Sitting in a chair, he raises his head to greet me.
“You look rested. ” He gives me a once-over. I sigh loudly, panting to catch my breath. “God.” Whispering under my breath, I place my hand over my forehead and hunch over to fill my lungs. I half expected him to not be here at all or to be pinned down and tortured again.
He’s standing now, concerned. “I was being sarcastic. You look terrible,” he says.
“Lovely to see you too.” I spit out a laugh.
“What’s the matter?”
I smile. “Nothing.” Deep breath. “Nothing, I overheard someone saying I was going to be upset when I heard about something, and I thought they were talking about you. I… I had a bad feeling.”
He narrows his eyes. “I need to ask something of you before the day is over.” He crosses his arms and raises his chin, detached and serious.
I stand up straight.
“Do you feel a bond between us?” His jaw clenches. Humor gone from his eyes.
“What?” I try to step back, but he tugs me toward him, hooking his hands around my arms with tender pressure.
“A bond. The kind that is familiar. The kind you can’t reach out and touch, but you know it’s there. A bond that you’ve never felt with anyone in the world before. A bond that is unbreakable, even through death.”
I widen my eyes. “Dessin—”
I know the bond he speaks of. The kind that would send me into a forest fire to be with him.
“Yes. I’ve felt that bond to you since the moment I stepped foot in this room.”Since the moment I saw your smile.
He’s become my best friend and closest ally in a short amount of time. And there’s something buried deep that I trust, a shelter I never want to leave.
“Would you abandon your whole world for me?” he asks. In those brazen dark eyes, I can see that this is his most dire question. One that he has been waiting to ask me.
There’s a sharp clinking sound, and the door is thrown open. Martin, in a power stance, wearing a suit with a white button-down and suspenders. He rolls up his sleeves and leads a large team of military men—wearing merlot-red wool blazers with bronze tassel linings.Demechnef. Belts of blades and weapons hanging from around their hips.
They’ve come for him.
“We’re in the middle of something,” Dessin purrs casually. “You can come back in—a couple of years.” He winks at me as if he simply does not care that the air has shifted and we’re outnumbered.
Flooding the room in vast numbers like a swarm of cockroaches, four of them hook their hands around his arms and bind them in shackles. He lets them. Standing at ease, calm and collected, like he knew this was coming.
“What are you doing?” I shriek. “Let him go!”
“Skylenna, did you really think you’d get away with your little rendezvous last night? You signed an agreement. One of the clauses is that he is clearly not allowed to leave the premises of the asylum. Youknewthat.” Martin was born with this sneer on his round face. He places a hand on my shoulder. “Time is up. We gave you the time. The patient hasn’t improved. He is to be publicly executed at dawn.”
My heart sinks into the earth. “No…” is all I can muster. I failed him.I failed… He’s going to die. Executed in front of my eyes. The thought of living and him not being on this earth anymore is unbearable.
I watch, blood draining from my face, as they usher Dessin out of his room. He watches me with careful eyes, and I wish I knew more than anything what he is thinking. Why he isn’t fighting back.
In the midst of him being dragged from my grasp, I make eye contact, and the entire world stops spinning. Even the particles in the air take pause. I look into those soft-brown eyes that have consumed me from the first day I met him. The same eyes that made people cower in fear of him, the same eyes that made me feel safe when my surroundings told me to run. From the moment I met him, I felt what it was like for the first time to come home. I can’t let him go. I won’t say goodbye.
“Dessin,run,” I breathe the words, push them into existence. I would rather him be alive and safe than leave this earth permanently. Martin spins around to look at me and to make sure he heard right. I was giving Dessin the okay to fight back. To escape for good.
Wide eyed and beside himself, Martin stares into Dessin’s stoic being, examining him as if waiting for a dormant volcano to erupt.
Dessin phases into a full moon, cold and emerging from darkness, an expression I have recognized as the animal inside of him, going on instinct to do what needs to be done to escape fatality. But the men of Demechnef came prepared. Before he can make a move, they secure us in his room by bolting the door shut. They remove gas masks from their belts and release canisters that spew fog into the room. I watch them strap the black crow’s masks over their faces, one by one taking a fighting stance as they wait for Dessin to retaliate.
But he does not move. Only a mere glance at me as Martin covers my nose and mouth with a small half mask.
The fog lifts, and I jerk backward, realizing what they’re doing.
