I did not know if I paled, but the room shuddered on the outset of my vision. I ground my teeth near to dust, fighting the angry words that jammed into my throat.
I would not allow this man to threaten my hard-won composure. I stepped away from the chair with determined effort. “I will fetch—”
“No,” he said over me, and I paused. “I have wasted too much time already. Come as you are or not at all.”
“You’re a bloody bastard, aren’t you?” I shot back, lip curled.
He smiled, a gleam of very white teeth against his dark skin, and his eyes glinted with laughter that cut. “There will be no other opportunities,” he told me. “Hawke’s time has run out.”
I did not know what game Osoba played at, but the meaning was clear enough.
If I did not go see Hawke now, I would never see him again.
Was the Veil prepared to execute him?
Was he hurt so badly that his life slipped away as I stood here and argued?
Blast it all and bloody the beggar. Whatever else I might have attempted, whatever argument, they all paled beneath one simple truth: Osoba might be bluffing, but he also might not. Did I have the cards to win this pot?
Oh, that Hawke would become that pot. The very idea was so ludicrous that it didn’t bear saying aloud. He’d never deign to be something to be won—or rescued.
Were I a little less driven on the matter, I’d have let Hawke stew in his own servitude.
I was such a fool. “Very well.” I brushed past Osoba, knew he followed me to the front when the beads in his hair clattered faintly in my wake, and I added, “But I owe you no favors.”
I seized the doorknob.
“No,” he agreed. “You do not.”
I should have been more careful. I had grown lax in my time away from the London streets that had taught me never to turn my back upon an opponent.
The sudden click and clack of those beads was all the forewarning I received. A feeling, a sense of movement had me turning to engage—too late, as fingers clamped around my throat.
My back slammed against the door, so hard that the single pane of filthy glass rattled and cracked. Pain shot through my back, my head, and again through my knee when an overly bony hipbone turned just so to block my strike.
Osoba did not smile. He did not speak, nor change from a fiercely determined glower in the torturous seconds he held me pinned. He was strong; stronger than I had thought him capable. Throttled into silence, I could not fight, and I seized his wrists in desperate panic.
I do not know what it was he did, what secrets he plucked to do it, but within those seconds, my world turned abruptly black.
Surprise would always be the greatest of equalizers. Any fool raised in the devil-fog would say so.
I’d forgotten all too much.
Chapter Five
The “direct method” Osoba chose left me feeling weak-kneed and wobbly when I came to—rather more suddenly than a true fainting spell should allow. One moment I was unconscious, without the benefit of dreams to soften the black, and the next I was awake, upright through no effort of my own, and clammy for it.
Whatever it was Osoba had done, it left me with a headache raw enough to split bone. I could see nothing more than the dimmest of outlines. All else was murky and dark. We were somewhere indoors, out of the chill and damp, but where?
It was not enough to be carted about like a sack of moldy wares. Osoba had taken the liberty to wrap an arm under mine, his long fingers splayed at my throat and the whole of my weight held easily against his much taller figure.
I had never doubted the strength inherent in such wiry muscle, and could not misunderstand it now. It was the lion prince’s own power that held me upright, back to his chest, and I could barely breathe around his grip.
The Menagerie.
He’d carted me inside, heaven only knew how, but where we stood was not familiar to me. I’d half expected to see the Veil’s usual silk screen mask, feel the heat of the room the spokesman favored when meeting with me, but I was too cold for that. Only Osoba’s body heat at my back kept me from shivering outright.
I opened my mouth, taking a strained breath to demand a better class of treatment, but Osoba’s other hand moved quickly to cover my nose and mouth. I stiffened, lifted a knee to drive my foot into his by reflex, but a harsh, “Hsst!” gave me pause.
It was not that he intended to strangle me, I understood only belatedly when I took another, clearer breath. He was still behind me, his breath hot on my ear, and his heartbeat slow and steady near the other. Though he all but cradled me like a crab in his grasp, he was not bothered by the odd tableau.
