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Chills pebble down the backs of my arms. To my right, Marilynn moves next to me, shifting away as the other two soldiers leave the room. Probably alerting the sentinels.
Dessin shifts his focus to me casually, like this is a normal routine in his day. And I know the captain won’t fight back. Dessin has already paralyzed him.
“You trying to get my attention? Because you’ve got it.” He continues to suffocate the man with his foot.
“I thought it might,” I reply sweetly. But the footsteps down the hall rumble in our direction. I open my mouth and urge him to get out of here.
He lifts my chin, holding it in his fingers. “I should take you over my knee and watch you beg for it.”
My nipples harden, poking through the thin material of my uniform.
“I got what we needed,” I say breathlessly. “I have the details for outside of the prison.”
Dessin’s eyes widen, slightly surprised, slightly aroused. And the captain beneath his foot stops breathing.
“We have to go!” Marilynn shouts, signaling for us to follow her through the doorway.
Dessin jolts forward, his plush lips landing on mine with greedy pressure. I let out a small moan at his aggression, savoring his taste, his emotion pouring into me. And we take off after Marilynn, sprinting behind her down the long, torch-lit hallway.
Past the adrenaline, I have a single breath of a moment where I want to tell Ruth what I just had to do to get that information. I want to hear her laugh at me, teasing, and making light of something I’ll eventually want to bury. The thought singes a hole in my heart cavity. Her absence is bruising, and I don’t know how I’ll ever live with this betrayal.
“And this is the nail on the coffin,” Kaspias announces, standing in our way with a small unit at his back.
The three of us sway to a stop, unable to fight the effects of the magnet in our ears. I clutch the wall for support, feeling Dessin’s hands gripping my waist. My stomach swirls, flips, and falls up my throat.
“We didn’t do anything,” I blurt out. But the writing is on the wall. It wasn’t a sentinel killed this time. It was a fucking navy captain. One of the high ranking.
“Well?” Kaspias looks somewhere past us, raising his eyebrows.
“Captain Roxal is dead, sir,” a young man announces behind us.
The hallway settles, falling eerily quiet. The sounds of fire eating through the air and the tips of the torches crackle around us.
Kaspias doesn’t look angry. He doesn’t appear upset. His sharp stare lands on Dessin, clear and elated. His mouth twitches before it shifts upward, rising into a lunatic grin. My back straightens at the sight of his disturbing happiness.
“My brother did it,” Kaspias tells no one in particular. “I’m certain of it.”
Dessin cracks his neck, shrugs. “And?”
More than one person flinches as Kaspias barks out a rough, cruel laugh. His large hands grab at air, like he wants to show us what he sees in his fucked-up head but can’t because it isn’t real.
“And I may not be able to kill you, but I can certainly torture the hell out of you for committing a federal crime!” His face lights up, biceps flexing, hands pulling at his hair in an attempt to have some sort of outlet for his childish excitement.
No.
I turn to Dessin, looking at him with the question in my eyes that matters. Do we have enough information to make an escape now? Or would his plan rely on leaving in the dead of night?
He shakes his head at me, and I might as well have just been kicked in the ribs. He can’t expect me to watch him get tortured on stage. He doesn’t really think I won’t do everything in my power to stop it.
If he does, then this should really shock the hell out of him.
I kick my right leg back like a horse, sending the sentinel behind me flying backward with a breathy grunt. My body flings onto the soldier at my side, latching on to his back, and clawing my fingernails into his eyes until he screams like a small girl.
The object in my ear rings through my brain with a shockwave that throws my world into a tornado. But I throw all of my willpower into swinging my fists, biting flesh that gets too close to my face.
“I wouldn’t do that, Skylenna,” Kaspias exclaims past the violent outburst. I tumble to a stop, rotating through a shifting world.
As the dizziness clears, I see Dessin on the ground next to me. Blood on his knuckles and splattered across his face. He fought with me. But something doesn’t sit right in my chest. An alarm goes off in my bloodstream. We look up at Kaspias at the same time, shuddering at who he has on their knees, arms pulled outward in chains.
