~
Before I could step footin the asylum to face the aftermath of Dessin’s jailbreak, Judas stopped me on the front steps.
He was concerned I had faced severe trauma wherever Dessin had taken me—that I would end up like Sern. He didn’t use her name, but I knew that’s who he had on his mind. My spine may be intact, but how could they know for certain if he hadn’t damaged something else? Perhaps he did—with those tokens.
“I’d like you to be evaluated. I know someone who specializes in trauma from the asylum.” He told me that the council wanted to speak with me about the incident. But first, he must know I was truly unharmed.
Now, I’m outside Judas’s home. The someone he knows would be here, waiting for my arrival, waiting to dissect me, to yank out and inspect everything wrong.
The front door opens, exposing a woman with a long and snakelike frame. Voluminous crimson hair, a pink pointy nose, and a black evening dress.
“Please come in, Miss Ambrose.” Her voice is smoother than wine and a sunset gliding across a steady ocean. It has a lower register than mine with a sultry echo to it.
I enter the spacious living room with a timbered, baronial structure of the brick walls and antique oil paintings. Candle wax drips down the only flickering sources of light in the room. There is a gas lamp on a round wooden table with a vase of pink tulips.
“Do make yourself comfortable,” she instructs, signaling to the velvet daybed.
I do as she says, tucking my navy uniform dress under my thighs like a lady, resting my hand against the arm of the divan. I breathe in through my nose, my eyes softening but still alert. This room smells of dust and women’s perfume.
“Wine?” she asks, pouring herself a glass. Her fingers are long and delicate. The skin that coats her bones is seamless in its iridescent beauty, porcelain white from head to toe, and hair vibrant with rich pin-up curls. She only looks a few years older than I am, twenty-five at most.
Deep-set hazel eyes blink at me.
“Oh”—my eyes flutter back into focus—“no, thank you. May I ask your name?” I watch the dark-purple liquid splash the inside of the glass as it puddles into thebowl.
“Lynn.” She glances over at me, setting her bottle of wine on the glass coffee table.“You’ve been quite the talk of the town lately.”
I nod. Her voice could put me to sleep. It’s soft, like a harp playing on warm summer nights.
“Judas is concerned about any physical or mental trauma from the incident.”
“Is he your husband?” I ask.
She chokes on her wine. “No.” She dabs a napkin at her plush lips. “Very old friend. Like a brother. I live a secluded life now away from the city, but I can be reached for occasions like this. May I ask… Have you known trauma before?” she inquires between sips.
I want to laugh.Yes, father, sister, mother.“I have.”
“Was this encounter more or less frightening?”
“Less.”
She raises her eyebrows.Oops. Maybe that was the wrong answer.
“These traumas you’ve known… Were they physical or emotional?”
“Both.”
She pauses. Swishing her wine in her glass, then taking another swig.
“It can take face-to-face confrontation to begin to heal. Is there a way to contact the person orpersonsthat this trauma involves?”
What does this have to do with Dessin? I want to go back to the asylum.
“No.” I give her one syllable. One word.“They’re all dead,”I say under eerie silence.
Her brow furrows in concern. “Did the patient that escaped hurt you in either a physical or emotional way?”
“Neither. He was a gentleman.”His hands reached for my waist as he helped me down from the broken ladder. He made me squeeze his hands as I was paralyzed with a panic attack.He was… kind.
