23. Chapter 23
It was official. My time at Blackthorne was limited.
There was absolutely no logical way I could have crossed that line with the Jester—tasting him, losing myself in him, pushing far past the point of no return—without the guard’s knowledge of it.
Yet, as I practically scrambled back to the safety of the staff room, the guards stood like stone statues—utterly oblivious to the quiet sins committed just a stone's throw away.
It defied reason. Our whispered negotiations, the desperate, ragged heat of it all—how had they not heard?
Unless the entire floor was already resting in the palm of that monster's hand.
It was the only explanation that made sense.
For the Jester to wield such a lethal reach in the outside world, he had to have deep, rotten roots planted right here within Blackthorne’s concrete walls.
But that realization brought a colder terror: it would be difficult, if not impossible, to figure out who was bought by him, and who was still loyal to the badge.
I spent the grueling remainder of my shift trapped in a state of low-grade vertigo.
Every time a voice crackled over the comms or a name was called, my stomach dropped through the floor.
The rumors said the Warden was away for the day, but logic doesn't apply to a spiraling mind.
Every shadow looked like an escort waiting to march me down to the administrative wing to pack my box and hand over my keys.
But the axe never fell.
When the heavy iron doors finally buzzed open, releasing me into a cloudy evening, I still couldn't quite breathe. The sky hung low, pregnant with the scent of impending rain. I stepped out onto the slick asphalt, half-expecting a hand to clap down on my shoulder.
Was I really about to get away with this?
If the answer was yes, then Blackthorne was a playground of corruption far deeper, and far more dangerous, than I had ever dared to imagine.
My mind devolved into a violent tug-of-war, a brutal back-and-forth that left me bruised on the inside.
The moment I crossed my threshold, I tore into the Jester’s classified file.
I forced myself to stare at the black-and-white horror of it all, dissecting every grim testimony and transcript.
I needed to catalog the rot in his mind.
I read about the clinical precision of his tortures, the chilling, absolute void where his empathy should have been.
That was the trap, wasn’t it? We expected monsters to look and act like monsters. We wanted to believe that someone capable of such apex cruelty couldn't possibly possess a human frequency.
Yet, the Jester possessed something worse: clarity.
He saw right through the glittering veneer of this forsaken city, cutting straight to the marrow of its corrupt, selfish politicians.
And, god help me, he had looked at me and expressed genuine sympathy for my dead, forgotten dream of going to college and becoming a veterinarian.
Who was he underneath the scars and his crimes?
What was the real name he had discarded?
Where had he crawled out from, and what precise sequence of tragedies or choices had forged the Jester?
With a frustrated snarl, I hurled the folder across the room.
It struck the wall, exploding into a white flock of scattering papers that littered the floor.
I was losing my goddamn mind. I was morbidly fascinated by that monster—desperate to peel back his many layers—yet undoubtedly paralyzed by the threat he posed.
He was lethal, an apex predator, and yet my blood burned remembering the weight of him pinning me to the wall.
Seeing that feral, unhinged hunger in his eyes hadn't triggered my survival instinct; it had struck a match in me.
He wasn’t a man you could save, or tame, or bargain with.
The Jester didn't play by the rules of humanity.
To be with him him in any capacity was to step willingly into a woodchipper.
He would dismantle my sanity piece by piece, use my secrets as punchlines, and leave me utterly destroyed—nothing more than a hollowed-out shell.
Every instinct that had kept me alive up to this point screamed at me to turn in my resignation and run.
But as I closed my eyes, the phantom sensation of his rough hands returned, pinning me so hard against the concrete wall that the breath had left my lungs.
I shivered, and it wasn’t from fear.
How could something so lethal feel so entirely intoxicating?
The terrifying truth was that the safety of the normal world suddenly felt profoundly, agonizingly boring.
The thought of stepping back into the light, of pretending I hadn't looked into his cracked, brilliant, chaotic mind felt like a slow death.
I couldn't stay away.
Even now, with my heart hammering a frantic warning against my ribs, my feet wanted to move toward his cell. I was a moth entirely aware of the flame, fully conscious of the ash I would become, yet utterly powerless to stop the flight.
I bit my lip so hard the sharp tang of copper flooded my mouth. Cursing under my breath, I yanked a tissue from the box and aggressively dabbed at the bead of blood swelling on my skin, wishing I could wipe away his ghost just as easily.
A truly good person wouldn't be longing for a monster.
My shoulders slumped under the crushing weight of a sudden, sickening epiphany.
For weeks, I had safely categorized the Jester as an anomaly—a creature of pure, morally black chaos.
But pointing the finger at him alone was a coward’s shield.
To crave his touch, to ache for the precise moment his lips destroyed my resolve, meant the rot wasn't just inside his cell.
It was inside me.
No, I could no longer claim the luxury of being a good person. My moral compass hadn't just spun out of control; it had completely demagnetized. I was willfully bartering my conscience for a hit of adrenaline, trading the ethical foundation of a lifetime for a taste of forbidden desire.
And the most terrifying part?
I had absolutely no idea how to stop.