Page 77 of The Puppeteer and the Poisoned Pawn

I sigh at the memory of her body going limp over the tub. The image seeps into my brain and releases bursts of serotonin or oxytocin; whichever it is, I’m filled with dazzling ecstasy. Since the day I met Skylenna, I wanted to treat her as a patient. Perhaps I’m a prophet. I always knew she’d end up under my care. It was all too perfect.

“Where do you suppose he is? I mean, weren’t they inseparable? Thirteen never left her side.” Belinda’s nasally voice pulls me back into the conversation.

“I was hoping she’d tell me while I treated her.” I shrug, signing my name at the bottom of the report. “But that topic seemed to be off-limits.”

Belinda watches me for a moment. The annoyance of someone staring at me rises in the bottom of my belly, burning until I tighten my abdomen. I turn to her with a locked jaw and an agitated glare.

“You scared he’s going to hunt you down for hurting her? That seems to be his style.”

I can’t roll my eyes slow enough. “No. He clearly got bored with her and jumped ship.”

She doesn’t stop staring.

“I am the only terrifying person left in this asylum,” I bark, my fingers itching to mess with the control panel again and drown another patient, preferably Skylenna.

The way her knees bruised themselves against the sides of the tub, the way she bucked and thrashed, dulls my bad mood, softening the hard edges of my temper. I want to do it again. I want to wait until the staff leaves so I can watch her struggle for air. The temptation is delicious and uncontrollable.

“You coming?” Belinda is already standing at the door of the study, placing her report in the conformists’ slot.

But that damning urge to watch her suffer again is too great to overcome. I shake my head. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

After the door closes behind her, I wait patiently, hands fidgeting at my sides, thinking about which treatment I want to see her in next. Electrotherapy just isn’t intimate enough. Flogging might be exciting. It’s hands-on. I like that.

But the hushed voices outside of the door grow louder.

And then I hear Belinda scream.

Skylenna

It’s too easy. I thought I would be rusty. But my limbs sliced through the air, knocking into the orderly Stefan’s bad knee with grace. The muscle memory was strong and simple to tap into.

He came into my room after I lured him in with promises of sexual favors. I wasn’t satisfied with how slow he was to defend himself. I even gave him the chance to admit remorse, confess that he gained no pleasure in this particular line of work.

It turns out he enjoys his job. A little too much.

It only took three moves to bring him to his knees like a groveling, unfaithful lover.

And now, as he holds his groin from where my knee once was, I yearn to watch the life drain from his grayish-blue eyes. That seemingly harmless glare that once guarded the door while Scarlett was hazed and waterboarded. Or even the time he conveniently forgot to feed Dessin for three days.

Rage unwinds in my stomach, acidic and thick, oozing through every organ until I’m sure I might explode from a combustion of wildfire.

My fingers curl around his chin, nails cutting into his bristly flesh.

“I am so tired,” I say without the usual emotion furrowing my brow. “This city makes me lose faith in humanity.”

Stefan gasps, still holding himself. His mousy brown hair is slick with fresh sweat, and his pale features are now splotchy from his forehead to his collarbone.

“And since trying to change your ways clearly failed me…”

I let myself relax further into the darkness. My face morphing into the perfect example of calm. He watches me with suspense tightening his shoulders.

“I’ll have to kill you all.”

Stefan opens his mouth to object, but the only sound in the room is of my foot cracking into his back, like a branch snapping from a tree after a strike of lightning.

Paralyzed but still alive.

Breathing. Huffing in and out like a fish out of water.

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