Albatross snarls, his face twisting in a revolting expression of annoyance. The thick pink scars on his forehead scrunching up together, making Dessin’s name hard to read.
“He’s not going to get in! This place is sealed tight! God himself couldn’t break it down!”
I stare at them in disbelief. There’s no way. My head mechanically starts to shake back and forth. No. Dessin? My Dessin? But Albatross said that he wasn’t all of the wonderful and terrible things I thought he was? He said Dessin isn’t powerful or destructive. They just wanted him to think he was. Would Albatross really go to these great lengths and let Dessin carve his name into his forehead and sew his lips shut? Just for this… experiment?
What—is—happening?
Absinthe shoves Albatross in the back with the head of her crossbow. He steps behind my cage and begins to push us to the door. I hold on, my fingers curled around the cold metal. Where are we going?
Dessin is alive. Could this be another trick? An experiment?
Absinthe guides us through the hallway. Another shudder echoes the halls, and a wave of dust floats downward from the ceiling. Albatross continues to make frustrated noises. Is he embarrassed? Why won’t he explain to me what’s going on?
“You said he was… dead,” I mutter, taking shallow breaths. A deliciously creamy, sugary flavor of hope coats my tongue. Was he lying?
Albatross scoffs. “You probably think I’m this absurd liar. But I assure you, I’m not. You have no idea how much progress I’ve made with you. Once we abide by this old woman’s security measures, I’ll take you back and we’ll expedite the process. It’ll be harder and far more agonizing for you, but I’m beyond certain the result will be glorious.”
“Why do you have his name written on your forehead?” I ask cautiously. I need to know how much of what he said to me is true.
“Because that conceited sociopath, that behemoth of a man had no desire to learn from me! He wasn’t like you! He wasn’t eager like you are to be educated by what I have to teach you! That despicable human was vile and pure evil.” Albatross pushes me faster down the hallway as he gets worked up by the haunting memory of Dessin and what he was capable of.
My attention is drawn to the glittering light fixtures dressed in crystals spaced apart as we move farther down this endless hallway. The walls are made of rocky stone, and the floors are dark hardwood. I suppose I would have imagined being tortured in a less elegant estate. With dudgeons and leaky ceilings. Or white walls and people with lab coats.
Absinthe uses the tip of her crossbow to tap a stone on the wall. It falls inward, and a stone door cracks open. A hidden room. Albatross wheels me through the doorway. First, I can’t help but notice the many glass screens embedded into the stone wall to the right. There are at least fifteen monitors capturing the views of several angles, both outside and inside.
BOOM! Louder, closer to us, and a shock wave that passes through me.
Albatross shoves his weight into the back of my cage until we are out of the doorway and completely into this panic room. The inside looks like a different building entirely. The walls, ceiling, and floor seem to be made of steel. There are compartments along the floors parallel to the built-in screens. A bar of light stretches across the ceiling. The room is chilly, laced with the scent of mothballs and gasoline.
I watch Albatross and Absinthe gawk at the screens, scanning them for the source of the commotion. We can no longer feel the effects of an earthquake. They whisper back and forth as they point to different screens and compare notes. I shrink into the corner of my cage, rubbing my hands over the backs of my arms and my legs to keep warm.
My attention falls back to the scars on Albatross’s face. Including the ones that cut into his lips. It makes me wonder what Albatross must have done to Dessin to provoke such a reaction. And if he was willing to mutilate him like that… what would he do to him for hurting me? But that would mean he would have to break into the facility. It’s been months since I arrived. I can’t cling to that ideal of him again, the pedestal I had him standing on, I can’t fall for this trick. It’s a sick delusion to test my loyalty.
Besides, of course it isn’t real, because Dessin would have saved me in a matter of days. Not months. I would never have been belittled, isolated, or beaten. I wouldn’t know what it feels like to have kidney stones, endometriosis, appendicitis, go through childbirth, endure a broken leg, and die from lung cancer. That man would have saved me from all of it.
“There! You see? He can’t break in! He’s embarrassing himself! He’s giving up!” Albatross exclaims, throwing his twiggy hands at the monitor that he sees something on.
I crawl to the front of my cage, straining my eyes to see what he sees on that screen. On four of the screens surrounding his hands, there are mushroom clouds of dust or dirt. My eyes scroll over the destruction to peer between his hands plastered to the screen. I see a figure walking out of camera view. Is that…? No. He isn’t here. It’s not him.
