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

“I’m all ears,” he says softly.

And with those three words balanced in the air, I release a few demons with a single breath. I tell Dessin about the day my father came home with blood trickling down his brow. About how something had changed. That the caring sparkle in his eyes had been replaced by a fog, thick and cloudy, cast over his pale-green eyes. I explained how my six-year-old body was kicked down the stairs, tumbling from step to step until I met the floor of the basement, hearing the snap muffled by blood and skin as my arm broke my fall. And the three long dark days I spent in that cold, dusty space will live forever in my mind. Flashes of that drip from a leaky pipe in the corner or how the cobblestone felt under my small hand.

He flew into a rage, burning the dolls I had in my room and tossing their ashes down the stairs to taunt me with what he had done.

“What brought all of this on?” Dessin asks.

“I’ve never known for certain. One day he was a good father, and the next, he was sick and sadistic… a monster.” I shudder at the memory of his abuse. “When he started drinking, it got worse. I tried to hide his liquor once; I buried it in the backyard while he was gone, and when he realized I had done it, he beat me and locked me in the basement without a scrap of clothing. It was a little over a week before he let me out.” I pull the edge of my dress down as it rises while I speak. Dessin catches my movements and pulls the sheet off of the bed and lightly drapes it over my legs tucked under me.

“And you never tried to run away?”

“No. At least, not that I can remember.” I shrug. “He was my father. I didn’t want to lose him. As bad as he got, I still loved him.”

Dessin doesn’t nod. Doesn’t flinch. He simply parts his lips and lets out a small breath. Then, he lowers his head, looks down at me with dazzling eyes, and it’s then that a section of the prison is unlocked, and the inmates come pouring out of me.

I share the time he made me drink a quarter of his bottle of whiskey—it would have been more, but I was only eight, and I physically couldn’t stomach anymore. And even though it burned my throat, soured my stomach, and left my body writhing on the carpeted floor in a drunk, dizzy, and nauseous state… I still loved him.

When I turned eleven, he had glimpses of sanity peek through, like sunshine through slits of a curtain. He would look at me like he hadn’t seen me in years and tell me he was trying to fight it, that he wasn’t strong enough. During some of his rants, he would blame me for my mother leaving us. He would say that she was the only woman he’d ever loved, and she was probably having it a lot worse than him right now. All for you, he would say.

“When I turned fifteen, he reached the peak of his violence and attacked me to within an inch of my life. But someone—it was never discovered who—saved me and slit his throat with his own knife. I woke up in Survivah with a chopped-up memory and a long road to recovery ahead of me.”

He furrows his brow but still remains silent.

A thought pops into my head and sends a slight jolt of adrenaline through me. “You knew,” I direct to him. “You knew it all. I mean, you’ve hinted that you knew, but why did you want me to tell you about what happened with my father if you already knew?”

He lifts his chin and scratches the left side of his jaw. “I wanted you to tell me because you trusted me.” He blinks and then meets my eyes again.

“Why does it matter if I trust you or not?”

He sighs. “It doesn’t. But I needed to know if you did.”

“That doesn’t explain how you already knew.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t.” He halfway smirks. “And there are details about your perspective of this story that I didn’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll never share those memories again.” I clench my teeth, dragging them together from side to side to bite back the tears that are burning behind my eyes. I swallow the thickness tightening in my throat. Why does he have to dangle the truth in front of me this way? I shared a piece of me that was behind bars in my mind. That should have taken an army to do, but he coaxed it out with a soothing voice and warm eyes.

“And why do you think that is?”

I hesitate. “Everyone would look at me differently. They’d see me as damaged, broken, like a doll missing limbs or an eye.”

I take a deep breath to soothe the unbalanced quivering in my voice. It’s the way he’s looking at me, the way he always does. Not like I’m a toy he no longer wishes to play with. And that triggers the tears that want desperately to escape.

“But you don’t seem to be fazed. You’re looking at me the way you always do.”

He sits up straighter. “How do I look at you?” Amusement twinkles in his eyes.

“You look at me like you want to protect me. Like you want to keep me safe,” I murmur, unsure of my own assessment because, frankly, it would be embarrassing if I were wrong.

His stare causes a flood of chills to rush down my back. A beat of silence swarms the room. He looks like he wants to say something but can’t, or won’t, or maybe something inside him won’t allow it. He clasps his hands together. “What I’m about to tell you… Will put you in danger by merely knowing. I expect it to stay between us, just as your burdens will stay between us.”

I bow my head in understanding. But I want to shake his shoulders, thank him, scream at the top of my lungs—you have no idea how badly I’ve wanted to hear this.

“There is a rumor that Demechnef is looking for me. That I am the way I am because of our government is true to some degree. From the age of six to seventeen, I was trained, like no one in the world has ever been trained—for the war against Vexamen. Demechnef’s intent for me became clear when they discovered that Vexamen’s armed numbers far exceeded our own. For every one soldier we have, they have a hundred. But there are a couple of defenses that have kept their armies from invading our country completely. That is the knowledge that our technology and weapons go beyond the advancements of their own and that the thousands of miles of forest surrounding our cities are far too dangerous to voyage through.”

“Not that I don’t find this fascinating or anything, but what does any of this have to do with you?”

