36. Crushed In Spirit

36. Crushed In Spirit

Warrose

My screams scour the earth.

“Dessin,” I finally form words. “My—chains.”

Dessin throws a sentinel off his back, eyes zoning in and out as he dissociates. His hands move swiftly, methodically as he frees me from my shackles and leash.

The crowd rumbles in victory. It surges like a ball of fire in my core, blazing through my lungs until I’m breathing puffs of smoke and steam. Nothing in my brain works right. It jumbles all thoughts together, fogging my sight, blurring all lines of sanity. The scene plays back over and over again until I’m dizzy with a cataclysmic rage. What the fuck have they done to her? It was all a trick. Kaspias truly made us believe she was a traitor. Ruth. My Ruth. My little rebel.

Skylenna’s cries ring through my ears, but I don’t stop running, don’t stop shoving people to the ground. I’m a plague obliterating anything in my path. Elbows jab into ribs. Knuckles crack into the bridge of a nose, a cheekbone, a jaw.

I force myself to look up at her as I get closer to the stage.

She hangs from that wooden stand like a dismembered doll. Staring down at her legs on the floor, soaking in a lake of blood. Her face is ashen, draining of color.

Bile pressurizes in my throat.

Niles beats me to the stage. And what he does at first impulse makes me want to fall to my knees and cry like a little boy. It sends an arrow straight through my heart.

Niles—he scoops her legs off the ground. He tries to put them back on her body.

I race up the stairs to the stage, careful not to slip on the blood.

“Niles,” I croak, holding back my tears. “I have to get her down.”

He looks up at me in belligerent anguish, tears gushing down his cheeks to his neck. He looks as disheveled and incoherent as I feel. And the thing is, he still doesn’t know she was never a traitor. He’s letting himself come to her aid, no matter what.

“But”—Niles hiccups on a sob—“her legs.”

I don’t listen to another word. All I can focus on now is saving Ruth. She doesn’t even look up at me as I rip the straps off her paling body.

“I’ve got you, Ruth,” I say in a shaky voice.

The only sign of life is a slow blink. A movement I’ll accept as a glimmer of hope.

After tearing off the last strap, I hook my hands under Ruth’s arms, half expecting her to grab onto my shoulders. She doesn’t. She just…hangs in my grasp. The sight fills my eyes with tears.

“What do you need me to do?” Dessin is at my side, placing a hand on her back for support.

“Support her legs while I adjust her body so I can carry her in my arms,” I say in a rush. “Gently. Please. Be gentle.”

Dessin nods, wasting no time to angle his hands under her lower thighs, helping me lift her so I can cradle her to my chest, hugging her close. Her forehead grazes my neck, and it’s cold. So fucking cold. Like melting ice against my skin.

“Move! All you fuckers either clear the path or die where you stand!”

I flinch at the sudden shouting voice. Helga Bee and Gerta herd people out of our way so we can leave easily.

“I’ll find medicine,” Marilynn announces in a panic. “What else should I find?”

“Clean cloths, hot water, a needle, and thread! I don’t care what you have to do to find a needle, but I can’t save her life without one,” Dessin commands, sweat glistening across his forehead. “Also, a belt and alcohol!”

Rotating to face the opening path, I come face-to-face with Skylenna. Her usual glowing, golden face is now completely white. The whites of her eyes are as dark as blood, falling to where Ruth’s legs once were.

“Do something to help or get the hell out of my way, Skylenna,” I bark, red flares smudging the edges of my vision.

This briefly snaps her out of that lost trance. She stands up straighter, pulling back her shoulders. “I’ll find blankets for her.”

Niles leads the way back to our cages with Ruth’s legs in his arms. Blood drenches his chest and pants, but he doesn’t notice. He just keeps running. Just keeps yelling back at Ruth to hold on.

As we turn a corner, I look down at Ruth to check if she’s still breathing. It’s shallow. Labored. But she blinks away a single tear, and I have to battle the longing to cry with her. For her.

“I’m going to make you better, Ruth,” I pant, kissing her once on the top of her head.

Dessin is careful to hold her legs up, adding pressure to her wounds to try and keep the blood loss at bay.

