He crossed the threshold, very gently disengaged my clenched hand from the door’s edge, and shut it behind him.
It seemed as if all the air left the room upon his entry. He filled what I now realized was too small a space for the two of us. I had no oxygen to breathe, no room to maneuver.
My knees buckled—everything swayed as if I were on a net, a swing; yawning oblivion on each side.
With the agony of failing dignity, I collapsed.
But I did not fall. An arm banded across my lower back, warmth pressed from breast to hip to thigh, and a bare hand smoothed back my sweat-damp hair from my forehead. Surely I imagined that much.
Surely, Micajah Hawke—the ringmaster of the Midnight Menagerie, Gypsy-blooded bastard and bloody-minded authoritarian—was not cradling me on the bare floor in a cramped, cluttered room.
“What fools you make of my house,” he said, the words a harsh, if quiet, accusation. Yet the arm supporting me was gentle, the muscled press of his thigh against mine only marginally softer than the hard floor beneath me.
I shook my head, over and over as if by doing so, my point would be irrefutable. “No,” I said, pleading it. I had no pride left. Not here, with pain ravaging my body and a need clawing at my belly, my mind. That the robe had opened over my legs, exposing my knees and ankles, seemed unimportant. My modesty, what was left of it, did not matter. “I will not. I won’t.”
A rough hand seized my jaw, captured my face between thumb and fingers with unbreakable force. “Proud, ignorant, reckless creature.” Each name an insult, yet his voice was as music to me—a salve, a sweet harmony.
I did not understand it. I could not fathom why.
All I knew was that I hurt in ways I would do anything to end.
“Tù zi wĕi ba,” he murmured, “cháng bu liăo.”
The refrain lodged within my senses, echoing, underscored by mocking laughter that was not his.
With what seemed to be effortless strength, he rearranged my body to lay completely against his, enfolded by his arm, trapped by heat and power and iron will. It freed his other hand, but for what, I did not know until the fingers at my jaw tightened to painful degree.
“Open your mouth,” he ordered. His gaze burned into mine—darkness torn by azure radiance, too bright. Too knowing.
I squeezed my eyes shut, appalled when a tear leaked from the corner of my lashes.
His fingers dug in to my cheeks. “Open it.”
I had no choice. Parting my lips relieved the tension of his grasp. The sound I made was both anger and despair, a terrible noise I had only ever made at my dying husband’s side—so much blood, everywhere. It painted the backs of my eyelids now, a ghostly reminder that seemed as real as the man who held me.
Something passed between my lips. Before I could spit it out, turn away, Hawke placed his hand beneath my chin and forced my mouth to close.
My lips sealed over two of his fingers. I tasted the shock of heated flesh, the salt of callused skin.
The acrid burn of tar as it touched my tongue.
I gave myself no order. As if bearing a mind of its own, my tongue twined about the fingers enclosed in my mouth, dragged over calluses and warm skin.
A strained sound seemed to fill Hawke’s chest beneath my lolling head, but I paid no mind—opium’s sweet lure eased the ache inside me, calmed the chills and fevered sweat battering at my senses. I whimpered as he withdrew his fingers, my teeth closing over the rough pad of his index finger.
His other hand fisted in my hair. “Let go,” he ordered, so quietly it was nearly a growl.
I did not want to. I wanted to be sure to lick every bit of the tar from his fingers, to suck the very flavor of it from his flesh.
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.”
Chapter Ten
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.