Battle Royal

by Lucy Parker

  A machine beeping, so familiar that her blood seemed to be pulsing in rhythm with the sound. And on the bedside table, amidst a jug of water and an array of medication bottles, a few scattered items. Beloved objects, a small piece of the home that would never echo with her aunt’s laughter again. A doll, the last remnant of Mallory’s childhood, a present from a doting older brother. The doll’s rosy cheeks had a dull sheen, worn away by years of kisses, but her hair and clothes were still immaculate. Mallory had kept his gift safe.

  As she had later kept his child safe, and so very loved, for nineteen years.

  There were well-worn copies of her favorite books. The necklace she’d never taken off until drugs had left her skin so sensitized that the friction of the chain was unbearable. And a tiny glass sculpture of a deer. During a trip to Paris for Sylvie’s sixteenth birthday, they’d visited the studio of the renowned animal sculptor Arielle Aubert, and Mallory had fallen in love with that one little deer. It was utterly beyond her reach financially, but Arielle herself had seen the look on the face of her visitor. As they’d prepared to leave, the artist had appeared from the private room out back. Vivid features, shining white hair, sparkling light-gray eyes; Sylvie would always remember her as looking like the spirit of a midnight star. She’d silently taken the little deer from his companions and placed him into Mallory’s hands.

  Arielle Aubert had been killed a month later in a random act of violence on the streets of Montmartre.

  Sylvie remembered curving over with her cheek resting against her aunt’s bed on that last night, her eyes parched and tight with exhaustion, staring at the little deer. La Belle Étoile, Mallory had called it. The Beautiful Star. In that dim, airless room, with the weight of the coming hours pressing down upon her and dread a sick clawing at her gut, the deer had seemed to be standing guard over them as they lay in the dying light.

  Mallory had been largely drifting by then, heavily medicated, already a step departed from Sylvie’s world. With their fingers entwined against Mallory’s chest, Sylvie had watched as the taut, grayish skin over her aunt’s high cheekbones seemed to pull tauter as the sun slipped away. So quiet and still, as the disease raging through her blood and bones made its last advance, and her tired body rallied for the final, futile stand. She had been unwavering since the diagnosis, relentlessly strong, ever cheerful, keeping her sense of humor until the end.

  But in those last hours, her hand had suddenly tightened on Sylvie’s, with a strength Sylvie hadn’t known she still possessed.

  “I don’t want to go,” her aunt had said fiercely, her feverish eyes fixed over Sylvie’s shoulder. “I promised him. I promised him. I promised him.” The words low and urgent, a refrain of anguish. “She’ll be alone. I don’t want to leave her alone.”

  Sylvie had cried, then, for the first time in Mallory’s presence, her face pressed against their joined hands, contorting as she tried to hold back the tears that wet both their skin. She was glad her aunt was too delirious to know.

  And as the sky turned black and it got really bad, Mallory’s pain increasing, her breath taking on a labored rattle, a nurse standing in constant vigil, Sylvie had pressed that little glass deer into her aunt’s hand, wrapping her fingers around it.

  She had lain beside her on the narrow, hard bed, cuddling her one last time, her forehead touching Mallory’s temple. “It’s okay.” A whisper in her ear, for her alone, for them alone. The hardest thing she’d ever done, to steady her voice and dry her eyes and put every bit of love in her heart into those last words. “You’ve given me everything you had and everything I need. It’s okay.” Her eyes had squeezed closed. “It’s okay to go now.”

  In a place neither of them wanted to be, but under the starry sky they both loved, Mallory had slipped away.

  And the deer had fallen from her fingers and shattered against the black linoleum floor, a thousand fragments of crystal sparkling in the light.

  Cool, firm lips were pressed against her temple. Closing her eyes for a moment now, as she had then, Sylvie breathed deeply before she turned her head and looked up at Dominic. He was holding her, his arms wrapped around her without hesitation, his body sharing its warmth.

  For once, the expression in his dark eyes was transmitting clear as day. Deep concern, but primarily empathy. The bone-deep understanding of someone who had walked a similar path.

