The fingers in my hair wrenched hard. I cried out, and he slid free of my lips with a rough sound.
I fell back as the tar melted in my throat, burned a path to my belly. Hawke did not let me touch the floor. As all the world softened to a swift, gentle blur, as the pain and fever left me so much faster than I would have thought possible, his grasp in my hair eased.
“Foolish child,” he said over my head.
I could not summon the anger to reply.
A tentative knock did not even raise my anxiety. With my cheek pillowed against Hawke’s shoulder, it seemed a matter of course when he called, “Enter,” and rose to his feet, cradling me as though I weighed as much as a feather.
“How is she?”
Zylphia’s voice, so familiar as to be welcome. How the harmonies of each tone seemed to play like liquid gold, like sunshine and sweet flavors in a dish of delight.
Hawke shifted, and when my feet touched the floor, I knew enough to keep them there. “She will mend.”
“What of the Veil’s orders? She’s to be in Ikenna’s ring come midnight.”
I watched as if from a distance as Hawke turned me, his features shrouded in implacability—none of the gentleness I had imagined, nothing of affection or kindness. Foolish, indeed.
Yet, as I looked upon Zylphia’s worried face and allowed her to wrap an arm around my shoulders, I could not summon the will to disturb the dreamlike quality of the bliss I now enjoyed.
I leaned against her—the woman who had once been my friend, and possibly would still be my friend, if I only asked—and watched Hawke draw on azure gloves with precision.
“Leave the Veil to me.”
Zylphia’s mouth turned down into a dire frown, the shape of it clearly obvious as I looked up at her dear face. The signs of such dislike—for me, for Hawke, for the situation, I didn’t know—were not enough to lessen her appeal.
Poor girl. One might consider that she’d be well used to the whips of the Menagerie and their high-handed ways.
Her hand tightened on my shoulder. “Why do you take this on?” Zylphia demanded. I could feel the tension in her body, a line of worry against my side.
I stirred, but I could not will my leaden limbs to pull away.
When Hawke said nothing, acknowledged nothing, I watched something painful slip beneath Zylphia’s lovely, furrowed features. “Cage—”
“That’s enough.” Hawke’s mismatched gaze touched mine. “Get her out of my sight.”
I believe I slept, a brief hour’s remedy lost in opium-induced dreams that made no real sense upon waking.
As I returned to my senses—shaped as they were by the warmth of the medicinal tar—I remembered only that I felt a puppet trapped in dreaming, the glint of ruby threads, wrapped snugly about my wrists and ankles, and a woman’s gentle laughter.
“Get Nye on the fires,” said a feminine voice whose tone briefly spanned my waking awareness and the foggy dreams I left behind. “Ginger, mind the south fog-pushers. Kelly says they’re sparking.”
“Aye,” piped up a young voice.
“On with it,” said the first, and I was suddenly aware of a noise that was not subtle so much as inoffensively present—a dull rush, an indication of constant motion, of force and power.
I opened my eyes to find a colorful spread hanging overhead; beautiful shades of burgundy wine, starlit blue, beaded black. The mattress beneath me was not soft, but my body did not ache—for that, I was grateful.
Where was I?
A dry, gentle hand pressed against my forehead. “Your fever is broken. Thank the heavens for small favors.”
“Zylla.” Hers was a voice, husky and familiar, that I would recognize anywhere. A terrible pain gripped my heart, but it was not the same as that I’d only just experienced. This was deeper than any physical symptom. It made me feel fragile in ways illness could not.
I did not like the feeling.
The hand left my forehead, and I turned my head upon the thin pillow beneath it to see my once-friend stand, shaking out a cream-colored skirt that tumbled from the back in a ruffle of peacock blue. Her corset was blue, and her beautifully thick hair wound in a tight crown.
I struggled to sit up. “No,” I said abruptly.
“Nye!” That other voice again. “The pulleys on the cages need a look-over, get to it.”
“He’s on the fires,” replied a deeper voice, older and roughened. “I’ll see’t.”
“Cheers, Linus.”
“Rest,” Zylphia counseled, her back to me as she reached for the divide in the hanging curtain separating this small sleeping nook from what appeared a greater room beyond. “You require more sleep,
I studied the expanse of her smooth, bare shoulders the color of my favorite tea and saw no signal, no sign that I could grasp in my confused state. She simply spoke her advice, and stepped out through the curtain.
“Ginger?” called the voice I could not wholly place.
“Out on the fans,” said that rough voice.
“Right. I’ll do it—Oh, Zylphia, ma’am. How is she?”
I could not hear the answer, but I could imagine what it was Zylphia said. Rest was the last thing I required. I kicked my bare feet over the mattress, pulling the edges of the worn robe together over my bare legs.
I could not afford to take the time to feel guilty for my lapse. That Zylphia would be in the lion-prince’s performing ring this night was not my doing. The Veil was to blame.
And Zylphia willingly worked the part.
Saying this to myself did not ease the guilt fluttering in my belly. How much of that was I carrying, of late?
Not nearly enough. Perhaps too much.
The curtain twitched aside. “You’re awake!” Maddie Ruth stepped inside before I could do more than nod my assent, a bundle of clothing folded over her arm. I realized then that it was her voice calling orders. “I’m so glad. You had us worried.”
I rather had myself worried. “I am quite fine,” I said firmly. “Tip-top shape. Where am I?”
“My room,” she said, as if it were obvious.
Like the last I’d seen her, she wore a sturdy woolen skirt and a simple man’s shirt, though now, the sleeves were rolled high and the heavy leather gloves I’d seen at her belt were protecting her hands. A set of goggles, brass-rimmed and with tinted glass in the frames, was shoved high on her forehead.
She looked quite the working man, were it not for the skirt and the ample roundness of her figure. A bit of dirt smeared her cheeks, or perhaps a kind of grease or oil. The smile she gave me was wide, and more relieved than I had a right to.
Guilt plucked again.
“I rescued your clothes,” she was saying a she set the items beside me. “Or, really, Zylphia did, and I repaired some of the holes.”
“Thank you,” I said, because such things were ingrained. I reached for the items, frowning at the precise stitches I found in the sleeve of the cotton shirt I’d worn. “Maddie Ruth, what do you do here?”
“I fix things. Can you hear the noise?”
