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The ghost of a smile plays on my lips, and I take in a deep, calming breath, inhaling the scent of his artificial fragrance sold at his gentlemen’s club. I suddenly have the overwhelming desire to show the rest of the asylum what I’ve done. Who I’ve become due to their arrogance. Due to their wicked ways.
The rest happens in a blackened blur. My adrenaline pumping so hard and so fast that my next movements aren’t recognizable. They are brutish and barbaric. I take a step back, blinking away the murderous daze that coats my eyes and assess the damage I’ve done.
I’m standing in the hallway, looking up at Stefan, strangling with his belt tied around his neck, dangling from the rib vault arch along the ceiling.
I did that.
He dies slowly, with loud gurgling cries and spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. But paralyzed and with no way to free himself.
I lick my lips, desperate for water to relieve the cotton dryness in my mouth. I thought this sight, being so devastatingly similar to my last memory of Scarlett, would send me into a panic, mentally sketching that puppet.
But I no longer feel the helplessness that once held me hostage.
Because I am the puppeteer. And this asylum is my stage.
24. The Puppet Show
“What the fuck have you done?!” Belinda gawks at the orderlies hanging from the ceiling.
My puppets swing back and forth behind me as I walk toward her slowly, taking my time, playing with my food.
I’m numb all over, lacking that conscience that tells me when to feel remorse and stops me from acting on impulses that would be deemed as morally incorrect. Well, this asylumismorally incorrect. This city is far from moral. And I’ve lost my patience. The only feeling that remains is searing rage and bloodlust.
There is nothing else.
When this is all over, my friends will have to stay far away from me. I don’t want to hurt them—I don’t want them to see me like this. Can I even control it? Do I want to? This primal need to exact revenge. To hurt those who have hurt the ones I love. It’s the closest I have ever felt to Dessin, and I’m not sure I can ever give that feeling up.
Belinda scurries away from me, not waiting for me to explain the newly decorated hallway. But her fleeing the scene is pointless, only delaying the inevitable. I’ve locked them all in. The staff is as trapped as each patient.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!” Belinda shrieks in a blind panic, running into the first stairwell door, slamming her body against it over and over again without any success.
“You used to be Niles’s conformist, right?” I ask casually, walking slowly, without purpose or interest in her hysteria. But the monster growing in my chest pushes me forward, making my fingers itch to dive into that void, search for her consciousness, and take her soul somewhere far away from civilization. It’s on the tip of my tongue. A way to use my abilities for something greater. Something far more powerful than I can fathom.
Belinda looks back at me with wide eyes and a trembling bottom lip. Did she think that would work? Doesn’t she know I’ve been watching her very closely since I was thrown into the thirteenth room? That every time she’s asked for the orderlies to bend the rules for her—leave her with a patient for an hour longer than necessary—she trembles that pathetic bottom lip.
She’s a pretty woman, there’s no arguing that. With her platinum-blonde hair, the color of moonbeams, and those long curly lashes surrounding her doe cerulean eyes.
“What did you do to those orderlies?” Her pixie-like voice shakes. Then, something occurs to her, and she looks around. “Did Patient Thirteen come back?”
Irritation snakes around my spine. “IamPatient Thirteen.”
“Christ,” she breathes. “Meridei’s done a number on you. You’ve really lost it.”
I laugh, although the sound is biting and clipped. My fingernails skim over the shoulder of her navy-blue uniform.
“Meridei was unreasonably hard on me this time around, yes.”
She winces at my closeness, at my thumb caressing the base of her throat. “It’s her you want then! I never put you through any treatments. Meridei was always the one that had it out for you. Not me! I’ve always liked you, Skylenna. I’ve always wanted to be your friend”—she gulps loudly—“we can still be friends.”
“You want to be my friend?”
Belinda nods like her life depends on it. Because it does.
“Of course. We’re the same, you and I. I never liked this place either. I was so happy when you started working here and wanted to change the way we treated patients.” She pants, eyes looking down at my hand resting around her throat. “We can change things around here. Together.”
I look at her for a long few seconds. “Really?”
“Yes! But I need you to get back to your room, and I can talk to the council and get you out. I’ll just need some time.” Her cheeks turn a soft shade of raspberry pink, and those cerulean eyes bounce around as if she’s hoping someone will find us.