  “Which piece?” he asked, inclining his head toward the glass cabinet without taking the comfort of that steady connection away from her. “Which one took you back there?”

  “The deer.” As she slipped her hand into his, she looked at it again. It was unmistakeably an Arielle Aubert, so similar to Mallory’s that it might well have been on the same shelf that day in Paris, a sister work. “It’s the deer.”

  She felt a slight tug on her hand, as if he were unconsciously trying to pull her away from the source of obvious pain, and she shook her hand.

  “It reminds me of the worst night of my life.” Like that long-ago companion in the dark, this deer had incredible eyes, so expressive in such simple lines. She could feel the tight traces of tears on her cheeks, but her body felt calm now. Peaceful. Comforted. “But also—more so—some of the best times. And it’s beautiful.”

  When she looked up again, Dominic said nothing, but very lightly, once more, he touched the back of his free hand to her cheek.

  And once more, she repeated the words in her mind and in her heart. “It’s okay.”

  They’d progressed from soggy bottoms and burnt crusts in previous seasons to outright assassination attempts.

  Death by incineration.

  Dominic knocked back another half glass of milk and exhaled through his mouth, trying to suppress the residual flames burning through every taste bud. Mariana was still bent over Sid Khan’s countertop, her face cradled in her hands, muttering to herself. Once she’d regained the ability to speak after her mouthful of Sid’s Hello, Dolly! cake, he’d heard a rasping repetition of “Mierda.” Followed by an equally blunt “Fuckin’ A.” The moment the first burn of chili had hit his tongue, he’d knocked Sylvie’s piece out of her hand before she could bite into it; unfortunately, he’d been a second too late in preventing Mariana from putting her entire slice into her mouth. He was surprised she was still conscious.

  The cake—seven layers of chocolate with a “hint” of chili, according to Sid’s initial intro—lay abandoned on the countertop. The elderly widower’s structural design—Horace Vandergelder’s top hat—wouldn’t have scored highly for either ingenuity or difficulty, even if the man hadn’t packed in enough heat to sear the hide off a rhino. However, any official critique on this one seemed a bit redundant.

  The poor bloke was just about in tears, turning his own hat over in his hands as he apologized profusely for the thirtieth time. Sylvie had her arm around him, trying to gently tease him out of his misery, while Aadhya and the medics bent over Mariana.

  Draining the last of the milk, Dominic shook his head at the medic who tried to approach him with a blood pressure monitor. “I’m probably about thirty percent grayer than I was five minutes ago,” he said wryly, touching his temple. “But it was only one bite. I’m fine.”

  “Are you?” Sylvie had left Sid to the sympathy and support of his fellow contestants. She searched his face. Her hand moved to touch his chest; he doubted she was even aware.

  Certainly, she’d appeared to be entirely driven by instinct when he’d been bent forward, coughing his guts up after his bite of the aptly named Lucifer’s Sponge. Sylvie had been at his side, rubbing his back, pushing milk at him. It hadn’t passed unnoticed that she’d gone straight to him before she’d tried to help Mariana. Quite a few crew and several contestants were sending speculative glances their way.

  And Dominic’s own instinct was to shield her from the scrutiny. She was still pale after the events in the third-floor gallery, a star scattering of freckles standing out on her nose. A fresh dusting of powder had removed the traces of tears from
her cheeks, but he could still see her in his mind, standing staring at the little glass deer. Completely still, her mind obviously miles away. Or rather, years away. Despite the misdeeds of Middlethorpe’s mini-me, the true haunting had been in her eyes then. Before she’d returned to the gallery, to him, her arms had come up and folded around her body, as if she was holding herself. Or remembering reaching for someone, holding someone, who was no longer there.

  Over the years, he’d had relationships with women, generally playing out at a very surface level on both sides and ending amicably. None of those experiences had left or inflicted scars.

  But there were other bonds in his life that had—not broken but splintered his heart, chiseling fragments away.

  Today, part of his heart had fractured for someone else’s pain.

  It would have been quite possible to step away, mentally and physically, from the intimacy that had unexpectedly ramped off the scale last Friday night.