Dessin narrows his eyes my way. “The backstory helps you understand for what purpose I was trained so harshly.” He pauses and looks down and to the right, as if he’s listening closely to someone whispering in his ear. “When I was six years old, I was brought into the Demechnef bunkers. I was taught every language, every form of martial arts, the science of anatomy, psychology, weaponry, chemistry, anything and everything that could advance me in warfare. I learned it all in a matter of weeks. It would have taken the average man an entire lifetime to learn half of what I know to this degree. Studies have shown that I have unlocked parts of my brain and use that at a different frequency than the average human.

“Despite my intellectual training, I was conditioned to survive extreme amounts of pain. That conditioning went on for three to four hours every day for eleven years. If you combined every treatment here, at Emerald Lake Asylum, it still wouldn’t come close to the sessions I endured as a child. But they made me strong, resilient, capable. By the age of eight, I could disarm any soldier, outsmart any scholar, and endure more pain than any man alive. When they discovered that a soldier this powerful could not be controlled by any government, they worked to find a weakness. To keep me in line.”

“And did they find one?” I know the answer is no. But I can’t help but ask.

“Yes,” he says with great seriousness. “Despite my efforts to keep it hidden away. They did not hesitate to use it against me when they found it. Which is why I had to leave.”

“And come here? Why, of all places, would you choose to hide out here?” I ask.

“Demechnef and Survivah have an agreement. They do not have control over the other unless one breaks our laws. Meaning, under oath, Demechnef cannot reach its hands in this asylum to bring me back. They can keep an eye on me. They can send people to spy on me. But they cannot touch me,” he says, arms crossed.

“So your plan is to rot in this cage? Live out your days undergoing horrific treatments?” It’s unthinkable that the Demechnef training on him was significantly worse than this asylum. I thought this was as bad as it gets. I thought this was a gateway to hell, where demons danced and preyed on weak minds. I feel a cloak of sadness drape over me. This is Dessin’s life.

He smiles at me. “I have no intention of staying. My reason for being here is threefold. First, is what I’ve already stated. I cannot be controlled by Demechnef in here. Second, I am buying time for a grand plan. And lastly and most importantly, I don’t dare to say out loud just yet.”

A groan involuntarily leaks from my throat. “I have so many questions.” I trace the lines on my left palm with my index finger. “But I know if I ask them, you will not answer.”

“Just as you are not ready to answer questions about Scarlett.” He says her name carefully, with a softness that couldn’t possibly break or damage such a fragile word.

“What weakness did they uncover, Dessin?”

He breathes in deeply, searching for a way to respond. “A very long time ago, the previous host of this body… Found something to live for.”

I stare at him. An iron rod pulls to Dessin from inside my chest. A force from inside me trying to explode. Climbing a great height. Fighting a storm that has yet to come. I wish I knew why I have such strange feelings when I’m around him. Certain words that he says. Certain ways he looks into my eyes.

“Skylenna, I have to ask this, not because I want to, but because I have to… Has Aurick ever touched you?”

My eyes widen. I bring myself back from the black hole I had fallen into. “What’s your deal with him?” My heart pumps at the rhythm of a hummingbird’s wings. “You act like you two are mortal enemies.”

“Has he?”

I roll my head back, loosening the muscles that have fastened tightly around my spine. “What exactly do you mean by touch?”

Along the sharp edge of his jaw, the muscles rise and fall, bearing down against his teeth in annoyance. “Has he taken you into his bed?”

The notion disgusts him, it forces his brow line to bunch together and his lips to purse into a fine line. A faltering gaze, like staring into the sun.

“What—” I can’t complete a thought. This feels personal on another level. This somehow acknowledges that I am a woman to him, besides a friend and a conformist. I am a woman, and he is a man, and he wants to know if I’ve been intimate. I’m elated with fluttering wings erupting from inside my organs, soaring through my veins.

“No.” This is none of his business. I shouldn’t even answer these questions. But, for a reason I am blind to, I jump at the chance to tell him.

“So, you’ve never…”

“Never,” I whisper as if the word itself is intimate, private, and only for his ears. Never. I would never let him touch me. I’ve never had the desire.

His shoulders relax, and he lets out an inaudible breath.

“Why did you have to ask?”

“He’ll hurt you,” he says. “The way Jack hurt you.”

I shake my head. “No, I don’t believe he would. I’m far more concerned about his friend, Masten.” I wonder again why Masten wanted to spend the day with me. Was it truly a peace offering? Or another way of scaring me?

“He was around again today,” he states. I thought this would end in a higher tone to indicate a question, but he says it stiffly.

“Yes.”

He looks down. Considers a thought. “You’ll stay until dark, then?”

“I suppose so, you haven’t given me much choice.”

I leave sometime after midnight when the moon is full and beaming a silver glow over the gravel driveway. The air smells like peonies and soothing woodsmoke from an outdoor fire.

At one point, Judas summoned me to the hallway, where he warned me of the repercussions of Dessin’s actions. There must be treatments to follow his behavior, and he asked me to break the news to him. I understood that if Judas was telling this to me, it meant there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Dessin accepted the consequences with casual ease.

The rest of the evening, we never ran out of topics to talk about. We shared a plate of fruit, and he told me about his love for the outdoors, that sleeping with a roof over his head is less than appealing. Then for dinner, we ate turkey legs, smoked sausage, and roasted potatoes. We made a rule that we couldn’t ask questions about the other, not in the way we do with the game.

Tonight was for friends.