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“I’m almost done,” Dessin mutters, threading a needle and thread through her soft flesh.
I glance up at Niles. His face is wet, puffy, and he’s staring at her wounds, yet completely zoned out. He doesn’t even seem to notice the prisoners taking a beating for us.
I can’t get the smell of blood, coppery and potent, out of my head. I see her hanging on that stage. See her legs hit the floor. I force my eyes shut against the disturbing memories. All that matters is that she lives through this. All that matters is that she survives.
Will she forgive us for believing Kaspias? We kissed the night before, and fuck, it was the best goddamned kiss of my life. I felt like a teenage boy being in the suffocating presence of my crush. Her sweet, floral taste. The way she softened in my hold on her, pulling that beautiful face closer to the bars.
I never expected my entire perception of her to be flipped around like this.
“You’re not reattaching her legs,” Niles gasps, staring down at her left leg sewn under the knee with his mouth hanging open. His eyes swim with new tears as they bounce from Ruth’s slack jaw to the stumps remaining of her knees next to him.
Dessin finishes his last loop, tying off the last thread.
“I couldn’t save her legs.” He sounds genuinely furious at himself and his skills for that fact alone. “This was all to save her life.”
I see the doubt written all over his face. He doesn’t even know if he managed to do that.
“But…her legs,” Niles mutters with a fist pressed over his mouth.
After a few moments, Dessin applies layers of cloth, bandages, wraps, anything to protect her sealed wounds. Then, we take turns cleaning our hands with alcohol.
“Let’s get her back,” Dessin instructs cautiously. “Support her head—yes, okay. On three.”
We lift her as gently as possible. My chest splinters in agony as I realize how much lighter she is now. Niles lets out a choked sob.
A trail of prisoners follow us as we find Ruth’s cage, dropping blankets to make her spot more comfortable. We squat slowly, terrified that any movement at all will make her scream out in pain. But she’s still so quiet. So concrete in her shock.
It’s immediately apparent that all six of us are staying in her cage tonight. Even though it’s tight, cramped, and no one is getting a second of sleep, we settle in around her.
“We’re not leaving you, my little rebel,” I say in a hushed voice, holding her hand close to my lips, breathing hot air against her chilled, clammy skin.
Ruth’s shallow breaths even out as she drifts to sleep. Dessin doesn’t take his eyes off her, checking her pulse every few moments.
I zone out, fantasizing about meeting Ruth in another life, far away from here. A place where I didn’t have to watch her suffer. A place she could be her sassy self in peace.
“Skylenna!” Dessin raises his voice in alarm.
I blink, surprised, at the blast of noise shaking me from my daydream.
Skylenna is halfway out of the cage, peering back at us with exhaustion and numbness clinging to her glistening eyes.
“I’ll be right back.”
37. The Bird’s Nest
Skylenna
I could have stopped it.
The brimstone walls blur past me, blending in with the flickering yellow and red bulbs. Voices, questions, screams, whispers, orders, sickles slicing through lungs, bodies swinging on nooses, conformists drowning patients, RottWeilens howling in the night, friends crying in pain, axes chopping through bone.
My veins leak a slow poison directly into my heart cavity.
It all comes crashing.
The stairwell takes me to the highest point in the prison.
And. It. All. Comes. Crashing.