  But the way he’d felt today at the Grange, when Sylvie had been genuinely frightened and she’d burrowed straight for his arms, when she’d stood alone with her memories, her chin held high and her eyes wet with tears—

  Understatement of the millennium to say this was not what he’d expected from this period of contractual proximity.

  He could still feel the press of her lips, the teasing dart of her tongue, a satin stroke against his own, and the sense of utter . . . rightness sinking into his bones as she wriggled close.

  It was as if she were settling inside him, a constant warm little light in his chest.

  “I’m fine,” he repeated in a low voice.

  Mariana had recovered her composure and the full use of her lungs. “Mother of God,” she said, coming over to join them. Her eyelids and cheeks were red, and even the single strand of silver hair stuck to her forehead was extreme dishevelment by her usual standards. “His recipe called for a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper. That was like inhaling a Carolina Reaper. How the hell do you make that mistake?” Barely pausing to draw breath, she added severely to Dominic, “But don’t go and ask. The poor man feels bad enough without a De Vere decimation.”

  “He wouldn’t do that when someone’s genuinely upset.” With a small frown, Sylvie had turned to look over at the contestants. She spoke absently.

  He looked at her for a long moment.

  Mariana was watching him. Her glance also flickered momentarily to Sylvie, with a ghost of a smile. However, when she spoke, it was merely to incline her head toward one workstation in particular, where Sylvie’s scrutiny was focused. “Are we directing a few faint and fiery suspicions at Libby?”

  “I mean, you said it yourself.” Sylvie shifted at Dominic’s side, her hand brushing his again. Just for a moment, one finger slipped inside his cuff, teasing the skin of his wrist. The tiny shiver of pleasure that danced down his spine was increasingly reliable. “It’s a hell of a mistake to make, isn’t it? Sid’s a careful, meticulous man.” Alien abduction claims aside, which had clearly been a blatant lie to get on the show. And had succeeded; so—well done, Sid. “Libby did borrow something from his station earlier.”

  “Chili?” Mariana asked doubtfully, and Sylvie shook her head.

  “I think it was baking soda. But it was chaotic with the lighting crew throwing cables everywhere, and Sid was away from his station when I left the room. She could have messed up his other ingredients. But once again—”

  “No proof,” Mariana finished.

  They all looked over at Libby’s station. She was one of the few contestants who weren’t standing with Sid. If she were responsible, at least she wasn’t compounding her sins with hypocrisy. They had already judged her Chicago-themed display. Other than a few minor errors, her dishes today were excellent. The home economist on the crew had privately pronounced her caramel brownie tart the best bake of the series so far, and Dominic didn’t disagree.

  Only one remaining contestant still had to present their work, and unless Adam pulled off something spectacular, Libby was going to top the leaderboard again.

  It was a high bar to clear—and Adam clambered over it.

  “Oh my goodness,” Sylvie said with obvious delight, immediately leaning down for a closer look at the former professor’s Beauty and the Beast spread.

  There were iced biscuits, piped well, each in the shape of an animated character. Happily chomping down on a smiling teapot, Mariana cooed, “Look at the gingerbread houses.”

  Adam had re-created the central square of a small French-inspired town in gingerbread blocks, chocolate beams, and blown sugar fountains. He’d mechanized the latter to spill out a cascade of syrup, which fizzed like sherbet and tasted far better than Dominic had expected.

  Most of the sugar-craft requirements had been checked off on the cake, however, and the sculpted objects that stood atop the icing. Even for a highly skilled, trained sugar artist, it was difficult to pull off a human figure, and Adam had wisely opted for the Beast’s enchanted household: the clock, the candelabra, and so on.

  With one exception.

  Mariana emitted a strangled squeak, and Sylvie went suspiciously still and quiet.

  After a long stare at Adam’s mild-mannered, reserved face—and the twinkle in his eyes—Dominic crouched to look at the figure of Gaston in pride of place.

  The legs were a bit malformed and the ponytail more of a mullet, but it was clearly the show’s arrogant, narcissistic villain.

  With Dominic’s face.

