Corroded

by Karina Cooper

It pulled tight enough that I felt some give. My scalp burned.

  “I a’ no sla’e,” I spat. For all his pretty words, a slave was something I would never again allow myself to be—neither by flesh nor by marriage.

  His thumb caught a thread of saliva tinted gold by the candlelight. Smeared it over my upper lip. “Yes,” he assured me, with extreme gentility. “You are. Why deny this freedom?”

  Freedom? Freedom in becoming a man’s possession? I would have laughed, if I weren’t driven beyond madness.

  I had faced this path before, selling my dreams in marriage—risking it all on a good man, much less a monster such as Hawke had become.

  I would debase myself for nothing less than total freedom.

  The exchange allowed me opportunity to work a hole large enough into the other silk ribbon that my weight did the rest. The sound of rending fabric said all that needed to be said.

  My weight dropped like a stone, tearing me free of Hawke’s grip as he leapt back. I hit the stage hard enough to ring every bone in my body like a jumbled bell, but I wasted no time feeling the pain.

  The severed silk floated to the stage floor, a rain of crimson, as graceful as ink drawn across the page of my comprehension. I surged to my bare feet, and it was as if I was living flame—I had no explanation for it, no real understanding.

  In my state of mind, I embodied grace and retribution, facing Hawke down as the ribbon trailed to the floor between us.

  The fabric hung from the knots tied around my wrists; near enough to my dreams that for all my surety, I hesitated.

  Was this real?

  Was I dreaming another dreadful opium dream?

  Hawke splayed one hand out, his face a twisted mask of malevolence. “You are mine,” he snarled.

  I tore the gag from my mouth, barely cognizant of it when twisted hanks of my hair snapped with it. I threw it at his feet. “I am no man’s,” I returned in like aggression.

  The wrong answer, to his mind. An expression of violence turned into rage incarnate. His mouth peeled back, baring white teeth. His eyes blazed. “You will not deny me!” The air over his palm crackled.

  Blue light gathered, a sizzling surge of energy. It flickered like electricity, but the central heart of it did not go out, gathering in bright intensity.

  I stared, open-mouthed and suddenly empty-minded.

  This must be a dream.

  A high scream rent the air. On it’s heels, a desperate, masculine voice. “Move!”

  From the left, I heard what could not be the sound of swords clashing. That would make no sense. Swords? Here?

  From the right, a man’s shape leapt onto the stage. Red hair glinted copper bright. Aristocratic features had not softened, but only sharpened with severe intensity. He appeared nothing more than a forceful man determined to interfere.

  Hawke’s teeth bared in a manic smile fraught with challenge. He flung that blue light with such savage fury that I flinched, threw my arms over my head—but I had no need. The blue orb soared, unerringly precise, launched at the man who dared to reach for me.

  Madness erupted.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Hands seized my waist, and I was dragged from the stage. Blue fire exploded, hotter than any fire I’d known and brighter than the most complex Chinese firework.

  I hit the ground upon my backside, my shoulders colliding with a stone seat. Agony tore through my re-opened wound; my vision went spotty.

  “The hell,” I heard in a voice I swore was familiar, but all I knew was that rough hands tore at the gag until the wood was removed from between my teeth and I could breathe normally again.

  Those same hands cupped my face. “Wake up,” he ordered, a pleasant enough sound were it not for the anger and—what? Something else twisted it. Shaped it to a ragged severity.

  I forced my fluttering lashes to part.

  Sculpted jaw, sandy blonde chops.

  The blood drained from my face. I gasped, but could not form the words.

  To my shame, a faint threatened to swallow me.

  The hands at my cheeks tightened. “No! Wake up!” He slapped me once, a tap compared to that which Hawke had delivered, but it sent heat surging to my cheeks. I startled, clawed at his grip until he let me go.

  “Compton,” I croaked.

  “Now,” he agreed, but as he pulled me to my feet, I realized that it was not my late lord standing before me, but his brother.

  Lord Piers Everard Compton, inveterate rake and no stranger to the Menagerie’s delights, had been invited to this special show.