“Stop in the showers. We have to do this now. She’s losing too much blood.” He’s right. My left side is soaked in vibrant color, painting my glistening skin in Ruth’s gore.

Our actions blur together as we lower her to the shower floor. It’s damp in certain areas and reeks of mildew and rusting metal, but it’ll have to do for now.

“Where the hell is Marilynn?” Dessin raises his voice, signaling for me to sit next to him. “I want you to hold her right leg up and add pressure here—yes, that’s right.”

I hold her wound firmly, adding strength to a place that’s pulsing riotously.

“Niles! I need you to hold her other leg.”

Niles is standing two feet away from us, carrying Ruth’s dismembered legs like he’s clinging to the only hope we have.

“But…” he trails off, looking around for help. “What about her legs?”

He might as well take a gaff hook and rip my heart out with it.

“Set them down,” Dessin orders.

Niles’s face twists in despair as he gently lowers them to the ground. I have to turn away from the sight to keep from choking up.

“We’re here!” Marilynn and Skylenna rush into the community shower. Their arms are full of white linens, glass bottles, and a toolbox. Skylenna is still shackled, trembling to hold the blankets up with her arms. “I pickpocketed the needle and small knives from a sentinel.”

“Alcohol.” Dessin holds out a bloody hand, accepting a clear glass bottle from Skylenna. He pulls out the cork and douses his hands in it. “Everyone, take turns disinfecting your hands and the area around us. We can’t risk Ruth getting an infection.”

I grab the bottle next while Dessin takes my place elevating Ruth’s thigh. My hands shake as I dump a splash of alcohol over my skin. Blood smears and drips away. Ruth’s blood. That axe. The desire to hurl snakes up my throat, pushing at the back of my mouth.

How the fuck did we get here?

“First we stop the blood, then I can surgically do my best to rectify the wounds,” Dessin explains to us. His voice sounds so calm. How can he be so relaxed?

“How can you rectify this?!” Niles hisses.

Dessin ties something around Ruth’s thighs, creating some kind of a tourniquet. I glance down at her face, watching the way she stares up at the ceiling, soft brown eyes drained of any emotion. Glassy and lifeless. Devastating to gaze at for too long.

“Support her head,” I tell Skylenna.

“And cover her with a blanket,” Dessin adds. “She’s in shock. We have to keep her body temperature up.”

Niles uses a knife to pick the locks binding Skylenna’s body so she can move freely. And with that, she moves mechanically, cradling Ruth’s head on her thighs, stroking her curly brunette hair as tears run down her cheeks.

“The bone is sharp and jagged on the right leg. I’ll need to round and contour it down, otherwise her skin won’t heal over it.” Dessin pours a bucket of water over Ruth’s wounds, giving me her leg back to hold so he can work. “Her nerves were severed. They need to be cauterized or buried in her bones.”

“Just hurry,” Niles pleads, looking down at Ruth’s face with round, glossy eyes.

Dessin nods, cleaning her up as quickly as he can. Blood stops gushing down his arms as he tightens the tourniquet again.

“Get her to drink the honey of Sweet Nectar Valley,” Dessin says.

Skylenna lifts Ruth’s head slightly, giving Marilynn a chance to pour the milky substance past Ruth’s lips.

“Drink it, Ruth,” Marilynn whispers. “Please.” And there’s a shift in her features, something dead and drowning behind her grimace. Like she’s reading a scene from a book that was already spoiled for her. Like she never anticipated how horrid it would make her feel, even though she already knows how it ends.

Some of the substance drizzles down Ruth’s chin. But her throat bobs as she gulps it down.

After a few moments, Dessin makes a silent decision that the medicine has made its way into her system. He works as quickly and fluidly as I have ever seen anyone work under this amount of stress and pressure. He saws down her bones with a knife, taking away their sharp, piercing edges. His eyes are the color of wet bark, determined and impenetrable. Nothing could break his focus from the goal he’s set for himself.

I’m grateful. So fucking grateful to have his genius on my side. To rely on his many gifts to save her. Yes, I’ve appreciated him in battle, in his many attempts to break us out of a bad situation. But this is different. This is Ruth.

