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“I have no life to go back to.” Her voice is no longer calm and collected. It rises in volume, rattling my bones and chilling my skin. It’s as if she is letting herself have one last moment to feel the gravity of the situation she’s found herself in.
“I—have lost—everything!” Tears swell in her emerald, red-rimmed eyes as she screams in my face.
There is nothing left to say as she turns the control panel on, lowering me into the cold water as I bleed out. Dark, thick blood gushes around me, a heavy cloud permeating the tub.
An inch before I’m swallowed into my own personal hell, Skylenna turns from the doorway.
“This is for Chekiss.”
And there is nothing worse than waiting to die while, at the same time, fighting to breathe.
25. Dragon’s Breath
Skylenna
Each patient door is opened.
I stand off to the side, nodding my head at each of them as they race for the exits. There’s Samantha, the patient with severe OCD. She limps past me with spindly limbs that have been deformed in the chair binding treatment too many times.
There’s Ray, the young man that only has severe depression and yet was treated for not conforming to the society. He shouldn’t even be in this section.
I watch the rest pay me grateful looks before disappearing. But whoever is in the second and third room doesn’t come out. I take a cautious step toward room two’s doorway, peeking inside, careful not to spook them with my appearance.
A young woman cowers in the corner of the room, clutching her knees to her chest. Shuddering with each small breath. I raise my eyebrows as I recognize that copper hair, long and wild. It’s the girl that was buried alive in the North Saphrine Forest. The girl that we’ve already had two run-ins with. How the hell has she ended up here?
She looks up at me with a dark, haunted gaze.
“Do you remember me?” I ask, approaching her like a cornered animal. I don’t bother asking how she ended up in this tight spot. With a city this strict, it was probably something small.
Her hopeless gaze fills up with tears. She nods once.
“You’ve had a lot of bad luck lately,” I comment, gesturing around the room.
She scans my bloodied patient’s gown in horror.
“I’ve had bad luck too.” I look down at the evidence covering my arms and legs. “I guess this was my way of getting even… for all of the bad luck I’ve received.”
“What happened to you?” she asks hesitantly. Her soft voice is hoarse, probably from screaming during her treatments.
I attempt to smile down at her, but my face remains cold and hard. “I lost the only man I’ve ever loved.”
She lifts her chin in understanding, then glances behind me with wide eyes. At someone who has approached. And it’s stupid. So fucking stupid. The way my heart leaps. The way I think, just for a moment, that Dessin is standing right behind me.
He isn’t. I turn to see the man she’s been traveling with. “Niklaus,” I say. Curly black hair that reaches his shoulders. White shirt and pants. He towers over me.
He gives me a once-over, jaw hanging to the floor. “Shit,” he breathes. “Are you what happened to the hallway?” He nods his head at the orderlies swinging from the ceiling.
I don’t answer. Just stare blankly.
His throat bobs before he redirects his attention to the girl still shuddering in the corner. “Hey, spitfire.” He kneels in front of her. “Ready to get the hell out of here?”
She nods with a quivering bottom lip, wrapping her tan arms around his neck in a hug.
Niklaus looks back at me hesitantly. “Can we leave?”
“Yes.” I take a few steps backward, ready to keep going. “But you should run. This place won’t be standing for much longer.”
For the next few minutes, I release every patient in the women’s wing. The ones that don’t meet societal standards like extreme dieting, keeping sinless skin, or dressing and acting the right way. This is the wing that starves, brainwashes, and creates conditioned responses for women to hate the sight of carbs and get nauseated at the taste of sugar.