  I had no time for shame.

  I shook him off, tossing back the weight of my loosened hair as I did. “A weapon,” I demanded. My voice was hoarse, my jaw aching from the strain of that damnable gag, but I could at least speak.

  Lord Piers stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. His brother had so often worn that very expression.

  The ache this caused in me shattered what was left of the mind I retained.

  I pushed him, hard enough that he nearly tripped over the seat behind him. “Get out,” I ordered.

  “I will not leave you to this madness!”

  “Out!” I screamed it, as wild a banshee as I imagine he’d ever seen. “While you can, you fool!” I pushed him again, and this time, he did fall backwards, crown over elbows. “Go!”

  I left him, certain he’d have quite the tale to tell his rakehell friends come morning.

  If he survived the chaos.

  What had begun as an event of prestigious invite had turned into warfare. I stood, feet bare and one bleeding, gasping for breath through a terrible knot in my side, and saw bloody hell rain down upon the amphitheater.

  Zylphia, her braid in a wrapped crown and her tunic and trousers similar to that of the Chinese servants, fought those same servants. She had no weapon, but the way she moved—fluid and precise—mirrored the men she fought. As I watched, a spark of something red glinted between her hands. One palm flattened against a short Chinese man’s chest.

  The man she battled howled as his eyes turned red. The same light spilled from his nose, his mouth, even boiled from his ears. He clawed at his face, but ash tinted the air on a ragged exhale and he collapsed.

  Over the slumped figure, separated by the smoke of fanned candles and wicked lights, Zylphia’s gaze locked with mine. She curled her fingers over a palm I’d sworn glowed as red as the firelight.

  I opened my mouth.

  She shook her head hard and turned away, this time to shout at a youth who swung a club at a knot of tangled bodies. “Watch your friends, Tovey!”

  Chaos. Screaming, thrashing, bloody chaos.

  Delilah had torn free of her bindings, and she wielded a sword taken from heaven knows where. Perhaps from Zylphia’s people, though that spoke of civil war in the making—a truth I had recognized no signs of. What bloody coup had been planned in the wings? So many secrets in these grounds.

  With skill fine enough to make a fencing instructor proud, Delilah defended Talitha and Jane, who stood back to back, the remains of broken vases in hand. Jane’s eyes were wild, her teeth bared, but Talitha looked winded and afraid; I could not fault her.

  Others had joined the fray. It was too chaotic to see them all, but I saw enough to know that not all who fought would walk away this night.

  A sweet with Irish red hair lay still, splayed over a stone seat. Blood dripped down the edge. A man whose white mustache had turned red slumped beside her, as if he’d thought to save her life—and only lost his own.

  “Help.”

  The plea came from behind me. I turned, trailing red ribbon, and screamed my denial as Black Lily scrabbled at the stone ground. A sword lay beyond her reach, as if flung under the weight of her falling. The lion prince knelt on her back, pinning her, as his fingers spanned her head. He wrenched hard, and her voice ended as suddenly as it had rang out.

  Osoba stood, a terrible strain written into his drawn snarl.

  She did not move again.
Her head remained tilted at a terrible angle.

  Like Zylphia, he looked up to catch my stare. Rage boiled within me.

  “You are mine,” I mouthed, knowing he would never hear me. He offered me a small bow, something raw in his expression, and he turned away.

  He vanished into the chaos as if he had always known how to do so, the lion prince seeking his next prey.

  Why it was not me, I didn’t know.

  Shaking, trembling with frenzy and opium-induced fatigue, I spun, ribbons trailing behind me, and stalked for the stage I’d only just abandoned.

  I needed to end this, once and for all. I needed to see this through.

  Menagerie bloody justice.

  Yet as I braced my palms upon the edge of the stage, I could not fathom what it is I saw. Try as I might to focus, to bat away the haze of bliss drawn over my senses, this defied description.

  Hawke and the red-haired gentleman were locked in a combat the likes of which I could not be sure I wasn’t fantasizing. Blue flame and violet light showered from the black sky above, turned to orange fire as it touched the floor, the ribbons. Even those who fought too close.

