Dessin stares at Martin, bleeding him dry with a look of hell’s fire. “Have you finally lost your mind in that torture pit, old man?”
“I am in control here. I wantyoutosurrender!” Martin’s hand shakes against my throat, wobbling the sharp point against my jugular. I try to take deep, controlled breaths.He won’t slit my throat.If he does, then Dessin will surely kill him. But what if he doesn’t have anything left to live for?
“Have you not seen enough of my wrath, Martin? Are you foolish enough to believe this will stop me?” Dessin takes a step toward us, causing Martin to press the blade harder to my soft skin. I yelp at the jab and suck in a frantic breath. Dessin’s attention flashes to me, pinning me down with a harnessed feral temper. It’s the most animalism I have ever seen in his darkened eyes—shadowed with previous murder. Blackening his soul.
“It’s her, isn’t it? She’s the leverage Demechnef pointed me to!” Martin pants against my ear—his body hot and sweaty against my back.
“She means nothing to me,” Dessin says, low and wicked.
“Is that a fact?” Martin shouts against the summer wind, puncturing my skin with the knife, digging it in enough to cause a rush of blood to snake down my cleavage. I whimper at the pang of splintering pain in my throat.
“I’ll skin you alive,” Dessin growls, following the snarl and low predatory stance of DaiSzek, the bear-sized wolf, black as the starless sky.
“You will not lay a hand on me. Not while I have her in my grasp.” Martin digs his fingers into my shoulder. “I am to turn you into Demechnef. And only then will I let her go. I’ve broken the laws that protect the asylum and have no life to lose!” He’s desperate and lower than maggots under a corpse.
But I won’t be the reason Dessin goes back. I won’t be Martin’s leverage.
With a rush of wind filling my lungs, I explode in a window-shattering scream, causing Martin to flinch away, loosening his hand around the hilt of the knife. In a clumsy movement, I grab the inside of Martin’s wrist with my right hand and his blade with my left, maneuvering it out of his clutch, slicing the inside of my palm in the process.
But before I can complete my planned reaction of kicking him between the legs the way Dessin taught me—he’s barreled over by a flash of white—the same way I watched DaiSzek tackle the night dawper to the ground.
A chesty grunt to the dirt. Dessin’s hand reaches up against my chest, keeping me an arm’s length away. And I fall backward, not at Dessin’s touch, but at the sound of a roaring dragon coming from behind us. I shriek, turning around on my bottom, facing DaiSzek as he flashes his fangs and sharp teeth.
“Skylenna, look away.” Dessin’s heavy and troubled voice pulses through my chest. He’s holding the knife against Martin’s throat, watching the blade pierce his skin slowly.
No, not again.
Watery flashes of the sickle—cutting through flesh—chopping past bone.
I will not pretend like I know the previous host, but I can imagine that murder, blood, and death—all at his hands—will not help bring the previous host back.
“No,” I whisper in exasperation. “Stop,” I say. I remember the darkness overcoming him when he snapped that man’s neck at the abandoned Demechnef headquarters. He did it for me. He did it to protect me.
His eyes snap up to me in distress, and I know I have to be the one to protect him now. “Get back.” His words jolt through the old road and back to me.
“NO! I need you to be whole. And killing—killing chips away at everything you are. I need youwhole.” I drop to my knees in front of him, placing my hands over his jawline, searching his eyes for the humanity I can hold on to.
“He needs to die,” he growls. But in the warm molten swirling in his eyes, I’ve caught him. Hooked onto an anchor. I begin to pull.
“Not by your hands,” I pant, inching closer to his body, tightening my hands around the bulge of the contracting muscles in his arms. “You told me if I can guess your greatest fear, I can meet him.” He’s staring at me now, brow tightly knitted together, with the look of an assassin as I slowly remove his mask. “I know what it is now… Your greatest fear is losingme. I know this because my greatest fear is losingyou.”
I pause to catch my breath. And his face is gravity, pausing, stunned in silence. “If you’re ever going to listen to me… hear me now,” I beg him. “Come back to me. Please come back to me. I’m right here.”
Our heartbeats synchronize into the dead silence.
“I need you,” I whisper.
His eyes narrow on me, and it’s as if he’s watching a tidal wave coming straight for him, unable to react, unable to run or hide.
It crashes over him.
His pupils dilate, widening until the chocolate brown is almost swallowed in the darkness. Then, the brown fills in once more, radiating with flecks of green and gold. The new expression on his face is overwhelmed with sorrow and exhaustion.
Martin wiggles his way out of Dessin’s grip and runs into the forest. But much faster than he can make his escape, the massive black and russet-red mountain, DaiSzek, explodes into a ferocious sprint after him. In a flash of blackness, there are only guttural screams.
Dessin doesn’t seem to notice. Is it even Dessin? Could it be the previous host?
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. Instead, he places his hands on my wrists. I realize my hands are still grasping the top of his neck and jawline.