Large groups of armed men close the distance from screen to screen, coming right for him. But that man walks with steps that are slow and intentional. He wants to be seen. He wants to be chased. I know that walk. It’s drowning in confidence and the unfaltering ability to dominate all. I feel the candlelight within me flicker with excitement, with hope. I haven’t tasted from that chalice of sweet victory in what feels like a lifetime.
And it feels damn good.
My two captors turn to me, smirking. Albatross’s lips peel apart, separating in space, showing his teeth even though it is a close-mouthed smile.
“Looks like the legend of his royal psychopath isn’t everything we thought it would be, hmm?” He taps his hand on the screen and sighs with satisfaction. “I told you I wasn’t lying. He’s a small man who believes he can do big things.”
I keep my eyes level with him. Trying to hold back an emotion building in me.
“Tell me, Albatross… if that’s true, then how did he get inside of the building?” I feel the malicious smile cutting through my lips and exposing my teeth.
He isn’t dead.
Albatross and Absinthe whip their heads around to face the screens again. Their heads frantically swivel and pivot from monitor to monitor. When their eyes finally catch it, the muscles in their backs turn to stone.
Dessin stands in what looks like a sitting room, with a fancy rug, leather couches, and a low-hanging chandelier. He stands in the middle of the rug with his arms crossed over his chest. A brown leather jacket, white T-shirt, and brown pants. He’s staring into the screens, smiling. It’s him. Oh god, it’s really him. It’s his face. His stunning, tan, rugged face.
He came for me!
I’m filled with a blustery excitement that flutters around under my skin like a disturbed hive of bees. The rush of adrenaline has me wired and alert. I look over at the screens where Dessin once stood outside and notice the seven-foot-tall spikes, topped with human heads.
“Shit!” Absinthe slaps her hand across the screen.
“Listen, you little street child, he thinks finding you in here will be a breeze! Our advancements surpass everything! Every security measure is meant to kill any intruder on sight! So if I were you, I’d wipe that smirk off of your face and prepare yourself to watch this man die a sad and painful death!” Albatross’s face is bright red, causing the name scar to protrude and turn a grayish red.
But I can’t wipe the happiness away. I don’t want to get my hopes up—because this could all be a test, a trick of the light, a confusing trial to ensure my loyalty to Albatross. This could all be in my head, the way DaiSzek rescued me from the hungry pack of men. But I haven’t seen his face, his body, those glorious dark eyes in so long. I’ve longed for this feeling to return to my heart, like melting an ice cube over a fireplace.
Hearing Albatross laugh brings my focus back to the screens. In the far-left monitor, Dessin walks down a long hallway with an axe slung over his shoulder. His eyes are glazed with a ruthless certainty. Like a time traveler that’s already witnessed the destruction of his enemies.
Albatross stomps his foot and looks back at me. “Flesh-eating acid,” he says with a nod. “The sprinkler systems are about to shower him with it. In…”
“Three… two… one…” Absinthe counts down.
I press my forehead to the bars at the front of my cage. The shower of acid starts at the opposite end of the hallway, one section at a time, springing to life. I wait for Dessin to turn the other way, to find a place to hide from the storm of chemicals. Like a sheet of fog, it covers every centimeter of the vicinity. TURN AROUND DESSIN! He stops in his tracks like he’s just now noticing the downpour coming from the ceiling ahead. Only a few yards left until it burns him into a puddle of bubbling skin and bones.
Slowly, confidently, he continues his walk into certain death. Doesn’t stop to assess, doesn’t wear a look of caution, doesn’t seem to care at all that this is a security measure to keep him out.
But that isn’t really his style, is it?
I half expect Absinthe to laugh, call him a fool for falling into the trap without a second thought. But the grandmother and mutilated man are gaping at him, silent, still, barely even breathing.
They clearly know him well. Know what he’s capable of. And have the good sense to fear his confidence.
I think about the moment Demechnef came for Dessin with gas masks, throwing a canister into the room to stabilize him, knock him unconscious. But he smiled, breathing it in his nostrils, making a show of how many steps ahead he always is.
Today is no different.
As he walks directly into a veil of streaming acid, the room holds its breath. We wait for the screams, the howls, the melting flesh. But he keeps walking, unfazed, unharmed. A puppeteer holding a performance for this hidden audience.
And each step he takes is that of a hunter, a soul-sucking grim reaper coming to end them. To send them straight to hell.
“How did he—”
“He switched it out with water,” Absinthe spits.
I laugh. It comes out as a loud scoff. “He’s playing with you!”