  A Chinese man shrieked as he was engulfed. The horrifying stench of charred flesh turned the incense-laded air to acrid charcoal.

  Hawke leapt aside as the strange man threw a glint of gold at him. Whatever it was, it failed to reach its intended target. In answer, he flung a hand and something green shimmered as it arced towards the unnamed toff.

  It flashed so brightly, I was left staring blindly at the aftershocks as they flared black and white in my straining sight.

  Hawke’s opponent was not caught so unawares, lowering the hem of his singed jacket from his protected face.

  Foregoing whatever tricks they pulled on each other, the gent launched himself at Hawke, a form of lethality the likes I never would have expected from an aristocrat. They collided, staggered back over the far edge of the stage and fell over.

  I scrambled atop it, darted under the burning ribbons.

  I had not expected anyone to pay me a mind. Battles were not my forte, and whatever madness had seized this place, I could make no mistake—this was war.

  And I, apparently, an unwitting soldier in it.

  The body that slammed into mine was lethally hard, honed like a blade and agile as a cat. I spun, hitting the stage floor upon my back, and already slamming an elbow into the man’s chin.

  Black skin, long plaits. Ikenna Osoba, his face twisted into a ferocious scowl.

  He said nothing—a lesser man would have tried.

  Rather, as we rolled and struggled for the upper hand, he made it clear that he would not tolerate anything less than total victory. Over me. Over himself. I didn’t know.

  The man belonged to the Veil; where I’d thought him too proud to take me on, instead he had accepted my challenge. That was all that mattered.

  The ribbons still bound to my wrists wrapped us both in a tangle. He wound up the victor on top, and his forearm pressed into my throat as if he’d waste no time drawing it out. Smart, but then I’d known that.

  I was long past the point of numb disbelief.

  Creating a hook with my fingers, I jabbed them into his arm—a point where the nerves would cause the limb to spasm. I’d learned that one from a doxie what took no nonsense from her paying men, but rarely was I afforded the opportunity to use it. It required precise placement.

  Osoba cursed, growling like the lions he was reputed to tame, as his arm slid from my throat. I gasped for breath, drew up a knee and jammed it hard into the soft flesh between his legs.

  His curse strangled.

  A dark, lithe shape drew up beside us. Zylphia’s hand buried in Osoba’s braids, wrenched hard enough that his head and shoulder bent back, cords standing out in his throat. “That ginger cove,” she said sharply. “He’s losing the fight.”

  “Why,” I rasped, “is that my fault?”

  Osoba pushed himself off me, a flex of muscle that all but caused him to go airborne for a fleeing moment. His plaits slid through Zylphia’s grip, and she spared me a hard look from behind a mask of blood. Hers or someone else’s, I could not be sure. “We moved this quicker than we intended. For you,” she said quickly, harsh enough that I knew she was feeling the pain of a wound I could not see. “Do not waste it!”

  “Zylla?”

  “Go, cherie.” She turned to handle Osoba.

  I watched them—the mulatto and the prince clashed in a spectacularly agile tangle that told me it would not be a bloodless battle. Part of me wanted to see this play out. I had never known what Zylphia’s special skillset was, only that she came from a lineage the Veil called “useful.”

  I hesitated, torn—I did not care to leave her, and owed no loyalty to the ginger cove she warned was losing. Zylphia clapped her hands once and spoke a phrase in a language I did not know she possessed, a glint of red light appearing in her palm. Where I expected Osoba to come for her, he leapt back as if she’d already burned him.

  He flung up his hands, fingers splayed and bloodied, and replied something in the same style of tongue. It did not click, not as I’d heard him say before.

  Zylphia laughed. It was not a sound I’d ever heard from her—rich and loud, as if he’d said something she found utterly comical.

  Osoba’s gaze flicked to me, then back to the sweet. Inclining his head, he slipped away, over the stage, and once more out of view; challenge forfeited.

  Zylphia did not turn to face me. As if a woman possessed, she tipped back her head and let loose a scream that galvanized all who heard it into startled shrieks and awful cheers—a terrible noise, yet so joyful as to be frighteningly out of place.

