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Dessin’s focus slips to Ruth’s face, flicking to Skylenna, then back to the nerves he’s working on so diligently.
“She’s in shock. Skylenna, get her pulse for me.”
“Isn’t shock a good thing?” I ask, gripping Ruth’s thigh closer to my chest. “It’s keeping her calm!”
“No.” Dessin shakes his head without missing a beat. “Shock is the body’s defensive response to a sudden drop in blood pressure. It constricts the blood vessels in the hands and feet, and then the adrenaline reverses, dropping blood pressure, which reduces oxygen and nutrients to vital organs. People die from shock.”
A terrible ache wraps around my mind.
“Fuck,” I growl.
But his last words pop Skylenna out of the glazed fog she was settled into. Her emerald eyes snap up to Dessin, then fall back to Ruth’s ashen face.
“Please, Scarlett. Save her.” Skylenna closes her eyes, and prays out loud, whispering fiercely. “Protect my best friend. Don’t let me lose anyone else. Please, Scarlett. Please.”
It takes me a second to remember the name. Skylenna had a twin who’s no longer with us. She whispers frantically, kissing Ruth on top of her head, watching her tears drip into those dark, splayed curls.
Marilynn shouts the pulse back to Dessin.
“Talk to her,” Dessin replies coolly. “Keep her awake.”
“I’m sorry for believing the lie!” Skylenna sobs against her best friend’s forehead. “I’m sorry for not being able to look into your eyes and know you’d never betray me. I’m a fool, Ruth. I should rot in hell for letting this happen to my best friend!”
Dessin wipes his temple with the back of his bloody hand. He walks us through every movement, every decision he’s making. But nothing calms the web of nerves jolting around in my gut.
“Vexëz! Vexëz!”
I flinch around, seeing sentinels charge into the bathroom, pointing at us aggressively, as if ordering us to get back to our cages.
Dessin doesn’t stop working, but he does glance up at me.
“I can’t move her,” he says calmly. “Do what you have to do. At all costs.”
I turn back to four of the sentinels. My chin raises, my shoulders pull back. I wish I had my bladed whip with me, but I’ve never been one to back down to using my body as a weapon.
There are three sentinels that act swiftly, snatching Ruth’s legs from the floor. They move like a night’s breeze, in and out of the room. Niles bellows, tears splashing, veins bulging in his neck as he screams incoherent words at them.
“Let them go!” Dessin orders before Niles can take off running after them.
“But her legs…” Niles mutters wetly, blinking in devastation at Dessin’s blood-splattered face. “They’ve taken Ruthie’s legs.”
“All that matters now is saving her life.”
A couple more sentinels enter the room with the threat of harming us to return us to our cages. Whips, clubs, sticks flail around us.
Before I can stand, I ask Marilynn to hold Ruth’s leg up for me. The floor tremors, the rhythmic sound of thumping feet cascades across the long hallway leading to this large shower. The doorway fills with the sight of prisoners bustling around us, pushing past the sentinels, and forming a circle around the small space where we’re operating on Ruth.
“Vexëz! Vexëz!”
Dessin’s tired, wide eyes flick up at the crowd around us, scanning their faces quickly before getting back to work.
“What’re they doing?” I ask him.
“We’re showing honor to our fallen warrior,” Helga Bee says from behind me.
“They’re giving me more time,” Dessin responds.
The sounds of whips smacking against bare skin drop like a rock to the bottom of a lake in the bed of my soul. The inmates forming a protective circle around us grunt, but they don’t part.