At this, Absinthe takes a sharp spin on her heels, cranks my cage open, and crawls inside as I shuffle backward. Her knuckles crunch against my jaw, under my eyes, and a final swing to my bottom lip. I scream as her fist fills my eyes and nose with pressure, hot tears. Blood comes trickling down my lips. “Shut up, stupid girl! Shut up! He’s not going to get in here without the fist of God to pound his way through that door!”
“Grandmother!” Albatross calls. Points to the screen. Soldiers flood the hallways, an organized formation of men trained to annihilate their target. But Dessin is already on the move, running up the side of the hallway wall, does a flip, a full rotation of his body through the air over the cluster of armed men, and it happens so easily. A clean move, a swing of his axe slicing through their necks like butter. Seven heads roll. Shreds of skin and spewing arteries soak the walls, the hardwood floors, and Dessin’s clothes.
He takes no time to examine his work, study the massacre he’s left behind. With a spin of his axe, he’s darting down the hallway, turning the corner and—
“He’s not aware of the latest addition to our security,” Albatross mutters nervously.
The hallway he’s in shudders, the floor throwing him off balance. He’s stopped, looking from wall to wall. But he isn’t responding fast enough. Metal walls rise on each end of the hallway, shutting him in. With an abrupt boom, the walls begin to move toward him, dragging against the floors, closing in, aiming to crush him.
No… do something!
The screens go black. The lights turn off. And we’re submerged in total darkness.
I’m so used to this sight. No color. No movements. Just me. Alone. But the gasps and groans from Albatross and Absinthe remind me that this is really happening. I’m not trapped in my mind again.
“What did he do?! What the hell did that boy do? Is he dead? Did it crush him? We’ve never lost power before!” she shrieks each question like a dying black crow.
I feel a tremble from something hitting my cage. “If you so much as breathe too loudly, I’ll take this crossbow and blast your blonde head off!” Absinthe is scared. I’ve never heard her sound remotely afraid of anything. It fills me with even more hope. Please, let this be real.
“He’s dead, grandmother. He couldn’t have survived it. The purpose is for the walls to move so fast that a human won’t have enough time to even blink, much less think of a way out of it.” I can hear him try and convince himself of this certainty. But Dessin is no average human. He plans ahead, moves strategically, and is always the smartest man in the room. I have to believe that he knew those walls were going to be there just like he knew the acid sprinklers needed to be switched with water.
Since they can no longer see me, I relax my face again into a smile, and get a rush of pride when I see him do what he does best. It’s infinitely attractive.
Albatross grunts and suddenly he’s at the left side of my cage. Breathing hard against my face, smelling of cigarettes, herbs, and grass.
“Now, we can still finish this! We can still see the progress I hoped for! Do you know why I put you through all of this?” His slick voice is an urgent whisper in my ear.
“No,” I answer. “I have no idea why evil people do evil things.”
“It wasn’t evil! It was necessary! You were beaten. You were locked in a cage, a small, enclosed space. You had to sit in your own filth. You were force-fed. You were given ice baths.” He’s panting now. An ominous fear creeps inside of me. “This was all to trigger your childhood and your sister’s.”
My blood turns to acid. “What?” Memories of the basement, my father’s episodes, and Scarlett’s horrid stories pierce me. I’m stabbed from every direction. When she first told me about how she lived in a closet. She used the bathroom in the same place she slept. She was left alone for days. It was always dark. She would feel paralyzed with fear, and she would never fight back—because she was a child. Small. Helpless. I didn’t know about the force-feeding though, or the ice baths. She kept a lot to herself. Much like I’ve done.
“I was hoping being in her shoes would help you lower that mental block,” he adds thoughtfully. I want him to step away from my cage. I want him to drop dead and decompose.
“You made me relive Scarlett’s darkest years? So I would cry?! So I would break down for you?”
“Well, to put it in layman’s terms, yes. I wanted you to self-destruct in your anguish.”
I laugh. It’s edgy and hoarse. A rope of blinding anger wraps around my neck. It’s choking me with a desire to explode and murder. Scarlett’s experiences were so much worse than what he put me through. She was only a small child. And getting a small taste of that fills me with horror.
“How. Fucking. Dare. You!” Smoke might as well be steaming from my scalp.
“I’m trying to help you!” he argues, his hands shaking the cage.
“NO! You’re trying to get to Dessin! You’re trying to turn me against him!” The more I scream, the more my brain swells against my skull and throbs from the beating.
“Look around! He’s dead, dear! He couldn’t have survived that moving wall!” Herbs. So many herbs blowing into my face.
