Corroded

apologize. Maddie Ruth is the only one who seems to understand the nature of such apparatuses.”

He weighed me—both with stare and, I think, based on my words and tone. This time, I held his gaze somewhat more easily. Perhaps I was getting used to it.

Perhaps he’d dimmed that thing that made his presence nearly impossible to ignore.

“Very well,” he said again, and seemed inclined to leave it there. He gestured with a bare hand, the skin of his palm pinker than the rest of him. “Do not let me keep you from your collections.”

“Thank you,” I said politely, and passed through the gate. I smelled a spice about him, something reminiscent of Hawke but drier. Like burned grass in the height of summer, and the charring of wood.

I paused, turned to find him still watching me. “I’ve news for Hawke. Where is he?”

“He is occupied,” Osoba said. That, I think, was to be the end of my line of questioning.

His Highness did not know me well at all. “Where can I find him?”

“If it is important,” he said instead, “you may tell me.”

Awareness trickled across the cold air; the fine hair on the nape of my neck, smeared down with the soot and sweat as it was, prickled in abject alarm.

Something was amiss. Something Osoba did not want me to know.

How I knew this, I don’t know. Only that my instincts were not dulled by the opium I consumed, or the pain radiating from my hands. Had I managed to eat the tar I kept intending to—had I found a place where no eyes could watch me do it—I would have felt neither anxiety nor pain.

A part of me demanded I stop long enough to tend to my hands, ease the pain of heart and flesh. Another latched on to the unspoken thread in Osoba’s words and followed it.

Was Hawke in danger?

“Where is Hawke?” I asked quietly, my tone so serious that it must have made clear my concern. Mine was not the manner of one simply asking out of curiosity; I had no patience to play the polite miss now.

If I had thought the man intimidating before, I had not realized he possessed the capability to project such warning that only a dead man might miss. His features closed, his eyes burned. “Leave the matter,” he advised me, so reminiscent of the ringmaster that my hackles lifted like the lions Osoba tamed.

Unlike his lions, I was not his to pacify.

Without another word, I turned and sprinted across the open ground. I half expected him to run after me, to keep me bodily from whatever it was that he wanted to keep me from. Perhaps to unveil a whip I had not seen wound about his person and lash it as a noose around my neck.

He did not. To my unexpected relief, the lion-prince let me go.

Chapter Seven

I must have appeared quite the demon, dashing through the market stalls peppered with workers intent on evening preparations, across the paths with no regard for direction, and all the way to the small but elegant estate where some in the Menagerie lived.

Or seemed to, anyhow. I did not know if members of the Karakash Veil lived on the grounds or merely operated here, or if anyone else truly lived here so much as work. I did know that the Veil had chosen to entertain my presence here both times I was summoned.

Servants, startled from routine, gasped or shrieked upon my arrival. I burst through the front door, which did not step into a foyer as I was accustomed but into a large receiving hall. The decor was unapologetically Chinese in origin, again with the imprinted wallpaper and distinctly foreign furnishings. The rug was thick and much larger than my own at what had once been my home.

Seven men and women paused in various states of surprise and dismay.

“Hawke,” I gasped, struggling to breathe after my impromptu dash. The corset about my chest did not give. “Where is Hawke?”

Seven pairs of eyes looked at me with one part disdain, for I was no image of cleanliness, and some part confusion.

I let the door close behind me, a hard thump. “Where is Hawke?” I demanded again. “Bloody bells, never mind.” I left them staring after me, once more pushing off into a sprint. I followed corridors I had been through once, obeying nearly-forgotten directions until I found myself outside Hawke’s quarters.

My heart pounded so loudly, it was all I could do to seize the door knob with shaking fingers.

The last I’d been here, I had woken up lacking in clothing and detailed memory. Zylphia had sworn that I had not been taken, but it had been so close.

Steeling myself against the wild conflict of emotions within me, I threw open the unlocked door and called, “Hawke!”

Silence greeted me. Stillness. The lamps were unlit, the grate empty of fire. Hawke’s bed loomed at the far wall, draped in black silk and embroidered in red, gold and green design, but there was no sign of the man himself.

I stepped out quickly, my breath shallow and too fast.

That even a foot into that place was enough to tear the confidence from me was telling enough. But as I had not found my quarry here, the return of my anxiety only made my concerns the worse for it.

In that moment, standing in Hawke’s chamber with perspiration itching across my shoulders and panic fluttering in my mind, I finally gave in to my own demand. I plucked the wax ball from my pocket, tore the paper in my haste to unwrap it, and bit a lump off. I did not chew it, I did not lick the pungent resin. I simply swallowed it.

Whether it burned through my flesh quickly or the very act was enough to calm my senses, I do not know. I stopped shaking. The pain in my hands dulled, then eased to a warmth I could better manage. My breath expelled on a relieved, gusty sigh, and it did not shake.

With a serenity I did not question, I wrapped the dwindling bit of tar once more in the torn wax parchment and replaced it into my pocket.

So calmed, I could search for the ringmaster without fear of missing clues along the way.

With his bedchamber pristine, I felt confident that I would find none here. I knew of only one other room, and hoped that it would remain the likeliest to be used. Ignoring the servants who stared at me as I hurried past, I ran down the corridors.

Something was wrong. I was not positive how things operated in the Veil’s residence, but if this had been my home, embers would have been allowed to flourish in the grate to keep the chill away. Lamps would have been lit as the day eased into afternoon, kept low for the sake of the oil.

That Hawke’s room was cold suggested he was not expected to return anytime soon. Yet he was not gone, else surely Osoba would have suggested so.

These thoughts came to me on the back of such simplicity that it seemed tragic I had missed it earlier in my high temper.

I did not pause to examine the root of my concern; had I done so, I might have taken things with greater tact. I might have also realized that there were no silent Chinese warriors waiting outside the Veil’s door, indicating there was nothing to enforce.

Instead, I burst through the two ornately carved doors into a wall of heat so thick that it stole what little breath I had left. The screens I had grown accustomed to had been moved, clearing the center of the hardwood floor and turning two fires into glowing jewels behind patterned silk. The light may have been directed away, but the heat did not lessen. I was sweating in seconds.

Yet it was not the light glittering on silk and gilt that snared my attention so fully, but that what snagged on tawny skin.

Hawke sat in the center of the floor, his back to the door. If my interruption bothered him, there was no sign of it. Not so much of a strand of his ink-black hair twitched out of place. Left loose, it tumbled to his shoulders in a pin-straight fall, hid any glimpse of his jaw or profile from me. Sweat gleamed on his back, turned his swarthy flesh to gold.

The man had removed his shirt.