Page 84 of The Puppeteer and the Poisoned Pawn

After the battered prisoners of this castle file out of every hallway, I find the door of the last patient I’ve been waiting to see.

The door creaks open, unmasking the woman who has been waiting years for this day. The woman who has kept up the ruse of insanity. The woman that kept Dessin’s secret.

Sern.

She doesn’t look at me as I take my first step past the threshold. Her weary, round eyes stare into a haze that isn’t quite the wall in front of her but in that general direction.

Sern is as still as a stone statue. A posture that may be from the habit of this act, or perhaps she’s detached from this body altogether. Something I can relate to.

I stand in front of her, wondering if the blood dripping down my arms and neck will grab her attention and snap her out of this trance.

“No more hiding,” I say with a scratchy voice and dry mouth.

She blinks, readjusting her focus to the vibrant contrast of bright red staining my white cotton gown. Her full lips part, only a fraction of a centimeter, and she meets my eyes. A moment of lucidity, a flash of the sane woman that was never meant to live in a place like this.

“Do you remember me?” I ask.

Sern nods, gulping as her eyes scale down the horror show of my body.

“They’re all dead. You can go home now.”

Her eyes snap up to mine again. “What did you say?”

“Go home, Sern.”

She glances out the door, deciding if it’s a trick or not, but her gaze lands on the other open doors across the hall. The patients running for the stairwell.

“You did this?”

I just stare at her.

She rubs a trembling hand over the back of her arm. Sighing. “He said you’d become like him one day.”

I don’t have to ask. I know who “him”is.

“I have been waiting a very long time for this day, Skylenna Ambrose.” Sern shakes her head, smoothing the hair around her neat bun. “He told me that the day I would be liberated would be by your hand. That—”

But I don’t need to listen anymore. I can hear his voice now; the memory of what he said echoes around me.

“She’ll be far more powerful than I can fathom. If she uses this place to channel her rage, get her a message for me. Tell her to keep going. This is far from over.”

“—this is far from over,” Sern finishes just after Dessin’s voice disappears from my mind.

I swallow down the lump lodging in my throat. Nod my head. There are glimpses playing out around us of Sern caring for Dessin over the years, being kind when there was no kindness left, and withstanding the pressure of Aurick’s father, Vlademur, to spill Dessin’s secrets. They even threatened her family.

“Take your children and your husband into the North Saphrine Forest. When you see a pack of white wolves, you’ve found it. Tell them Skylenna sent you for refuge. And warn them that there is a war coming in only a few months.”

Sern stands now, grasping my bloody hands with fierce gratitude. Tears trickle over her lids, and that firm trumpet of a voice spills past her mouth. “I owe you my life, Skylenna Ambrose.”

She bolts out of the asylum with a new purpose and excitement that she probably hasn’t felt in a very long time.

And with the last patient gone, I do what Asena said I would be able to do one day.

I breathe fire.

Knocking the gas lamps from the walls, the flames spread like a flesh-eating virus. The rooms go up in unconquerable flames, scaling up the walls, swallowing the beds whole. Heat drenches my body in sweat and dried blood.

With each unhurried step I take through the hallways, knocking each gas lamp from its post, I remember the way Scarlett’s house went up in flames. A symbol of my grief and all I had lost. This fire is the end. It’s releasing the pain of those who have suffered, those who have lost their lives in these walls, those who were treated like wild animals. And any conformist or council member still alive will perish by fire.

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