I pause. “…Then why do you sound so scared?”
And like clockwork, the lights come back on, a low whining of machinery powering up. Albatross is on his feet, jumping back to the monitors to find Dessin. Alive or dead. The spot that Dessin once stood is closed off by the walls that are now smooshed together. I try and scope the area to see if there was any way he could have escaped… but my eye is bloody and swollen, clouding my vision with red tears. What if Albatross was right? What if there was no way he could have survived that? My heart contracts in a desperate need to see his face again. Alive.
Albatross starts to laugh and shriek in excitement. “There’s blood!” He claps his hands together. “Look, there’s blood on the floor where his body was crushed between the walls. I told you he was dead!”
Absinthe looks back at me with an insidious smirk. “No one is coming for you, stupid girl. No one.”
No. He’s not dead. He would have thought this through. He would have planned for this thoroughly. I can’t believe that this would have stopped him. But what if it did? My heart sinks into a dreary place. Desperation. Hollowness.
“Let’s get out there and see how many soldiers we have left. We need to pull his body out in the open,” Absinthe instructs. “But you-know-who will be furious with us. We’ll have a lot of explaining to do to save our own necks.”
Who would she need to explain his death to?
Absinthe pushes a button next to the door and a waterfall of air decompresses, blasting Absinthe’s gray, stringy hair away from her shriveled face. Albatross walks around her and touches the door, his fingers curl around the handle. With the brute strength of an explosion, the steel door is blasted off of its hinges, flying across the room as if it were cocked into a cannon and fired. It takes Albatross’s frail body with it, his arms and legs flopping like earthworms being burned in the sun.
Absinthe and I both shriek in unison, looking back to the doorway.
A pair of legs hang from the ceiling just outside the door. The source of the blast that might have crushed Albatross under its weight. The body drops, his weight making the ground shake as his boots hit the floor. The dark hair, the brown leather jacket, and those fierce eyes like two nuclear weapons ready to devastate humanity.
It’s him. He’s alive.
Dessin.
Absinthe lifts her crossbow, points it at Dessin’s chest, and as her hand trembles, attempting to aim it, Dessin’s eyes slide to her. And it’s over. With a quick kick upward, the crossbow is knocked out of her brittle hands and snatched up by his. He tosses it into the hallway as he has no need for that kind of weapon. He wants to feel their death, their pain with his bare hands. The next steps he takes are like a tiger, heavy, masterful, the thief of life.
“Dessin, I had nothing to do with this! Nothing!” she whimpers. And there it is again. The crippling terror. She’s petrified. Her wilted eyes are glassy with pupils the size of cannonballs. For the first time since I met her, she looks like a sweet, gentle old woman. “Please, I’ve been very good too. Taken good care of the girl.”
Oh, please. She says this as blood drips to my hands from my cheek.
“You’ve been good to her?” Oh, god. That voice. I’ve waited thousands of inhumane moments to hear the deep waters of that voice once more. “You’re forgetting I was once a victim to your impatient outbursts, you vile bitch!”
I like that name for Absinthe. Vile bitch. He’s so great with nicknames.
“But I’ve changed since you were a boy!” That old violin whines into this hollow room.
He takes another step. “Did you use a cane or your fists on her?”
She backs into a wall. Her drooping bottom lip quivering as he gets closer. But he stops, turning his head to face me in my cage. His gaze is a cold plague, sinking to the bottom of my stomach. He goes completely still as he examines my bruises, my swollen cheekbones, and my blood. She used her fists, I want to say. But I’m sure he already knows that.
I catch a movement below his hips and notice his hands shaking, clenching into a half fist. I’ve never seen him display his anger so uncontrollably.
“Now, listen here, boy…” Absinthe tries to reason with him, but it’s too late. It’s far too late. He closes the distance with a jerked step, takes her chin in his hand and forces it to face me. Absinthe’s noises vary between crying and panting.
“Look at her!” he shouts into her ear like a combustion of thunder from God himself.
“Don’t kill me!” she wails, globs of saliva forming in the corners of her mouth as she sobs hysterically.
Dessin laughs darkly, leaning closer to her ear. I can almost hear the hairs on her neck stand. “I have no intention of killing you. No, I have a punishment that will give me so much pleasure, my children will feel it when they’re born.” He smiles, wide, with eyes finding joy in pain and destruction. He’s losing pieces of sanity.
“But I—”
Before her next plea, he pushes into her back, hard, the sound of lightning striking a tree, snapping a thick branch of wood. Absinthe’s eyes lose focus, lose that glint of light. She falls to the ground sucking in shallow breaths. Is she in shock? Did he break her back? Paralyze her?
