35. “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

35. “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

Skylenna

Kaspias chuckles. “That’s adorable.”

“No, really. I’ll accept his punishment,” Ruth says loud enough for everyone to hear.

Every emotion flashes behind my eyes. Shock, desperation, sadness, indignation, rage.

Kaspias’s dark chocolate gaze flicks between Dessin and me. As if he’s waiting for us to fight for her, beg her to stand down. Neither of us declines her offer. Neither of us has the words to interject at all. How are we supposed to feel about this? Does she think this sacrifice will make up for the betrayal? A part of me that still loves Ruth wants to scream at her to get out of here. That she doesn’t know what she’s offering.

The other part of me wants this bitch to burn.

Still, no words escape me.

All I can do is stare.

“You realize the punishment for a volunteer won’t be death, but it might as well be, yes?” Kaspias asks, staring down at her skeptically.

Ruth sighs, keeping her eyes firmly locked with mine as she nods.

Kaspias watches her as he settles into his thoughts, working something out. An emotion flashes across his features, quick as a blink of an eye, and it’s gone. He smirks, raising his eyebrows at me.

“No objections?”

I can feel Warrose’s pleading stare clawing at my face to look back at him. My eyes fall to my knees, grating into the gravel. I try to keep my breath even despite the wild bull trapped in my chest. I can’t decide between the vengeance boiling hot in my gut or the sweet, gentle Skylenna that first saved Ruth from Dessin’s wrath on the conformists. She was so kind, so bright and accepting. I was excited to have a real friend.

But it wasn’t real.

Without lifting my gaze, I shake my head.

A blizzard of feelings war against this decision, but I push it down in the depths of my soul, fighting the urge to cry at everything I feel.

“Very well,” Kaspias purrs, signaling two sentinels. “Take her to the stage for the last performance of the night.”

I raise my head reluctantly, catching Ruth’s stoic gaze as she’s being secured in chains. If I look past the betrayal, past the lies, all I can see is my best friend. My soul sister who would do anything for me.

And it’s like she feels it. too, as tears rim her bloodshot eyes.

I take one last look at the tip of her upturned, pink nose, her perfect posture, and those curly lashes surrounding her soft brown eyes. A tear drizzles over her scattered freckles.

My heart cracks like a rock thrown into a glass window.

“Ruth,” Warrose finally chokes out.

She makes a noise, a cross between a sob and a laugh. “I know you all hate me. I don’t know how I could have done what I’ve done. But I do know that I love you all…my family. Maybe it isn’t real for any of you because of my lies. But it was real for me.”

And they tug her away, ushering her down the long hallway leading to the barbaric stadium. We’re left sitting in shock, watching her thin figure slowly disappear into the darkness.

I inhale through my nose, sucking in the smoky aroma of the burning torches.

“We can’t let this happen,” Warrose grunts, voice cracking with a sob that is desperate to escape his iron hold on his sadness.

“She’s made her choice.”

Dessin and Warrose gawk at me as the soldiers force us to our feet. Did those words come out of my mouth? Yes, they did. It’s impossible to sort through my murderous hatred of her lies. Those damning thoughts collide with the fond memories I have of her. The ones I’ve kept close when I need to feel the love of my family the most.

Before stepping into the blinding red and yellow lights, Kaspias turns to us with a half smirk. “Enjoy the show.”

And we’re left standing at the back of the stadium, waiting for the Ringmaster to calm the audience and announce the next round of entertainment. But my focus is nailed to the spot where Ruth stands on the side of the stage. She holds her head high, viewing that platform with determination. A pinched brow and a look that could slice through concrete.

I mentally grab myself by the shoulders, shaking until I rattle my teeth.

What are you doing? It’s Ruth! No matter the lies, those moments were real! She loves you!

I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing myself to pick an emotion—any emotion—and fucking stick with it! Do I try to stop her from being humiliated and harmed on stage? Or do I pull my shoulders back and accept this form of revenge on the woman who gained my trust and stabbed me in the heart?

A sentinel jerks Ruth forward by her chain leash, causing her to stumble to her knees. She scrambles to the wooden table they lead her to. Its surface is slanted at a seventy-five degree angle. An incline that allows the crowd to see her strapped down, facing their boisterous activity. Her forehead, chest, forearms, wrists, shins, and ankles are locked down. Yet, she doesn’t falter.

Ruth stares out at the audience in defiance. Unwilling to let them see an ounce of fear. Unwavering to remain strong in her solitude.

Just as I’m about to pick the emotion that is wrapped in the warmth and profound love of my best friend, I’m slapped with that one pungent visual of Ruth kissing Kaspias. The vicious fury that tore my skin from my bones. The way she clung to him, nibbled at his lip. The look on her face when she realized the jig was up. We finally discovered her face without the beautiful, loyal mask she once wore.

And I’m suddenly sure Kaspias won’t let her get hurt.

It doesn’t matter what emotion I choose.

They’re lovers.

This is all a trick.

Dessin cocks his head in my direction, pinning me down with those close-set eyes turning a shade of bronze and gold in the streaming circus lights.