  Dead-on likeness.

  Unlike the character, Dominic didn’t spend hours gazing at his own reflection, but even he had no trouble recognizing Adam’s tongue-in-cheek mimicry.

  The silence stretched.

  From the beginnings of twitching lips, Sylvie was now openly grinning.

  Adam was starting to shuffle his feet.

  “Some of the sugar work is clumsy,” Dominic said very coolly. “The proportions on a few of the figures are off, and you clearly overboiled this batch. These biscuits are overbaked and there are lumps in your custard.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emma Abara’s face. She had been entirely unbothered through the critique of her own more mediocre Grease bake, but she was glaring at him now.

  Sylvie also noticed that. She perked up even more.

  Dominic reached out and plucked Gaston from his perch, carefully holding the sculpture on his palm.

  “Just a little joke?” Adam suggested with a shade of caution.

  “I wouldn’t call it a joke.” With his other hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the little gold disc all the judges were given at the beginning of the season. Engraved with a crown, it could be awarded by each of them only once and earned the recipient an instant cash prize of £1,000. “From the neck up, I’d call it fairly exceptional work. Well done.”

  A blinking Adam took the disc, looking a bit stunned as the other contestants broke into applause—notably unenthusiastic clapping from Libby—and Dominic extended his hand.

  The other man was completely flabbergasted now.

  As he shook Adam’s hand, he turned his head and raised a brow at Sylvie.

  Laughter was a dancing light in her eyes. She inclined her head in a silent Touché.

  His own amusement was tested when they headed out into the grounds for some fresh air before the journey back to London. He’d been distracted by Aadhya, chattering at him with yet more lunacy—did he think it would be a good idea to stage one of the final rounds on a Thames barge? No, he fucking did not. And nor should she, after what had occurred last year, when she’d made them film an episode on a train to Edinburgh. Rocking surfaces, three saucepans of highly flammable liquids, two blowtorches, and one elderly former judge’s toupee. Jim Durham’s drinking had noticeably worsened after that disaster.

  So it wasn’t until they were standing on ice-crisp grass in a spectacular winter garden that he noticed what Sylvie was holding.

  She blinked placidly as she gave Gaston-Dominic a p
at on his mullet.

  “Unless you’re planning to eat that,” he said, “you’d better not be taking it in the car.”

  Her look was drenched with pity for his poor straggling wits. “Obviously, I’m taking it in the car.” She smiled beatifically at it. “I’m going to put it in the kitchens at Sugar Fair as our new mascot.”

  Before he could voice one of several comments on that, she reached into her bag and pulled out another item she’d purloined from the tables. It was a pink sugar Cadillac, reasonably identifiable and Emma’s one real success today.

  Carefully, she propped up G-D in it.

  “What—”

  “How else is he going to get around with those teeny legs?”

  Absolute last straw.

  When he started to laugh, the smile in Sylvie’s eyes lifted her mouth. But the humor in her face faded, transmuting into something else. An emerging hint of an emotion that made him feel slightly less alone in new territory here.

  Spontaneously, she reached up and touched his cheek, dusting her lips across his jaw in a feather-soft kiss. She paused there afterward, fleetingly, obviously checking his reaction. Lightning fast, Dominic cupped the back of her head before she could lower from her tiptoes and kissed her mouth. Her smile grew against his, and she nuzzled her nose against his cheek before she drew back.

  He took a slow, deep breath, trying to clear his head.

  Sylvie touched the tip of her tongue to her lips before she pressed them together. Her hands gripped the sugar Cadillac, cradling it against her chest.

  Suddenly, she sighed. “And I once swore that I’d never let my knees quiver in your presence.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Sugar Fair

  Currently in Mourning

  RIP the victims of the Great Gingerbread Witch Massacre.

  Sylvie tried not to flinch as the entire trolley of gingerbread witches crashed to the ground. Broken biscuits skittered across the newly cleaned floors. A decapitated witch head landed on the tip of her shoe. They decorated these as good witches, with correspondingly friendly expressions, but the fall had knocked this one’s face askew and she peered up with gleaming malevolence.