Corroded

“Tou’ ‘e an’ I wi’ ki’ y’u!” What didn’t make it through the gag, I made bloody sure burned in my stare.

The devil laughed. “And still, she fights. Come, Countess. Let go your obligations. Let go the prudery that has all but strangled the heart from you.” I leaned as far away as I could from his grasp, but the ribbons left me no avenue. He crowded me, his hard features twisted into a mockery of kindness. Of platitudes that twisted like knives within my chest.

“Free yourself of sorrow,” he coaxed, his hand flattening over the front of my corset. As if I wore nothing, I felt it press against my constricted ribs—a brand, a mark of possession. “Free yourself of the guilt you feel when choice is all you are offered.”

Slowly, his free hand splayed over my cheek. Warm. Gentle enough that my senses could not distinguish what was real and what came of my own hazy fantasy.

Was this Hawke speaking to me? Was it a stranger in his skin?

Did he promise me safety?

His hand lifted from my cheek. Crack! Pain blossomed beneath his palm. “A body so owned has no worries but that which her protector bestows.” Crack! The other cheek. Tears filled my eyes. “Her passions so enslaved, she has no sorrows but those he allows.”

Crack! My teeth ground against wooden rod. Fire bloomed over my face, crawled down my neck.

“Such a treasure, my lady, is adored, utterly and completely. She is consumed, until she is nothing—” another slap, “—but obedience—” Another. I cried out. “—and love.” Hawke’s palms framed my face, drew me to my toes as his mouth slanted over mine. His kiss reeked of arrogance, of lust given flesh and heightened arousal so sharp, I could taste it on his breath.

Behind him, I could hear the crowd murmuring. Feel their intensity as they watched.

I forced myself to remain still. To remain lifeless under his kiss, noisy and wet and messy as it was against my gagged mouth. When he lifted his head, it was not to me he looked, but the crowd.

I was a prop, a thing. This show, this demanded submission, was nothing like that which I’d offered Hawke of my own will. This was a mockery—a bloody performance for jeering apes dressed in silks, twisting that which had been my gift to him.

What joy I might have felt in Hawke’s arms before now turned to ash and rot.

I shuddered with revulsion. With fear.

“Think of nothing,” Hawke said, his voice a deep drag within my skin. That he could still force an element of feeling from me was something I despised with all my being. “Worry for nothing but that which we demand. That is our responsibility. Our gift to the likes of you.”

When he circled me, I saw him lick his lips—as if he would taste the red rouge that had rubbed off on his mouth from mine. Raw delight, depraved in ways I had never seen before, filled a face I had once thought of as familiar.

I did not know this monster.

I did not know how to rationalize what I felt now. Only that I would escape, the very instant he gave me opportunity.

And then he would be sorry.

“Bring them,” Hawke called. On cue, the side doors that were usually used for Menagerie staff opened, and out came four women—midnight sweets, all of them. I recognized Talitha and Jane, girls I had befriended. Beside them, Delilah, who had been so kind when I’d seen her last, and Black Lily.

All were dressed in simple shifts. All bound. They did not shuffle, or walk with rounded shoulders. They were sweets, quite used to the peddling of their flesh to the highest bidder, but Lily stumbled. It was Talitha who caught her, an arm around her shoulders, and in that moment, I saw Talitha’s face turned in my direction.

Fear flickered there. Fear, and anger.

Lily’s face was bandaged, but the way she moved told me she was as drugged as I—with none of the tolerance to afford her understanding.

He’d brought all the women I’d come to know, to enjoy the company of.

The Veil had lied. Even though I’d capitulated, though I stood here now, these women would be made to suffer—and I had no choice but to watch.

I think I must have lost my mind, for the next thing I knew, I was raving at Hawke in words that would not form fully around the wooden rod. His laughter filled the amphitheater, fused with the sudden surge of delighted chatter from them what watched.

The stays of my corset loosened, so sharply that I know he did not untie them. The panels eased, my natural curves pushing them away.

A knife. I’d bet my life upon it.

A literal wager.

Gripping the ribbons, I waited; held my breath with the effort.

His fingers slid beneath the corset’s edges, pulled it farther apart. The sudden ceasing of pressure upon my wound woke the deadened flesh, and I flinched.

Only to scream in shock and pain as his fingers found the puncture and pressed.

The sound tore through the amphitheater.

“A possession’s reward,” Hawke said in the pulsating silence that followed, “is punishment. Our kindness is in the demands we make. We have too long been made to suffer in silence, persecuted by societies determined to stamp out the vices that give us control. Remember where you come from!” This last was spoken so sharply, filled with so much menace, that many gasped.

I glared out over the firelight, panting tiny breaths lest deeper ones aggravate the agony he’d provoked. Very carefully, I eased one foot out of my slipper.

I saw the color of Lady Sarah Elizabeth’s emerald gown, but could not see her face as she bent to cup Black Lily’s chin in her hand. Her thumb pressed against the bandage.

Spots of red turned black against the white cloth.

Lily did not flee. Rooted to the spot, kneeling beside the woman, she sobbed.

My vision went red in kind.

Bollocks to waiting. I would see blood for blood now. I straightened my arms, providing slack in the ribbons where there had been none. I whirled, graceful as the dancer Fanny had always wanted me to be. Hawke’s strange blue eyes laughed at me, but his smile was one of sinister mockery as my corset slid to the stage floor, cut laces drifting in its wake.

I don’t believe he expected me to behave as I did then. I certainly hadn’t expected it of myself. All I know was that my heart thudded hard enough in my skull to drown Lily’s pitiful cries, the protestations of the girls he would see abused, and my fury would wait for nothing.

Tightening my arms, I lifted my legs and braced both upon Hawke’s chest. I was quick; much more so than he expected, and perhaps more than my wound could allow, but pain would not stop me.

The knife, a simple dagger without ornamentation, glinted in his gloved hand. With a deft move I hadn’t planned through, I kicked out, toes splayed, and deftly plucked the blade from his grip.

Laughter turned to surprise.

Pain sheared up my leg.

I could not let it stop me.

Clenching my toes tightly around the sharp edge, I rolled my body up, until I was upside down upon the ribbons.

Hawke laughed outright. His hands caught my head, cradled it. The veil they’d placed upon my head floated between us, caressed my cheek. With one hand, he seized it at the base, and wrenched the whole thing off. The shear ruthlessness of it hardened my resolve, and though he tore my hair free of its pins, I did not scream. Forcing my upside down stare to meet his, he drawled, “And where do you think to go, my lady?”

A twist of my foot, toes clamped upon the blade, and fabric tore.

Crimson silk pooled over us both. It slid across his cheek, trailed down my body, and abruptly left one arm loose. I would have swung—a strange echo of the way I’d freed Hawke from his own chains—were it not for Hawke’s own grasp on my hair.

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