I thought him barmy as all out.
I bared my teeth, but did not bite. Instead, I waited as he waited—and realized soon enough that what we waited for was the abandonment of the room beyond the faint outline of a door. Voices trickled from somewhere past the dark corridor, and the clank of metal against metal screeched and echoed.
I winced.
Osoba lowered his lips to my ear. “Be quiet or I’ll wring your neck myself.”
I shuddered. Not because there was any pleasure to be found in the warm breath against my ear, but because I had been seduced by such a maneuver before, and this was nothing like it.
Hawke’s infuriating ability to threaten my well-being while seducing me with every word was not, I was relieved to note, a trait shared with others.
Tightening my fist, I jabbed my elbow into Osoba’s ribs and heard him grunt. He let go of my face and my throat, arm snaking away from my ribs with remarkable grace. I wobbled, but a flailing hand caught at the corner of a crate whose contents clinked softly. “Where are we?”
“Where Hawke is,” he replied softly, and I thought I heard a bit of a rueful note to it. Perhaps it was just my imagination in the dark. “Shush.”
Because I was not explicitly unintelligent, I obeyed. Metal clanged again, that eerie flat quality lacking in harmony but exceedingly loud, and from the gloom, another sound tore through the quiet.
A roar.
Full, lush, predatory in the extreme—this was the sound of a hunter. Instinct forced a shudder down my spine; in the depths of that bestial roar, I recognized the fragility of my own existence.
Such was the manner in which lion-tamers earned their keep—subjugating animals whose very natures placed them above the human beings that would otherwise be prey.
“The lion cages,” I whispered.
Osoba did not acknowledge this. “Come,” he ordered softly, and I felt more than saw him pass me, black upon black and the faintest click to mark his passing.
I let go of the stacked crate with care. Again, it clinked, as glasses might. Cautious of stumbling into more like it, I followed Osoba, eyes straining in harsh gloom. My boots did not sink into mud or crackle upon straw. The flooring felt softer than brick or wood, and I wondered if we tread upon earth tamped flat and firm.
A silhouette passed across the narrow wedge of distilled light, and a door half-opened widened beneath Osoba’s touch.
Light spilled from the interior, revealing a wedge of dark earth and stray bits of straw scattered as though by haphazard footsteps. With it came bits of sound I could not wholly place—a soft thudding now and again, a strange sort of flapping.
A breath revealed the musky odor of beasts, similar to that of the hounds Ashmore had left with one of his plethora of helpful companions before returning to London.
Prepared as I was for the revelation of lions, no amount of preparation could soften the impact. I stepped beneath the low-hanging frame separating the dark corridor from the interior, and it was as though a fist in my chest took my breath away.
Cages lined the interior, a row of bars from door to farthest wall, where a high and narrow window allowed daylight to trickle in. Much of the light came from lanterns affixed to the wall on either side of the door behind me.
In each cage, creatures I had always known existed but had never s
een stared out from between iron bars.
At my left, a large pile of fur revealed itself to be three lionesses curled together for warmth and comfort. They were large, much larger than I had imagined, with softly rounded ears and lazily lidded yellow eyes. One’s tail lashed, but none thought me worth investigation.
In the cage across, a massive male paced back and forth before the bars, wide black tongue licking at his chops as he stared not at me, but at Osoba in the midst of the pungent, faintly damp room. His mane was lush and dark brown, a gorgeous shade I’d only seen on the skins occasionally displayed by lords who’d gone on safari in the wild lands.
Muscles bunched and stretched beneath a glossy hide, and large paws bearing wicked black claws batted at the bars. The lion’s jaws yawned open, and the sound he made was something so much more than a mere growl. The teeth revealed were yellowed—and deadly sharp.
Osoba stared at the beast who stared back with eyes tinted with more green than yellow. The enormous feline’s pace did not decrease, chops drawn back and fangs bared in deliberate challenge.
