep mostly. Count the seconds, count the bars around me. Recall stories that Dessin or Kane would share with me to play out in my head. But the doubt starts to creep in like an infestation of cockroaches. What if Dessin isn’t coming for me? What if I am trapped here forever? What if there is no Dessin and I’m insane? I want to bang the side of my head into the bars until it stops working. I want the thoughts to be silenced and to go back to sleep. I don’t want to wake up until he comes for me, even though that day might never come.