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DaiSzek and I take a step forward. “Can I show you what’s in my heart?”
“No.”
Another step.
“I’m warning you,” he grunts.
“I promise this is the only truth that exists.” Before he can react, I place a hand over his temple, sending a memory spiraling into the depths of the void, linking through his thoughts.
The night in the thirteenth room when he had me in his bed, on my back, and my legs around his hips. He kissed me and said, “I’ve never wanted anything more.”
Another memory scatters across his mind. When he burst through the door and found me in Albatross’s cage. The next memory of me sitting on his lap by the lagoon, the night we shared our traumas for the first time.
Something on the outside of the void pulls us from those memories, sending a tremor through this slice of heaven.
Dessin takes a vigilant step away from me. Confusion, uncertainty, and frustration that begs for him to decipher which reality is the truth.
“We can’t stay in here,” I breathe. “We’re in the Vexamen Prison. Our friends need our help.”
Dessin exhales slowly, looking at me like both an infectious rash and a soothing touch. Like I might laugh in his face at any moment and return to the cruel individual he knows me to be. He nods once.
“When this is over, you’ll know how much I love you. Because this time, it’s my turn to help you remember me.”
47. Heaven And Hell
Skylenna
Returning to the room that has changed the trajectory of Dessin’s heart, is like landing in a pit of molten lava and flames.
I see nothing but red.
The color of blood as it gushes from a sliced artery. The stain on a carpet after someone has been stabbed repeatedly. The shade that dripped in a pool around Ruth’s legs. The color on my hands as I held Dessin’s body in that sand. The wet gleam of the sickle as it was pulled from his chest.
There’s a serenity in understanding my new abilities better through this rage. It’s biblical. It’s being able to soar past physical barriers, to conquer the mind’s limitations, and to manipulate anyone like a puppet. It’s a gift from God to travel through a veil of life and death and act as a deliverer of evil souls. I understand it now as heat blinds me, thrumming through my veins with the thunder and lightning of the Almighty himself.
I turn to Masten slowly, taking my time to pin him down with my unblinking glare. Focusing in on him as he rises to his feet, gripping that wolf’s head on top of his cane like he is considering using it to crack one of my kneecaps.
“You don’t know, do you?” And I feel like a puppet as I direct my question to him. Like there is a devil and a god pulling my strings, working as one to funnel power through my lungs, into my bloodstream. A power no one has ever seen.
“Know what?” Masten asks with faked disinterest.
“That your fate for this will be much worse than death.”
I stride toward him, closing the space of this dungeon with only one thought: to destroy. To obliterate all of his humanity in my wake. The void thrums through my fingers, vibrates my soul with a ticking detonator.
Masten forces out a laugh as I’m slowed down, feeling the weight of the magnet in my ear, blurring my vision, and obstructing my natural axis that aligns me upright on my feet. I sway for a moment, holding my hands out to break my fall.
But that gutting visual of Dessin being tortured by me rings loudly in my brain. It wakes me up. The ancient, dominant power of the void takes a hold of my equilibrium on its own, sending my entire body buzzing as I straighten myself and lift my chin.
I smile at him, as he has no control over me anymore. No one does.
“How?” Kaspias asks with uncharacteristic horror thickening his tone.
My strides close the distance, and just as my hands grip the sides of Masten’s head, he falls to his knees with a thud in my presence. The connection is stronger than it’s ever been. More potent. More alive with a black fire that can only be described as apocalyptic. End of times.
Like both a demon and an archangel, I drag Masten’s consciousness into the prison void, although we don’t stop there. We seem to glide right past it to a deeper location surrounded by screams, cries, moans, and an ache that resonates so deeply, I can only imagine that this is what hell would feel like.
And maybe it is.