What teeth. I’d lose an entire arm before I could blink, and that was only if I were extraordinarily lucky.
I had never called Osoba’s courage into question, but now I wondered at his sanity. To step into a ring with such a beast, knowing that the animal waited for the opportunity to test the greatest of the pack—Osoba himself—lacked a certain awareness of one’s well-being.
I hugged myself as a shiver took me. “Why am I here?” I demanded, though quietly. I could not know how far the workers we’d heard had gone.
Osoba’s mouth twisted into a parody of a smile, though he did not look away from the king of beasts who watched him. “Did you not wish to see Hawke?”
My mouth fell open. Startled, I looked again at the lion butting his sleek, maned head against the bars. He turned away, tail flicking as though we were both worthless, then rose on his hind legs, turned and rammed a shoulder into the sturdy metal grate.
I jumped.
Osoba did not.
Taking a steadying breath, I narrowed a suspicious glare upon the lion prince and opened my mouth to argue when I realized that the kingly animal’s cage did not extend as far as I’d thought.
My heart pitched a dull beat; my throat closed on my scorn and my steps took me past the motionless tamer to the darkest corner.
Osoba had warned me, in his own less-than-clear manner, but as I approached the bars, the scenario my imagination spun for me did not give credence to the reality of it.
Zylphia had once told me that Hawke’s shortened name, a simplified Cage, was in part because of the manner in which he lived—a powerful force prowling the confines of the Menagerie like a tiger in a cage. The lion facing down his master gave exactly the same air, but the man within the farthest cage did not rise to such a description with any degree of confidence.
Of all the scenarios played out in my mind, I had never thought this one to be possible.
Micajah Hawke sat within the enclosure, nary a blanket nor cushion to salve the chill. A single chamberpot in the corner provided little privacy for such matters, and another corner overflowed with the same straw as in the other cages.
His posture was such as I had stumbled across him once before, with his legs bent inward in that uniquely Oriental manner and his back to me. His hair was black, a thick fall of pure night that tumbled over his shoulders, tangled and longer than months prior. It would be cool to the touch—so at odds with the furnace of his body.
Sweat darkened the back of his shirt, an uneven vee of damp fabric revealed between hanks of his hair. Even without any obvious need for such rigidity, he did not appear relaxed. If he slept, I could not imagine how. Tension strained his shoulders, and I bit my lip when I noted the white-knuckled fists clenched upon the floor by his thighs.
He was not well. Unhurt, perhaps, but not at peace.
I had seen him in his guise as ringmaster and without. I had seen him clothed and near enough to nude to matter. I had freed him once from a different prison, only to be seduced and abandoned for my effort.
I had never seen him like this.
The Veil had ordered him whipped. Had tested his strength in ways Osoba’s tale had only hinted at. They had demanded more of this man than any mortal should be expected to deliver, and he allowed them to cage him.
Dismay clashed with stilted fear. My body seized, muscles tight enough to risk springing loose like a bent coil; all razored edges and reach. One part of my senses shrieked a warning, for the last I’d seen Micajah Hawke, he had made a show of my humiliation.
The rest of me could have wept for the sight of him, relieved to learn that he still lived—and was not maimed or worse by the cruel ringmaster that had replaced him.
I approached the bars on soundless feet, lifted a hand to wrap around one.
I was not certain Hawke had noticed my presence.
I opened my mouth, but my tongue felt overly dry and the words weak. Pulse hammering, I squeezed my eyes shut and whispered, “Hawke.”
A rustle, a rasp of sound, was all the warning given.
Hard hands closed around my head. My eyes flew open, a startled sound jarred from me as Hawke filled the space that had been empty only seconds before. I had not known he could move so quick nor so silently, but somehow, he did.
And oh, the face he showed me.
I had precious little opportunity, a glimpse of implacable steel and blazing blue eyes, before those fingers clenched around my skull jerked my body hard into the bars. My face pressed against icy iron, and Hawke’s mouth seized mine with a growl only marginally different from the intensity of the tiger he had been likened to.
