Corroded

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 sufficed.

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.

He whipped about, flailing that arm, howling his rage. Blue frenzy, naked venom, once more drowned his stare. Whatever the violet stuff was meant to do, Hawke flung it from him with a hard word that crackled.

It fell to the floor in shards of purple glass.

The stranger put me down, keeping his body between us, his arm flung out—hemming me behind him, keeping me away. “I only want the girl,” he called. “The rest of this mess is your own to clean.”

Hawke said nothing, his lip curling into a mocking sneer. Once more, that light gathered between his hands. Red as blood, evil as I would have always sworn light simply could not be. Light was light, color was color; neither good nor evil.

But I felt it. Even from this distance, my skin crawled beneath the vile touch of whatever power the Menagerie’s own devil summoned.

The world had gone utterly barmy; with it, my own senses. I could only stare, rooted to the spot, as the light gathered in intensity—frozen by the cold power in azure eyes.

“All who oppose me will burn,” Hawke said, still in that showman’s voice I despised. He turned that sneer upon the stranger and let fly the mysterious light.

The man I did not know sketched a shape in the air that glowed brightly purple, distorting the air about it. A contour appeared in his fingers’ wake, a pointed set of angles I did not recognize.

Hawke’s red light did not engulf him. It did not touch him.

The evil power banked over him, and Hawke’s smile turned to satisfied leer.

I stared, worn down to nothing but numb futility, as all in my sight turned red.

The cove turned, but too slow. “No!” he shouted. Fury filled it, and he flung one hand. “Hamaxa!”

Everything within me ignited.

My lungs burst. My eardrums popped. Blood filled my throat, my nose. My heart tore itself apart. Everything that could rupture, did.

Or at least, that is what it seemed to me.

Whatever happened after that, it all faded to the faintest of displays, as if I watched a play from far beyond the stage, buried in the wings. My body skidded across the ground, listless as a rag doll, and sent candles spiraling in my wake. No flame caught, but smoke filled the amphitheater.

When I finally fell still, I could not move. I could not will my body to stand, to twitch, even to breathe.

I could only watch in numb horror as everything fell to flame and chaos.

The tail of a rabbit can not be long.

Betrayal had come to the Karakash Veil after all. But did it come from my doing?

Or was this only a matter of course?

My lashes lowered. Weariness—a fatigue the like I’d never known—settled upon my limbs.

Sleep. All I wanted now was sleep. Perhaps forever.

Yes. Forever.

“Cherry!” Hands seized my shoulders; I did not feel them, not really. I was aware that it happened, but not that it hurt. It should have. Everything should have.

My sense of self dissolved into air and nothing.

Cherry. My sweet, sweet girl.

A woman’s voice coaxed me into slumber.

This time, I did not care that I dreamed it. I obeyed.

For once in my bloody life, I did not fight.

You will let me in.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The jarring is what woke me first. My world shuddered, sending vibrations all the way to my aching bones, and I came to already sobbing. It hurt. Everything about me hurt. My body. My head.

My empty, aching heart.