I shrug.No, you’re not wrong.
“Well, that feeling is mutual. And if a raving mad lunatic like me can trust you? Despite the many burdens I carry at this very moment—you can believe in me.”
“Why me? Why do you care about protecting me and no one else?”
It dawns on me that I haven’t asked him this question before.
But I’ve caught him off guard. He blinks, opens his mouth to answer, looks away.
“I don’t exactly have a choice,” he says stiffly.
“I need more than that.”
“The other man in my head…” He looks at me darkly, like he’s about to spill classified information. “He isn’t allowing me to care for anyone else.”
Processing that bit of news sends me walking to his bed in a colorful trance. Taking my mind off the earlier trauma and focusing on this new spectral idea that the mystery soul inhabiting his body behind the shadows, behind psychological bars, is aware of my existence.
And he…caresabout me.
46. “Take My Hand.”
Dessin agreed to hours ofvarious treatments for the harm he inflicted onto the orderlies during his outburst. I wasn’t allowed anywhere near him until they finished.
Hydrotherapy was first, then he was left in the coldest room of the asylum to reach near hypothermia. What followed after that, he asked that I didn’t inquire about. To spare me the knowledge of the severity of his punishment.
I sat in a washroom and sobbed alone until it was over.
It took some time this afternoon, but eventually, I made a case that sitting inside his room every single day without any other scenery wasn’t in anyone’s best interest. With Judas’s blessing, I managed to get two hours a day outside of Dessin’s room, and if he so much as looked at someone the wrong way, he would be sentenced back to solitude.
Together we sit in silence. Dessin glances down at his food residing beside him on the stone steps on the terrace. A sense of hopelessness sinks inside of me. I don’t know what I am going to do when this day is over and it is time for me to return to a home that isn’t mine. That now more closely resembles a cage.
I glance over at Dessin, taking in his short time of pretend freedom, the rays of the soft afternoon sun draping over the asylum garden like a cloak of protection, and the towering pine trees oscillating in the breeze. But when a dancing ray of light bounces off of his brow, I see that it is furrowed, and he is frowning.
“What is it?” I ask.
He turns his head so that I no longer have a clear view of his profile.
“You’re going to stay with him, aren’t you?” he asks, yet, in the absolution of his tone, I know he already knows the answer.
I stare at him, holding my breath, summoning the right answer with a silent prayer. I can’t leave Aurick. If I leave, I might as well kiss my position here goodbye.
And for that matter, Dessin goodbye with it.
He scoffs at my lack of an answer. “Are you going with Aurick to his grand, luxurious ball tomorrow?”
Ball? Tomorrow?I can’t handle this right now. I don’t want to think about the near future or the distant one. I only want to sit here with him. I want to be distracted.
“I don’t know.” And we both know that my words are to answer both of his questions.
He finally turns to look at me, this time with eyes that force me to believe he hates me; he actually hates me. But a second longer, and I see something else, something deeper, stinging with buried pain. There’s a look of exhaustion and an unfamiliar yearning.
“I thought I’d have to fight you to keep from hunting him down. Why didn’t you?” I breathe in the spring air to calm my erratic emotions that continue to bottle up at the surface, threatening to burst at any sensitive trigger word.
He stares down at me. “Because I knew if I did, you might never have forgiven me. Even though it took every ounce of restraint I had to not give him a living autopsy.”
I flinch. “It’s really not a big de—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” he interrupts, holding a hand up to stop me. “Do you know how tormenting it has been to look at your face andseewhat he did to you? See the pain behind your smile?” Pause. Two breaths. “How—” his voice breaks, and he caresses his finger lightly under my right eye where the bruise sits under my makeup. “How could you stay with him after he did this to you?” There’s a sadness in his voice, a certain tenderness that comes out only when he’s talking about me.
