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“There’s a law written in the asylum. No matter what a patient has done or is capable of, if a priest pardons them, the patient must be granted a room and treatment plan coordinated by the priest.”
I narrow my eyes. “You’re not thinking of going b—”
“My execution sentence would be lifted. I could find out what Judas’s importance is.” He crosses his arms, rolling his neck. “The only problem is, I wouldn’t be able to keep you safe from in there. You are a wanted woman now.”
I want to laugh. This is out of the question. There must be ways around that extreme scenario. “Why can’t we just go to Judas’s home… ask him our questions there?”
“Oddly enough, Judas lives in the asylum. He never leaves.”
“Why can’t you just break into the asylum at night, and force him to tell us whatever it is he knows?”
“I could do that. Interrogate him. Use torture methods to get him to talk.” He looks down at me as if I should understand why that’s a bad idea. “But what exactly am I asking him while I make him bleed? We don’t know. All we have is his name, right? Not to mention, that kind of interrogation isn’t effective. Manipulation is a powerful tool to get someone to talk and share even the secrets you don’t know they are keeping.”
I raise an eyebrow. That makes sense. We don’t actually know what to ask him.
“Then how will you manipulate him into spilling his secrets?” I ask.
Dessin thinks of this for a long minute. “He tried to help us last time we were there. He wasn’t willing to share why—”
“He told me once he was looking at the bigger picture. That’s why he was helping me,” I interrupt.
“If he thinks I was captured and brought right back to where I started… then maybe that won’t fit with whatever he has planned. If he gave you that key to get me out, maybe he wanted us to leave. And if that’s the case, then I can play on that weakness. Get him desperate enough to tell me whatever makes him so important.”
I blow out a breath, a hot cloud of fog whooshing from my lips. It’s a good plan…
“What if—I’m admitted with you?” I ask, knowing how he’ll react. “The twelfth room is vacant.”
“Not an option.”
But my mind is made up. “No, it is, actually. Think about it. Judas has always been in my corner. Scarlett’s too.”
“No.” A firm answer set in stone.
“You have your talents, but this one is mine.” My stance is unmovable. “I was able to get through to every patient in the asylum for a reason. What if I convince them to let me have daily sessions with Judas?”
“Did you hit your head on some ice? I said no.”
“It will work!”
He looks like he’s about to yell or break a tree in half. “Maybe it would. But you would also have to endure treatments every day. And that is out of the question.”
“Dessin,” I utter, taking two steps closer to him.
“Don’t. It’s not happening.”
But my hands find the hard muscles of his chest. “I make my own choices. I decide what I can handle.”
“Apparently not good ones,” he growls, but his dark-mahogany eyes are fixated on my hands stroking up to his neck.
“I can do this. Let me prove to you that I can handle whatever you can.”
I won’t let myself think about the simulated drowning, the chair binding, the induced seizures. Enduring Niles’s treatment was enough to scar me for life.
He shakes his head.
“I. Said. No.” The violent anger is now spilling from his alpha presence. He’s edging over a cliff, the end of his patience, the dark tunnel of no return.
But I don’t stop pushing. I won’t let him win this one.
