Karina Cooper: Corroded

Hawke’s teeth bared in a manic smile fraught with challenge. He flung that blue light with such savage fury that I flinched, threw my arms over my head—but I had no need. The blue orb soared, unerringly precise, launched at the man who dared to reach for me.

Madness erupted.

Hands seized my waist, and I was dragged from the stage. Blue fire exploded, hotter than any fire I’d known and brighter than the most complex Chinese firework.

I hit the ground upon my backside, my shoulders colliding with a stone seat. Agony tore through my re-opened wound; my vision went spotty.

“The hell,” I heard in a voice I swore was familiar, but all I knew was that rough hands tore at the gag until the wood was removed from between my teeth and I could breathe normally again.

Those same hands cupped my face. “Wake up,” he ordered, a pleasant enough sound were it not for the anger and—what? Something else twisted it. Shaped it to a ragged severity.

I forced my fluttering lashes to part.

Sculpted jaw, sandy blonde chops.

The blood drained from my face. I gasped, but could not form the words.

To my shame, a faint threatened to swallow me.

The hands at my cheeks tightened. “No! Wake up!” He slapped me once, a tap compared to that which Hawke had delivered, but it sent heat surging to my cheeks. I startled, clawed at his grip until he let me go.

“Compton,” I croaked.

“Now,” he agreed, but as he pulled me to my feet, I realized that it was not my late lord standing before me, but his brother.

Lord Piers Everard Compton, inveterate rake and no stranger to the Menagerie’s delights, had been invited to this special show.

I had no time for shame.

I shook him off, tossing back the weight of my loosened hair as I did. “A weapon,” I demanded. My voice was hoarse, my jaw aching from the strain of that damnable gag, but I could at least speak.

Lord Piers stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. His brother had so often worn that very expression.

The ache this caused in me shattered what was left of the mind I retained.

I pushed him, hard enough that he nearly tripped over the seat behind him. “Get out,” I ordered.

“I will not leave you to this madness!”

“ Out !” I screamed it, as wild a banshee as I imagine he’d ever seen. “While you can, you fool!” I pushed him again, and this time, he did fall backwards, crown over elbows. “Go!”

I left him, certain he’d have quite the tale to tell his rakehell friends come morning.

If he survived the chaos.

What had begun as an event of prestigious invite had turned into warfare. I stood, feet bare and one bleeding, gasping for breath through a terrible knot in my side, and saw bloody hell rain down upon the amphitheater.

Zylphia, her braid in a wrapped crown and her tunic and trousers similar to that of the Chinese servants, fought those same servants. She had no weapon, but the way she moved—fluid and precise—mirrored the men she fought. As I watched, a spark of something red glinted between her hands. One palm flattened against a short Chinese man’s chest.

The man she battled howled as his eyes turned red. The same light spilled from his nose, his mouth, even boiled from his ears. He clawed at his face, but ash tinted the air on a ragged exhale and he collapsed.

Over the slumped figure, separated by the smoke of fanned candles and wicked lights, Zylphia’s gaze locked with mine. She curled her fingers over a palm I’d sworn glowed as red as the firelight.

I opened my mouth.

She shook her head hard and turned away, this time to shout at a youth who swung a club at a knot of tangled bodies. “Watch your friends, Tovey!”

Chaos. Screaming, thrashing, bloody chaos.

Delilah had torn free of her bindings, and she wielded a sword taken from heaven knows where. Perhaps from Zylphia’s people, though that spoke of civil war in the making—a truth I had recognized no signs of. What bloody coup had been planned in the wings? So many secrets in these grounds.

With skill fine enough to make a fencing instructor proud, Delilah defended Talitha and Jane, who stood back to back, the remains of broken vases in hand. Jane’s eyes were wild, her teeth bared, but Talitha looked winded and afraid; I could not fault her.

Others had joined the fray. It was too chaotic to see them all, but I saw enough to know that not all who fought would walk away this night.

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.