Алекс Калер - The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels)

“How can you live with yourself?” I whisper. “Three hundred years of fucking everyone over, messing with their minds. How many people have you manipulated like that? How many people have you forced into loving you?”

And I’m sick with myself for saying it, but I can’t help it. I was fine knowing I’d run from my past, was fine thinking Mab knew more than I did. But I’m not okay with this, with knowing that Kingston had changed everything around in my head and had made me forget that he’d done it in the first place.

Worse, I hate knowing that I was most likely right. How could I trust my feelings for him when he had been playing in my head? How could I trust anything anymore? I close my eyes and squeeze my hands against my temples. The ringing won’t stop. I wish I could force it into him, make him see how it felt.

“I had no choice,” he whispers. His words barely cut through the din in my head. “You asked Mab to erase it, all of it. You signed the contract. I had to do it.”

“You didn’t have to lie about it.”

“About what?”

I want to sink into the side of the trailer, want to disappear entirely. The rage in my head is dying down, sinking back below the surface, but the ache is still there. I’m tired, so tired, and this feels like a fight I’ll never win.

“Liking me,” I manage.

There’s a long pause before he speaks.

“You think I lied about that?”

I don’t respond, don’t even move. The images in my head are still warring for control, still trying to piece themselves back into place.

That’s when I feel his hand on the side of my face. His touch is cool, tingling. It melts the pain away, even though I know he isn’t using any magic. It takes everything I have not to reach out and touch him as well, not to pull him close and lose myself in that touch. The rage allows me to keep that one small dignity intact.

“You’re right,” he says. My heart knots. He lied. He lied about everything. No one could love you. No one would want you to stay.

“I told you I didn’t need someone,” he continues. His hand traces my jaw and I want to break apart. “I played with you because you were cute and funny. But you fought for me when no one else would. No one does that around here.” He laughs softly to himself. I feel like I’m a yo-yo. Just that sad little laugh makes me want to hold him, even if it is all a lie, even if he was just using me. In the middle of all this crashing pain, the idea of comfort is intoxicating. I force the feelings down as he continues.

“You were my savior. When Senchan had me, you tried to save me when everyone else stood and watched the show. And then I had to erase that from your mind, too.” He sighs. “Do you know what that feels like? Knowing you tried to save my life and would never remember? That I’d never be able to repay you because you wouldn’t know of my debt?”

I can’t open my eyes. I know there are tears straining to come through but I won’t let it happen. I won’t. This is just a game, too. I did remember, and this is how you repaid me. I reach up and take his wrist, gently, and draw it away from my face. I don’t want to — no way in hell do I want to — but I refuse to be toyed with. I’m done being the fool.

“How do I know?” I whisper. “How do I know this isn’t another lie? How do I know this isn’t because you need me to do something for you?”

He sighs.

“I do need you,” he finally says. His words break apart the shell around me. “But not like that.”

Then his hands are once more on my face and I open my eyes to see his lips inches from mine. His brown eyes are like coffee, like mocha, and in that one glance, I know that he’s telling the truth. I can see the hurt and desire, and I reach up and thread my fingers through his long black hair. He closes his eyes and smiles and then his lips are on mine. The world melts away.

His kiss is soft and hard and tastes like cinnamon and need. His hand slides behind my head and my hands are reaching around his neck and I’m kissing back as all the fury and fear turns into something else, some great passion I can’t control. I pull him close and he leans in and every inch of my body is pulsing with heat and electricity and desire. The beast inside of me is roaring for a different reason. I could fall into this fire and burn forever.

“No.”

The word, that one word, and he tenses up. We both freeze. Then he pushes me away, wipes a hand across his mouth like that could make her unsee everything.

“Lilith,” he says.

But it’s not just Lilith. Penelope stands behind her, her hands on Lilith’s shoulders. Her expression is impossible to read, but Lilith’s is plain — rage and hurt. She looks at me, and I can’t help but flinch, remembering the fire that flew from her fingertips only nights before.

“You,” she says. “You’re as bad Senchan. You try to take him. You cannot take him. I love him.”

I take a deep breath and wait for the flames to come. I wait for her to kill me, to burn the whole world down. But she doesn’t. Her head drops when she’s done talking and then she runs off, hiding somewhere out of sight.

“Well,” Penelope says. “That was...unexpected.”

Kingston stands and takes a half step forward.

“You knew,” Kingston says. “You knew how she felt about me. Why would you do that to her?”

“I was merely bringing her back to Mab,” Penelope says, holding her hands up in defense. “She had run off. Again.” She turns her gaze to me. “And I have enough on my hands keeping this one out of trouble. Which is clearly not working.”

“You’re a heartless bitch,” Kingston says. Then he runs off in the direction Lilith went, calling her name.

Penelope looks at me.

“You were supposed to be practicing,” she says.

“I was.”

She sighs. “You mustn’t let your emotions get the best of you,” she says. “In this world, show any sign of weakness, and it will be turned against you.”

“What are you talking about?”

She smiles one of her sad, lost smiles. “Let’s just say, for people like you and me, love, freedom, happiness…well, unless we’re very specific from the beginning, they just aren’t in the contract.”

She turns and begins walking away. But as she goes, I catch her mumble something. It sounds like for now.

I close my eyes and slide against the trailer. I can still taste Kingston’s kiss on my lips, can still feel the tingle of his fingers in my pulse. Underneath it, though, is an anticipation, a sort of fear. The way Mab paused, the catch in her words. The sudden rage. Someone’s been messing with my contract.

Someone is targeting me.

It’s dinner time when Kingston comes and finds me again.

I’m in my trailer, reading a book and trying not to think of everything that happened that afternoon, which isn’t really working because now that I know my memory’s been tampered with, that’s all I can think about. How much did Kingston hide from me, and why the hell did I want it hidden in the first place? Why the false memories? Why the grand illusion? And, perhaps most importantly, what landed me here to begin with? I try to think back and am met with only haze and grey and patchwork moments that could have been pulled from anyone’s life: walking to school, watching movies with friends whose names I can’t remember, eating dinner with my mom whose voice I can’t hear. Nothing remarkable. Nothing that would put blood on my hands and visions in my head. Nothing spectacular. What was I?

The worst part was, every time I closed my eyes, those weren’t the only thoughts coursing through my mind. Every blink, every moment of darkness, and I felt his lips on mine, tasted the cinnamon of his tongue and felt the heat of his breath. Every blink, and I was back, crushed against his chest. Every blink, and I wished it would have lasted longer.