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We travel halfway to Demechnef headquarters, a.k.a. one of the two Emerald Lake mountains behind the asylum. Dessin stops us. He’s having a heavy argument within his own head. He closes his eyes and turns his neck, like he’s enduring a high-pitched sound that’s painful to his ears.
“What’s the holdup?” Niles sets his pack down to sit on.
Dessin snaps his fingers at Niles like a parent would to scold a child without causing a scene. “Another word out of the contentious little prince and I’ll sew his mouth shut.”
Niles raises his eyebrows. I mouth the words, he’s done it before!
I wait patiently at his side, sensing the retaliatory anger coming off in clouds of steam from his skin. I can only imagine the amounts of pressure he’s under. Pressure to appease Kane, protect Kane, make sure nothing bad ever happens to Kane, protect me, protect my friends, save DaiSzek, follow his carefully curated plan he’s constructed for years. I can see it swelling inside of him like a cancerous tumor, eating away at the good cells he needs to remain healthy.
I let my hand follow its desires and reach out to him. I move slowly, like the first time I touched DaiSzek, careful not to scare him away. My index fingertip touches his palm, a knock on the door of his humanity. He doesn’t move, doesn’t make an effort to meet me halfway. So, I slide my hand within the strong, larger-than-average hand attached to Dessin. My fingers interlace with his fingers, clutching him with any comfort I can send his way.
He looks down at our hands, takes deep and controlled breaths. His close-set, dark-mahogany eyes flicker up to mine with a disarming sigh.
“I had every intention of dropping you all off at a safe location,” he says to Ruth, Chekiss, and Niles. “But Kane is insisting on bringing you lot along for the ride.”
Ruth tightens her lips together in an excited smile.
“But I have a few rules that need to be followed. What I say is the law. No questioning my judgment, making your own decisions on how situations need to be handled, and no trying to be the hero. Skylenna does that enough for everyone.”
He’s still bitter. Good to know.
“I’m going to make a deal with Demechnef’s leader that will keep all of us safe and exempt you all from their cruel methods. With that being said, if you all insist on standing at Skylenna’s side… I want you three to train for war. Demechnef wants me for a reason. Everything in Kane’s life they put him through is to create a human nuclear bomb. They want me to end the war they have with Vexamen. And now that the Vexamen Breed has discovered and captured one of my weaknesses, I have no choice but to help Demechnef put them down.”
A pit of silence hangs between the five of us. No one knows how to respond to him. Niles normally would, but he fears Dessin will make good on his word and sew his mouth shut.
“I’m going to give you three one last chance to walk away. If you decide to stay, above all else, I need your loyalty.”
My three friends exchange glances, coming to a wordless agreement.
“You wouldn’t last a day without me.” Warrose grins, walking past Dessin.
“I’m in,” Chekiss says, then nods to me. “We’re family.”
Niles smiles. “I’m clearly a tumor you can’t get rid of. Count me in.”
Ruth glances between Dessin and me, swallowing down her fear. “Family.”
48. I Am The Master
I have an infection that needs tending to. Like I fell off my bike and scraped up my knee, then let the dirt and gravel snuggle into its new home. I want to clean it out, I want to bandage it up and start the road to recovery. But there’s no time. No time at all. And I don’t want to tell someone that there’s a deeply rooted infection taking hold of my ability to gather strength and stay focused. It’s not something you talk about out loud. You keep it to yourself. You bury it in a cell like a criminal that’s done unspeakable things to innocent people. Because talking about it would make other people uncomfortable, and if you’re making them uncomfortable, then that makes the infection much worse. It makes it harder to pretend that it’s not there.
My infection is a devastating rope of fear looped around my neck. I don’t want to go back to the people that made me believe I had broken bones, endometriosis, or kidney stones. These people violated me. These people made me believe I was a prisoner for four months. I never want to experience anything like that again. I’d rather die. If it were to happen again, I’d go with DaiSzek to Ambrose Oasis and I wouldn’t come back.
But it’s too late to speak up, not that I would. I want DaiSzek back just as much as Dessin and Kane. I feel a constant stinging in my chest at the thought of never seeing him again. But more than that, if they do anything to hurt that glorious friend of mine, I will kill them all myself. The rage boiling inside me is enough to wipe out a continent.
We stand before the great Emerald Lake Mountain, about to enter the underground entrance. Dessin is in a foul mood, and I don’t dare try to calm him down. I can’t imagine how he’s processing this. He just got me back, only to lose his beloved friend too.
We live in a malicious world.
Walking toward the iron gates of the mountain tunnel, I stop to look back at Dessin who is staring at something in the trees.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. But I see it, standing behind a veil of ivy. The tall, lean man that I met near the tree house. Forest boy. Brown glistening skin, long golden hair, with moss and leaves covering his private area.
“Which man are you?” The voice of thunder and sandpaper stops the group from moving.
“Dessin.”
The man’s bare chest is slick with sweat. He nods his head once. “Come.”
