A Web of Steam & Puppet Strings (Sevastyan #1)

Chapter Twenty-One

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"Sevastyan."

I jerked awake. The sound of static flooded my ears.

No, that wasn't static. That was water.

I blinked away the blurriness from my vision. Lazar filled my sight, his usually stony face less than stony, chafed away by a very real sense of fear. I rolled my head against the wall behind me, finding myself sitting upright, with Lazar and Eliza and Aris knelt too close beside me, clogging my breathable air. And there were others behind them as well, pressing to get inside and to get a look of Sevastyan unconscious on the bathroom floor, soaked, with the showerhead still spitting water and steam.

Steam.

I could still hear it in my ears. The machine as it exhaled, as it doused me in its metallic breath.

Eliza leaned in to touch my limp hand and my slack jaw. "Sev, are you all right?"

I wasn't all right.

Nothing about any of this was right. But every attempt I made to rev the gears of my vocal chords produced nothing. Not a sound. I tried and I tried, but words refused to come to my lips.

My other hand shifted, brushing against the sleek metal cane. I upturned my fingers. Wet chalk dust. Dark hues.

I moved mechanically. There was no thought involved, not even emotion. I felt nothing as I grabbed my cane and, just as I had the day before, shifted to stand. Eliza protested, but Lazar moved to help support me, wordless, without question. My leg ached, no worse than yesterday, and no better. My arm buckled as I shifted my weight to my cane and limped for the crowded doors.

Everyone parted out of the way. Even Maksim and Grigory and Ivan only had to take one look at my face before they stepped aside. The footsteps of the others followed me. Whispers and hisses trailed me like sinuous smoke from a fire. I made it to the doors of the Playground and shoved my way outside.

My eyes stung from the daylight. I hesitated, shielding my face, but then pressed on. It took years for me to reach the mangled fence and ravaged earth. I dragged myself no closer than ten feet from the new mural. It was almost beautiful. Gold and yellow and orange wings patched the blackness, with long, sharp feathers like those of a hawk, coiling around words.

'I have been keeping secrets.'

It was a setup.

I was a setup.

She wanted to put the pressure on me. She wanted the others to turn against me. She wanted me to divorce myself from them and see them as she did: as test subjects.

She was breaking me.

My legs turned to wood, but I forced myself to turn and face them. Each pair of eyes was stapled to the wall, reading the words, rereading the words, memorizing the sounds and the syllables and the haunting curl of the script. Every single person. Even Eliza.

It was harrowing, really. Beautifully so. The past nine months, I'd considered each of my fellow inmates a danger, because I never knew what they would do when blindfolded. Now, I was the one blindfolded, and they didn't know what I would do.

Eliza was the first to switch her attention to me. "Why would she make you write this, Sev?"

That was the simplest question. The more challenging ones came after.