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

The motivation for sleep guides my movements through the dark mansion.

It’s one thirty a.m., and I’m afraid Aurick waited up for me.

I trudge into the sitting room with bare feet and sore limbs, look around and see that Darcie has been here, Aurick’s maid. The white marble floors have been swept and polished. The shelves have been dusted, and the chimney has been cleaned. I step into the kitchen and find a bottle of bourbon, now bone dry. My head falls. The sight of an empty liquor bottle always petrified me as a child. It meant my father was lurking somewhere in the house, thirsty and angrier than ever.

I jog up the spiraled stairs and peek into the crack of his door. Aurick sits on the edge of his bed, hunched over a small trash can. Shirtless, black briefs hugging his hips, and an uncharacteristically messy head of raven-black hair.

I consider racing back to my room, locking my door, and pretending like I had been asleep this entire time. But I can’t leave him while he’s sick. I push open the door with my left hand, and his head pops up. I offer a soft smile and step into his room.

“I really hope it wasn’t your cooking that’s making you this sick,” I tease. He sets the can down. I try not to look inside.

He chuckles and nods his head. “It would make sense, wouldn’t it? I am the only one who ate the dinner I set out.” A rigid bitterness in his tone—an iceberg cutting into a ship passing by.

“I’m sorry—but I got a lot of work done tonight.” I stay close to the door, suddenly feeling a violent tremor permeating from his frame. He stands up, back hunched and shoulders slumped forward. He doesn’t lift his head, but his eyes work hard to focus on me.

“Let me ask you something—do you find me attractive?” His words are slow and slurring, and he stares at the space between my eyes.

“I—you said we were friends.”

He laughs aggressively loud, cutting me off with the sudden noise. He takes a stumbling step toward me. “Because I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable staying with me!” he shouts with breath reeking of cigar smoke.

“Aurick…” I have nothing to say, only a new perspective gliding into focus on my living here. This whole time, he lied to me. My hands reach behind me to grip the door for support. As if I were eight years old again, my knees threaten to buckle, and hot waves of fear flood into my gut.

“It’s been torturing me to live under the same roof as you—knowing you’re undressing just across the hall—but I’ve been patient, waiting for you to make the first move. Show me you want me.”

“But I don’t—” I choke on his unexpected confession.

“You don’t want me.” His words are heavy, eyelids sluggish. “You’re telling me you’ve never thought about fucking me?”

He drags his feet a step closer, cornering me like the night dawper I met in the woods.

“Not once. You’re my friend.”

“No—” He runs a shaky hand through his wild hair. “I’m a man, and you’re a woman. A woman living with me. A woman that has to obey me. Care for me. Touch me.”

My mouth falls open, and I dig my nails into the palms of my hands to force an invisible dam to my eyes as the urgent flood of tears blurs my vision. The blood from the arteries in my neck pumps hard and fast into my face, prickling with heat to my forehead as if I’ve pressed my face in an oven.

That warning, like a red pulsing fire growing in height at the center of my brain, tells me to run. Much like when my father had his violent streaks. Do I leave? Where would I go? But I must. At least until he’s sober and able to have a civil conversation.

“We can have this conversation when you’re sober.” I take the door handle and begin to turn to flee the scene.

Thick beads of sweat roll down his temples, and his face becomes red. “Don’t you dare walk away from me when I am speaking to you!” I see a flash of the back of his hand and then feel the hardness of the bones from his knuckles against my cheekbone. A screech escapes me, like nails across a porcelain plate—I fall backward.

I hold my hands over the right side of my face to comfort the sting, the throb, the déjà vu threatening to throw me into a sea of depression. Instantly the sobs possess me, and my shoulders shake like a twig in a thunderstorm. Salty tears puddle in the corners of my eyes, drip down my cheeks, and seep between the slit of my lips. As if stepping backward in time a good ten years, I am powerless to stop the ones I love from hurting me. I can’t believe it’s happening all over again.

He kneels down, swaying back and forth. I flinch and use my arms to shield my upper body. “Please,” I beg, whimpering as I bear down for another strike.

And like soothing warm water, Dessin’s last words to me before I left him tonight flow into my mind, reminding me what to do as my first line of defense. Tell Aurick I told you about my time at Demechnef. That you know I have a plan and that I plan on revealing it to you soon. He’s a jealous man—and if he believes you’re opening up to him, it’ll help your living situation.

My eyes flicker to his bloodshot stare through the small opening between my arms. This could easily anger him even more—but I trust Dessin. I trust he wanted me to tell Aurick this for a reason.

“Patient Thirteen told me about Demechnef—how they controlled him! And that he has a plan—he’s going to reveal it to me soon. That’s why I stayed so late! Only for that reason!” I’m blubbering now, hiccuping to catch my breath as Dessin’s solemn advice spills from my lips wet with fresh tears.

Aurick’s eyes suddenly look sober as they open wide to process my statement. He bows his head in remorse, shaking it side to side. “Shit—I didn’t mean it. Oh God, what have I done?!”

My right eye waters up as it burns from impact. I sigh in relief that he has snapped out of his spontaneous rage and isn’t going to keep attacking. “I’m okay,” I whisper.

In the beginning, when my father first began to change into the monster he became, he would hit me and then briefly apologize afterward as if he regained his conscious morals. I grew accustomed to telling him it was okay after he had struck me. After a few months, he eventually stopped apologizing.

Aurick scoops me into his arms. “I don’t know what came over me. I swear to God, Sky, I won’t ever lay a hand on you again! I can’t believe I did that.” Thin, hardly noticeable tears spill from one eye. He kisses the top of my head and sobs lightly into my hair. I’m sick to my stomach at the thought of this happening to me again. I finally escaped my father, and now it seems that he has found me again. I can’t help but have feelings of abandonment toward Dessin. Did he know this would happen? Is this what he was talking about when he said leave her alone? At the moment when Aurick reached his anger and violence, I wished Dessin would save me.

“I’m okay,” I repeat. He abruptly turns to the can and hurls again. I stand up. “I’m going to get some ice for this,” I say with my back turned to him. He doesn’t answer. Silence. I glance over my shoulder to see him passed out on the floor.

Thank God.

As I lay my head down with a bag of ice resting over my right eye, Dessin’s words ring through my thoughts.

He’ll hurt you. The way Jack hurt you.