“Skylenna?” He lets a stream of alarm enter his voice.

“Kaspias won’t let them hurt her,” I say confidently.

I peer to my left, seeing Dessin’s hand on Warrose’s slumped shoulder. He’s panting, trembling, flexing every muscle like he’s going to rip the world to small shreds of paper.

“It’s okay, Warrose. She may be a traitor, but I don’t wish her to be tortured. She’s Kaspias’s lover. This is all to get a rise out of us.”

Her stormy hazel eyes leak thin, hardly noticeable tears. “It’s working.”

“Ruth!” Niles’s flustered voice stretches across the mass of the huddled inmates. He stands on a step leading to the stage, darting his focus from her to us and back to her again.

Fuck. He doesn’t know what’s going on.

“I don’t think Kaspias will stop this,” Marilynn says quietly behind me, like she knows something we don’t. A warning.

I gulp, holding my breath in defiance. She’s wrong. She’s wrong. She’s wrong.

“I think she’s right, baby,” Dessin says loudly enough to penetrate the thick plate of armor I’ve been molding around my breaking heart.

A soldier, the size of an ogre, tall with muscles as thick and broad as a horse, enters the stage holding an axe.

An axe.

Ruth’s expression flinches, shuddering away from the image of strength and rebellion. Now appearing like a little girl in the middle of a battlefield. A place no child should ever go.

“Dessin,” I whine, snatching his wrist through the chains.

He stiffens, leaning forward to get a better look.

The blade of the axe is the size of a dictionary. Its handle is a thick pole of iron, matte black with dents and jagged markings, like it’s seen the display of clashing swords in a war.

“Dostërovex hiurëz dexezels!” the Ringmaster bellows with a show of electricity that crackles across the ceiling and blue flames licking the edges of the stage.

“NO!” Dessin roars, veins bulging in his neck.

“What?” I yell. “What did he say?!”

Ruth’s face breaks apart into a look of unadulterated terror. She cries out, shaking her head with burning red cheeks, fat tears rolling off her bottom lashes and puckered bottom lip.

“He said ‘Remove her legs!’” Dessin translates in a single, horrified breath.

I gasp, my mask of confidence shattering in the wind. I choke on a cry as Warrose roars at the top of his lungs, bucking like a bull against his restraints.

Within a small tunnel, in a single moment, Ruth looks directly in my eyes, straining to see me through a thick wall of tears. She mouths a single word. One that shoots through my chest like a spear.

“Void.”

The soldier walks to her, spinning the handle in his beefy hands.

“Please, help me peek into the void! Only for a moment! Help me see what Ruth wants me to see!”I silently beg that voice in my head that has guided me through the most dire of moments. “Oh God, please help us!”

A glimmering hand reaches out of the thin veil of air, hovering toward me.

“Here, take my hand, Skylenna. Quickly!”

Latching onto her wrist, I’m sucked into the darkness by an inhumane force. A loophole sneaking me past my splintering migraine, my brain sitting in a swollen shell of agony. I whirl past flickering moments in time, zooming through hours until we land on a setting in a hallway, the one that leads to the commissary. Kaspias is leaning against the wall, and Ruth asks him for food for me.

His only condition.

An injection he pushes under her arm. And as she asks him what it is, he smiles that wide, delirious grin. “Vexamen altered Mind Phantoms. You won’t remember this. My brother won’t even be able to catch the usual symptoms.”

He gives it to her five more times after that.

We never noticed.

He chemically brainwashed her to believe she was a traitor.

The same way they altered my parents.

“Go!”The woman’s voice detonates through the memory.

I fly through its smudged barriers, shooting past the void until I’m back in my own body, hunched and panting, twisting my head to gawk at Dessin in bleary-eyed astonishment.

“It was Mind Phantoms!” I scream at him. “She was never a traitor! That was Kaspias’s trick!”

Oh my god, what have I done?!

I break into hysterics, screaming and crying, thrashing against my chains to break free. But as usual, Dessin is ten steps ahead of me. He’s unlocked his chains, throwing them off his body. A dogpile of soldiers swarm him, launching against his bulldozing frame like a dozen wild animals.

“Go, Dessin! Go!” I wail, trying to break my own wrists so I can slip them through my shackles.

Hearing a violent cry from the audience, I look up to see Niles beaten and thrown off the stage. And that giant axe soars through the hot air, bashing into the bone under Ruth’s knees.

The entire stadium goes silent.

Ruth doesn’t even make a sound. She just looks at the blade splitting through her legs in quiet disbelief.

It’s almost a clean break.

I vomit across the floor in front of me. Shaking. Gasping. Feeling the blood rush to my bulging eyes. What have I done? What have I done?

After the second swing, Ruth’s legs fall off, hitting the stage with a wet, heavy thump.

Warrose cries out in agony.

What. Have. I. Done.

And there is so much blood. It sprays across the soldier’s bare chest. It gushes from the uneven, gaping wounds beneath her knees. Dark, crimson rivers devour my sight.

And Ruth still does not make a sound.