Oh, sweet tree sap.“You’re right…” I say.“So, I guess that means it’s my turn?”
He nods once.
“I have a paralyzing fear of enclosed spaces.”
My thoughts jump back to his Sern confession. That’s why he hurt her. He told her a secret? Did he try to kill her to cover it up?
“I killed six people the day I admitted myself here.” Emotionless. Ice-coated words.
A jolt to my entire system. I try not to act fazed by his secret. But now I know he is, in fact, a murderer.
He closes his eyes, smiles to himself. “I don’t think there are any secrets you can tell me that would surprise me.”
A burning urge to prove him wrong rises under my chest.
“I think the only reason I can connect to patients with such ease is that I belong in here too. My secret is… I don’t think my mind survived the trauma from my childhood.”
Dessin’s body goes rigid.
“Skylenna,” he whispers like a hollow drum, laced with spider silk that clings to my ears. His lips part, and there is a thought reaching from his mouth, trying to break free. His eyes are conflicted, darting across the floor as though he is settling a silent argument.
Suddenly, his face is calm again and unfaltering with confidence. He lowers his head and raises his eyebrows at me in a condescending glower.“If I had a heart—that might have worked on me.”
His words lick my wounds with salt. I stand from my seat, realizing that our conversation has reached an end.
But before I can leave, I take a step in his direction, lowering myself into a squat so that I am now looking up at him.“You can try to convince me in every way possible that you don’t have a heart,” I say softly.“But I don’t give up. And if there is a heart somewhere in there—” My hand reaches out, touching the center of his chest. He stiffens like drying concrete, dark-mahogany eyes fixed on my fingers.“I’ll find it. I’ll be the first to find it.”
19. Unlocked
It’s been a long, underwhelmingweek.
The council has kept me from Dessin for“psychosis conditioning.” I’m not really sure what that means. No one is telling me anything other than that. But I get to see him today, and I couldn’t sleep last night knowing that bit of information.
Dessin is not in his usual spot. He’s upright in his bed today, shackled to the posts.
“Breakfast in bed today?” I comment, circling the unoccupied chair to sit down. Dessin looks at the wall behind me as if he is looking through a window with a thousand distractions.
His face is tired, shadows around his eyes like warning signs of danger. His broad chest moves unsteadily, with flexing arms and clenched fists.
“What’s wrong with you…?” I ask cautiously.
Something isn’t right. I blame the council for whatever they have been doing to him.
Finally, he looks at me, causing my stomach to twist. I always thought I loved blue eyes, like Aurick’s. Because they’re piercing and cold, like a jagged piece of ice. But his are like nothing I’ve ever seen.
They speak their own language—a dialect that might take me years to decipher. And I’ve imagined them hundreds of times since our first meeting, never quite capturing them correctly, as if the photograph in my mind smears after I leave this room. But, of course, I know the color. At least, I thought I saw one single, simple shade.
Before, I saw melted chocolate and caramel. But today, they’re the bark on an oak tree, dark and saturated just after a heavy rain.
And his eyes are currently speaking louder than his silence. Somethingiswrong.
“Dessin, what happened during your treatment?” I ask.
He raises his eyebrows with a side smirk that says,ah, well, you know.
My patience fizzles out, and suddenly, my knee is bouncing while I sit, fighting to remain calm until he gives me an answer. But what if he’s seriously hurt? He’d hardly show it. Perhaps his pride is too great to ever let me know.
That single thought has me surging to my feet, and then I’m kneeling down in front of him. He blinks, eyes wide, and he leans back as if he’s expecting me to attack. My chest is grazing his knees, and I share a glance with him, silently asking for permission to touch him.