  Fear for her froze me in place.

  Too late. A flare of red light, wholly different from what Zylphia summoned, surged from the edge of the stage.

  The whole of it shuddered. I had no time to scrutinize my options. The far end blew outwards in an excessive display of energy and power, so forceful as to beat down all who stood in its path.

  I shielded my face from the splinters of wood and stone.

  A foot connected with my back, just over the wound I’d already reopened. I screamed my pain, howled my anger, even as I fell over that ruined edge of the platform.

  The report of a pistol cracked, and the amphitheater returned the echo a thousand times. Whoever had assaulted me, they did not come again.

  Groaning amidst the carnage left by that red flare, I forced myself upright. Lurched when my knees wobbled.

  What a fearless collector I’d turned out to be. Confident enough of my skills when it came to one on one, but the madness of this place undid me. I had never been trained for all-out war, and that was the hell I found myself in.

  For all my befuddlement, still I staggered forward. “Cage...” That his name was the one upon my lips should have infuriated me. It would, later. But I had no name for the ginger gentleman and no real understanding that what I saw did not stem from the opium I’d imbibed.

  I had taken too much.

  And still, I wanted more. To dull the noise, dull the pain.

  Put me to sleep where all the cares of the world could fade to empty silence.

  The men fought, heedless of the severe damage they left in their wake. Ginger to black; copper to ink. Blue and violet and sparkling green, they fought with things I could not wholly take in, even as the impact of fists and flesh and the ruby glint of blood smeared all.

  Hawke’s white gloves were nearly black with it.

  The other man wavered upon his feet.

  I lurched into a shuffle.

  Then, a sprint.

  Hawke shaped that light, malignant and red between his hands, his voice raised in Chinese words I didn’t understand. Yet this time, he changed the inflection—his tone turned nasal, where I’d only ever heard him respond to the Veil in his own deep voice.

  Had I required further proof of this abnormality wearing the ringmaster’s skin, this suffi
ced.

  Where was Hawke?

  The stranger tripped over fallen candles, sprawled on his backside, and strained until his jaw stood out in stark relief and tendons popped in his forearms—mostly bared, its burned remains reduced to a few clinging threads. I saw the roll of his lean shoulders as if he struggled to push back against whatever force Hawke summoned.

  I did not think. I simply leapt at Hawke as he raised his hands, his face a wild mask of triumph and near ecstatic pleasure.

  “Cage!”

  In that moment, a split second, Hawke’s hands wavered. The light faded out, sizzled to nothing. I collided into his chest; his arms came around me, long-fingered hand splaying over the back of my head as if he would protect me from injury.

  With effortless strength, he spun me, utilizing my own momentum to gather me hard into his arms. I looked up, fearing the blue of his eyes and frantic to see traces of the man I desperately hope remained inside.

  His eyes banked. Blue darkened, and in my wide-eyed confusion, struggling to regain the upper hand as he held me, I saw my terror and abject bewilderment reflected in a brown pool streaked with azure light.

  Hawke sucked in a ragged breath. “Cherry.”

  I seized his face in my hands. “Come back to me.” That I implored this was not something I am proud of.

  His jaw shifted, that muscle I had never thought would be such a relief to see leaping in his cheek once more.

  He did not address my demand. “Go,” he ordered.

  Bollocks to that. “I won’t!”

  The despair writ into his twisted grimace warred with fierce possession, and he shook me hard enough to rattle my senses. “Leave me.” A ragged plea that turned to a growl as another pair of hands tore me, addled and beyond understanding, from his grasp. I found my feet only to lose them again, spun out of the way by the ginger man’s rough handling.

  His unfamiliar voice rang in my ear. “Get to safety!”

  A tinkle of glass, all but inaudible beneath the madness, seemed so desperately out of place. Over the man’s restraining arm, I watched something violet, not quite light but not flame either, ripple up Hawke’s arm. It hugged his flesh, snaked up his shoulder as he half-turned to protect his face.