Corroded

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.