Karina Cooper - Corroded

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.

“I a’ no sla’e,” I spat. For all his pretty words, a slave was something I would never again allow myself to be—neither by flesh nor by marriage.

His thumb caught a thread of saliva tinted gold by the candlelight. Smeared it over my upper lip. “Yes,” he assured me, with extreme gentility. “You are. Why deny this freedom?”

Freedom? Freedom in becoming a man’s possession? I would have laughed, if I weren’t driven beyond madness.

I had faced this path before, selling my dreams in marriage—risking it all on a good man, much less a monster such as Hawke had become.

I would debase myself for nothing less than total freedom.

The exchange allowed me opportunity to work a hole large enough into the other silk ribbon that my weight did the rest. The sound of rending fabric said all that needed to be said.

My weight dropped like a stone, tearing me free of Hawke’s grip as he leapt back. I hit the stage hard enough to ring every bone in my body like a jumbled bell, but I wasted no time feeling the pain.

The severed silk floated to the stage floor, a rain of crimson, as graceful as ink drawn across the page of my comprehension. I surged to my bare feet, and it was as if I was living flame—I had no explanation for it, no real understanding.

In my state of mind, I embodied grace and retribution, facing Hawke down as the ribbon trailed to the floor between us.

The fabric hung from the knots tied around my wrists; near enough to my dreams that for all my surety, I hesitated.

Was this real?

Was I dreaming another dreadful opium dream?

Hawke splayed one hand out, his face a twisted mask of malevolence. “You are mine,” he snarled.

I tore the gag from my mouth, barely cognizant of it when twisted hanks of my hair snapped with it. I threw it at his feet. “I am no man’s,” I returned in like aggression.

The wrong answer, to his mind. An expression of violence turned into rage incarnate. His mouth peeled back, baring white teeth. His eyes blazed. “You will not deny me!” The air over his palm crackled.

Blue light gathered, a sizzling surge of energy. It flickered like electricity, but the central heart of it did not go out, gathering in bright intensity.

I stared, open-mouthed and suddenly empty-minded.

This must be a dream.

A high scream rent the air. On it’s heels, a desperate, masculine voice. “Move!”

From the left, I heard what could not be the sound of swords clashing. That would make no sense. Swords? Here?

From the right, a man’s shape leapt onto the stage. Red hair glinted copper bright. Aristocratic features had not softened, but only sharpened with severe intensity. He appeared nothing more than a forceful man determined to interfere.