Clarity was not a gift I claimed anymore, but in that moment when his lips stole my breath, I remembered the feel of his skin beneath my fingers, hot as molten gold and ridged where the lash had marred his back forever. I remembered what it had been to writhe under his attentions, pinned by the greater strength of his body, and how it was that I had come to be there.
If I had any thought that I might free myself from the bindings of his attentions, they fled from me.
His mouth was warmer than the cold air might have suggested it would be, his tongue searing as he licked his way between my lips. He had never been overtly kind, but now it was cruelty and a savage hunger I tasted as I gripped the bars he’d pulled me into and drowned in a kiss so feverish that it shattered all sense of self.
My breath shuddered as he forcefully tilted my head at an angle that allowed him greater feasting, and a ragged sound escaped me when his teeth closed over the curve of my bottom lip.
A second’s grace, a flick of his tongue over the captured flesh, and pain flickered through my muddled senses.
Another arm banded around my waist, plucked me from Hawke’s grasp as though I weighed nothing more than a feather. I cried out, my lips aching and body overly warm, but Osoba paid me no mind. He dropped me as though I mattered not at all, but gripped my arm to hold me still at his side as he met Hawke’s furious stare.
“Why is she here?” Hawke demanded. The first words I’d heard him speak, and they frothed with barely concealed violence. He gripped the bars in one hand gone white at each knuckle, while the other blotted at a stain of red at his mouth.
Shocked, I lifted trembling fingers to mine and winced when my lip throbbed. My fingertips came away colored by my own blood. I almost laughed, save that I couldn’t get a proper breath.
To mark me so cruelly and then pretend that I did not exist; Hawke had always been such a bastard.
The heat gathered low in my belly stubbornly refused to dissipate. Even as my staggered thoughts finally found purchase on the truth I’d been too swept away to take note of.
Hawke’s shirt was thin and patchy at the elbows. The neck hung askew, torn at one side, and provided no obstacle to the leather fastened securely around his corded throat. No jewels softened it, no etchings or placard to deflect the inarguable trut
h. The tiger had been collared.
The Veil had dared.
“She came—” began my captor, only to halt when I jerked my arm free.
I glowered at him before turning the full force of my fury on the caged ringmaster. My bloody fingers curled into a fist at my side. “I came to see if you were well,” I said tightly. “I apparently wasted my time.”
He did not flinch from my unkindness; I did not expect him to. I could be such a fool for pride. Instead, Hawke’s wicked blue eyes pinned on me, a veritable inferno of inexplicably unkind regard, then flicked to Osoba and narrowed. “Take her,” he said, low and barely civil for the savage strains of it.
The lion-tamer’s arm lifted, as though he might bar me from moving forward. I had no desire to. Not even if my lips tingled still, pleasure sharpened by a throbbing ache. “Do you see?” Osoba asked, and I frowned when I realized he spoke to me. “This is what’s come of the Veil’s tiger.”
Hawke’s shoulders stiffened, tightened to stone as he gripped the bars with uncommon strength. “Osoba,” he growled.
“Why don’t you set him free?” I asked, then demanded of Hawke himself, “Why do you stay here? What do you possibly owe?”
Hawke’s lips peeled back from his teeth, stained with my blood, and a tic in his jaw nearly completed what that kiss had already begun to unravel within me. Arousal was a thing I had come to know, and I was no maid to be afraid of it, but the intensity of the feeling Hawke evoked within me was nonetheless a fearful thing. To say that I did not relish the taste of his lips, the force with which he kissed me, would be a lie.
But these conflicting, heightened feelings were not all I felt. There was a time I viewed that leaping muscle as a victory, for it meant I’d worked my way beneath his vaunted control.
Now it reminded me of times no longer mine, and warned of things I felt too fragile to endure. It reminded me of a time forever lost, when my love for laudanum softened those things that frightened me, and his gaze did not churn so violently in a sea of hellish blue.
Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles Page 7