Dessin stares at the ground in front of me. Like he knows he has to face me again but isn’t ready yet.
A weak, pathetic whimper squeaks from under the collapsed door. I glance over to see Albatross squirming like a rat caught in a trap. The door must be at least seventy-five pounds. I can’t even believe Dessin kicked it hard enough for it to tear off its hinges. How strong does a person have to be for that to happen? How angry?
Dessin closes his eyes and listens to a voice inside of his head. I wonder how Kane feels about all of this. He smiles as he opens his eyes again, soaking in a single thought… probably what he’s planning on doing to Albatross.
“Hello, old friend,” he greets the frightened man under the door.
“DO YOUR WORST, BASTARD! You already condemned me to a life in the shadows! What could be much worse?!” He’s howling under the obnoxious weight of the door. The scars on his face turning purple.
Dessin takes in a deep breath. “I branded you a slave to my reputation for causing me utter annoyance. What do you think I’ll do to you for…” His next words are caught in his throat. He looks down. Swallows. Looks back up only with his eyes, from under the thick wisps of his lashes. “For hurting… her.”
A burst of doubt erupts in my gut. What if this is another trick? What if I’ve lost my mind? I’m playing out a fantasy in my head. Dessin wouldn’t have left me in here this long. It’s not real, is it?
Albatross says nothing. He stays perfectly still, held captive under his steel door.
Dessin shifts his head to face me without taking his eyes off Albatross.
“What did he do to you?” Dessin asks quietly.
He’s talking to me. I don’t know how to respond. I don’t even know if this is actually happening.
“I needed to trigger her childhood and some of Scarlett’s! Just so she could remove the horrible burden of being mentally blocked! I was trying to help her!” Albatross is stuttering, scrambling over his excuses. Trying to push the door off. But Dessin doesn’t need the door to keep him exactly where he wants him.
With an overwhelming sense of disgust with myself, I drop my face into my hands and start to shudder. My bones vibrate under my skin.
Dessin sticks his jaw out, fists squeeze together until they turn ghostly white. He cocks his head to fully face Albatross. Chest moving faster than my body can tremble. Not another second is wasted. He lifts the steel door like it is made of cardboard, lunging to the ground to take Albatross’s neck into his wide, grizzly hands.
“Skylenna—close your eyes!” Dessin instructs with a voice that could split the earth in half. I do as he says, shut my eyes and drop my face back into my hands. But it doesn’t block out the screams that sound like his throat is being shredded into fine wisps of tissue.
“I’ll do more than condemn your life to the shadows. Let’s see how brave you are without the pieces that make you a man!”
And then a boyish scream, something between a malfunctioning machine and a boiling teakettle. I hear sounds of peeling, ripping, or maybe unzipping. And then the screams are muffled and choking. Gagging, sputtering, gasping. Then, nothing. Silence.
Silence.
I keep my face cradled in my hands, rocking back and forth. I feel broken and underwhelming to a man like Dessin. If this is real, he did all of this for a sad, weak young woman who can’t even defend herself from a captor. I couldn’t even stand up for myself as Absinthe struck me in the bathtub. And then there’s that part that secretly hopes this isn’t real. That prays this is all a trick. If it is all in my head, then he can’t really see how ugly I really am. He’s strong, and handsome, and full of fire.
Without success, I try to minimize the compulsive shaking of my muscles. But I’m cold. I’ve gone so long without the warmth of a simple blanket. Or a decent meal.
Click. Chink.
Something touches my cage door. If this is real, I’m guessing his revenge was short lived, and he’s ready to assess the damage. Strands of my hair are hanging down in my face. I lower my hands and peek out to see him. Or to see Albatross, waiting to tell me I imagined it all.
But it’s not Albatross. It’s him. It’s Dessin kneeling down in front of me, gripping the cage door like he might kick that off of its hinges too. He opens it up, his stunning face unmasked by the bars. And all in one swoop, it’s not Dessin anymore. It’s Kane. My Kane. His lips part and he raises his chin, he blinks several times, like it’s his body’s way of trying to process the shock. His dark eyebrows lift upward in an empathetic expression, then turn to remorse, agony, and anguish.
He reaches out to me. That large abrasive hand moves slowly through the air, timid, adjusting to the memories Dessin is offering him. When it finally hovers over my cheek, I lean into it, closing my eyes.
If this is a trick… it’s worth the beating.
