Page 76 of The Puppeteer and the Poisoned Pawn

I know what I must do.

It should have been done a long time ago.

The sounds of Dessin’s groans fill the asylum, echoing in my head like a trumpet of war. Every treatment they have ever suffered blazes through my core. Every threat he’s ever made, every promise of immense pain, rings up my spine with determination.

The door opens, and the priest steps inside with a shameful shake of his head.

“I am so sorry, my dear. They do not know the potential that God has given you. They do not understand.”

I can hardly breathe as fire races through my lungs.

“I need you to give a message to Judas,” I say calmly.

The priest nods eagerly, pulling out a piece of parchment and pen. I accept it with wooden hands and begin to write.

Righteousness is the only way out. Under the word of God. Now we live with his mercy.

-Skylenna

I know that using the same code Judas once used to get a message to Dessin and me is the best way to ensure he heeds my warning. The first letter to each sentence.

R. U. N.

23. The Reckoning

I have one hour until the staff leaves for the day.

One hour is all I need.

The hallucinations swallow me whole, a ship sinking to the bottom of the ocean. I wade my arms through the memories of each orderly, each conformist, and each board member in the vicinity. It takes time to decide who deserves to go to hell. It takes looking closely at each vulnerable moment, like the time Suseas jokingly pushed her little brother out of a tree and broke his arm. She was only nine and couldn’t sleep for a week from the gnawing guilt.

Or, Stefan, the orderly stationed outside my room—he was a kind child, always said please and thank you. Even Lyoness had his moments. Always treats his wife like a queen. Gives her anything she asks for.

But that does not make up for the evil they’ve let spread like a plague in this asylum. Suseas’s second year of being a conformist, she killed a woman. A patient with severe depression who wasn’t a danger to anyone, she shouldn’t have ever been committed to the intricate section at all. Unfortunately, the patient looked just like Suseas’s husband’s mistress. And so, Suseas might have accidentally left the patient in the scalding bath for too long.

Stefan once flogged an elderly patient for wetting himself in the hallway.

Lyoness ordered the execution of a young girl that accused an orderly of sexual harassment.

Their sins drastically outweigh any good deeds they’ve done in their lives.

And I have shed the last bit of skin that was the old Skylenna. The girl that couldn’t fight back against her father even though she knew how. The girl who cowered behind Dessin when danger neared. The girl who watched each asylum patient be treated with cruelty and torment without standing up for them.

That girl is dead. No longer in existence. No longer able to call the shots.

This woman standing in the thirteenth room… has learned to be the dragon that flies over men.

Meridei

Belinda whines next to me about gaining three pounds since last month. She can’t see me smiling to myself as I fill out my daily report.

“Anyway, heard you got in trouble with the priest,” she says smugly, reapplying her baby-doll-pink lipstick in a handheld mirror.

I snort. “He made some sort of treatment deal with the little narcissistic bitch. Must be getting sucked off after hours by her in the thirteenth room.”

Belinda cringes.

“I managed to drown her today,” I add, writing up my last treatment. “I was always too hesitant to butcher her when Patient Thirteen was around.”

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