We all turn our heads as he grates his knife against her bones, looking away but unable to close our ears to the sounds of scraping. It’s like a fork clawing the smooth surface of a porcelain plate.

Dessin sets down his tools and works his fingers in her wounds, pushing and arranging.

“What’s happening?” I ask, concerned with the pinching of his brow.

“I’m arranging her nerves. If I don’t do this right, she’ll be in a lot of pain for a long time.”

Do it right. Please, Dess. Do it right.

My hands and forearms grow numb as I continue to hold Ruth’s thigh up, quivering with tension as I try even harder to hold myself steady.

“She’s shaking,” Niles comments, looking at Dessin with tracks of tears drying on his cheeks.

Dessin’s focus slips to Ruth’s face, flicking to Skylenna, then back to the nerves he’s working on so diligently.

“She’s in shock. Skylenna, get her pulse for me.”

“Isn’t shock a good thing?” I ask, gripping Ruth’s thigh closer to my chest. “It’s keeping her calm!”

“No.” Dessin shakes his head without missing a beat. “Shock is the body’s defensive response to a sudden drop in blood pressure. It constricts the blood vessels in the hands and feet, and then the adrenaline reverses, dropping blood pressure, which reduces oxygen and nutrients to vital organs. People die from shock.”

A terrible ache wraps around my mind.

“Fuck,” I growl.

But his last words pop Skylenna out of the glazed fog she was settled into. Her emerald eyes snap up to Dessin, then fall back to Ruth’s ashen face.

“Please, Scarlett. Save her.” Skylenna closes her eyes, and prays out loud, whispering fiercely. “Protect my best friend. Don’t let me lose anyone else. Please, Scarlett. Please.”

It takes me a second to remember the name. Skylenna had a twin who’s no longer with us. She whispers frantically, kissing Ruth on top of her head, watching her tears drip into those dark, splayed curls.

Marilynn shouts the pulse back to Dessin.

“Talk to her,” Dessin replies coolly. “Keep her awake.”

“I’m sorry for believing the lie!” Skylenna sobs against her best friend’s forehead. “I’m sorry for not being able to look into your eyes and know you’d never betray me. I’m a fool, Ruth. I should rot in hell for letting this happen to my best friend!”

Dessin wipes his temple with the back of his bloody hand. He walks us through every movement, every decision he’s making. But nothing calms the web of nerves jolting around in my gut.

“Vexëz! Vexëz!”

I flinch around, seeing sentinels charge into the bathroom, pointing at us aggressively, as if ordering us to get back to our cages.

Dessin doesn’t stop working, but he does glance up at me.

“I can’t move her,” he says calmly. “Do what you have to do. At all costs.”

I turn back to four of the sentinels. My chin raises, my shoulders pull back. I wish I had my bladed whip with me, but I’ve never been one to back down to using my body as a weapon.

There are three sentinels that act swiftly, snatching Ruth’s legs from the floor. They move like a night’s breeze, in and out of the room. Niles bellows, tears splashing, veins bulging in his neck as he screams incoherent words at them.

“Let them go!” Dessin orders before Niles can take off running after them.

“But her legs…” Niles mutters wetly, blinking in devastation at Dessin’s blood-splattered face. “They’ve taken Ruthie’s legs.”

“All that matters now is saving her life.”

A couple more sentinels enter the room with the threat of harming us to return us to our cages. Whips, clubs, sticks flail around us.

Before I can stand, I ask Marilynn to hold Ruth’s leg up for me. The floor tremors, the rhythmic sound of thumping feet cascades across the long hallway leading to this large shower. The doorway fills with the sight of prisoners bustling around us, pushing past the sentinels, and forming a circle around the small space where we’re operating on Ruth.

“Vexëz! Vexëz!”

Dessin’s tired, wide eyes flick up at the crowd around us, scanning their faces quickly before getting back to work.

“What’re they doing?” I ask him.

“We’re showing honor to our fallen warrior,” Helga Bee says from behind me.

“They’re giving me more time,” Dessin responds.

The sounds of whips smacking against bare skin drop like a rock to the bottom of a lake in the bed of my soul. The inmates forming a protective circle around us grunt, but they don’t part.

“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.”