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Our silent abductors toss their torches into the fire before they nudge us onto the fine cloth parchment, closer to the mutilated body.
Kallum coughs to conceal a groan of pain as we’re forced to our knees. “This scene was already set. They were coming no matter where you were,” he says, an attempt to reassure me. “He wants you.” I look up into his face, pained at the dark bruises forming beneath his beautiful eyes. “I won’t let him have you.”
“Don’t do anything reckless,” I say.
His devilish smile carves the dimple in his cheek to squeeze my heart as a drum strikes from somewhere behind us. I stay locked in Kallum’s heated gaze, the fire dancing amid the flinty shadows.
Then Devyn breaches the circle to break our connection. Her movements are fluid despite the constricting bones shaping her torso in stiff posture. As she reaches us, her dark gaze travels over my appearance. Kallum’s shirt fitted loosely, strands of my hair matted with dry mud. My body itches as the heat of the fire bakes dirt into my skin.
A fragile smile lifts her mouth. “I see you’ve made peace with losing your mind over the sexy expert consultant.”
“I’m hard to resist,” Kallum says, sarcasm heavy in his gruff tone. “Unhinged women can’t seem to keep away.” The baiting remark is directed toward her.
Devyntsks. “Remarkable how that male privilege affords you so little fear,” she says, offering him a bright smile. “I soon realized Halen was your agenda. Once I saw you together, so much made sense.” They trade a look before she aims her attention on the masked man standing at Kallum’s side. “Prepare him. I want to speak with my sister.”
Her order is eagerly obeyed, and Kallum is hauled to his bare feet and taken to the other end of the parchment. “What are you doing to him?” I demand.
Devyn leisurely lifts her gauzy skirt and kneels before me, her spine forced to keep perfect posture by the bone corset. “Don’t worry,” she says, collecting a stick of white chalk from the cloth. “Nothing too heinous.”
Fury pricks my composure, and in the same way she struck me in the cave, I slap her cheek. My palm stings from the impact, and I instinctively dig my nails into the cut on my left hand to balance the pain. “That’s for trying to eat me.”
Yet it’s for so much more. The emptiness I feel for trying to keep my promise to help her—for failing her. Knowing now there was nothing I could do to save her.
She gingerly touches her face, concealing a faint smile. “You have a sick fetish with pain.”
“Why am I here, Devyn? Am I going to end up like him?” I jerk my head in the direction of the mutilated corpse near the fire.
“I wanted to introduce you to my brother,” she says, delicately grazing her fingers over the bones encasing her chest. “I keep Colter close now. Since birth, we were always together, rarely apart, such as twins are. And now that I’ve been deprived of my family, he’s the last that remains.”
Appall roils in the pit of my stomach as I stare at the twined bones. “It’s probably a bit difficult to be on the run with a gang of people who have no eyes.” I manage a partial shrug. “Just saying.”
A smile brightens her pretty features. “You’ve gotten feisty, Halen St. James. Hot, dirty sex with the professor suits you.” She grips my chin and brings the chalk to my forehead. I control my breathing as she begins to drag the cool stick over my skin.
Early on in the case, Kallum claimed the Overman suspect chose Nietzschean doctrines because of the artist’s soul, attributing it to therausch. Devyn is an artist. Her art allows her to break free of her stringent perfectionism and obsessive compulsive nature. Her artist’s soul is why she connected to Nietzsche over any other philosopher. And despite the ghastly nature of her corset, I’m choosing to believe that, in her own artistic way, it’s a sign she’s still connected to whatever remains of her humanity.
I swallow past the thick ache of grief in my throat as she tilts her head, turning pensive. “But wait,” she says, “it’s more than that.”
I try to look away, but she keeps hold of my chin, proceeding to scrawl the chalk across my cheekbones. “Something’s changed,” she says solemnly.
What Devyn sought to connect to within me was my grief, the pain. Kallum said the suspect was seeking unity in their opposite, but honestly, that was Kallum’s agenda, never Devyn’s.
I wanted to leave, and she wanted to stay.
An even trade.
“You want to live now,” she says, studying me intently.
Aware Kallum is listening, I say, “Yes. I want to live, Devyn. But I know you’re dying.”
“I had no doubt you’d figure it out.” Some of the woman I knew from before shines through. She appears more lucid than the last time I saw her. Certain medications can help control the unusual movements caused by her disease. They can also help offset any delusions or hallucinations that might present. I have no idea if Devyn is medicated, or if her devout belief is merely overriding her regression.
“I am dying,” she says. “But really, I think I died the moment I lost Colter. Without those we live for, are we truly alive? You know the answer to that, Halen.”
She discards the chalk and spins away, severing the connection.
Alarm flares in my veins. I no longer have any delusion of reaching her, but I have to keep her talking.
“Devyn, wait. Listen. Someone in your life made you feel inadequate,” I say, stalling her. “I profiled this, remember? At first, I thought it was your brother. But it wasn’t. It was him, wasn’t it. This man in authority over you.”
