Karina Cooper - Corroded

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.

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.

A steady arm wrapped around my shoulders, supporting me against a warmth that combatted the chill I suffered, but it did not help. Everything rocked. “Easy,” murmured a soft spoken voice. Masculine, firm. “Rest while you can, Miss St. Croix. ’Tis a long journey out.”

A glass rim touched my lips. Bitter alcohol coated my tongue. Because I was naught but a creature of habit, I drank every drop of the laudanum fed me.

I had learned nothing, after all.

Peeling my crusted eyes open showed me the blurred glare of a small lantern, and a glint of red where it reflected off copper hair. The gentleman cradled me against his side, his features lost in my bleary sight.

A carriage, I realized. We were in a carriage, it was night—or perhaps the curtains were drawn. The jarring came from roads that were not of London-make, yet that we took a carriage and not a sky ship suggested a certain amount of secrecy.

The laudanum burned a path to my belly. What little deductive reasoning I’d grasped faded away beneath a tide of sweet lassitude. Pain faded. Worry, theory, even interest dulled to nothing.

Opium to dull the pain, and I bore so very much.

My head lolled, and gently, the man I traveled with adjusted his arm so that he supported my inevitable wilting.

My lips moved. “Who...?”

The carriage rocked again, and this time he splayed his free hand over my chest, covered by an ermine blanket to combat the chill. It put his face closer—enough that I could see that his hair was short, messy as if he’d dragged his fingers through it repeatedly, and a bruise stained the pale skin of his jaw. Another abrasion marred his left cheekbone.

Aristocratic features. I could not place them; could barely be bolloxed to try.

“Rest, Miss St. Croix,” he murmured. The lantern reflected back in brown eyes. “There will be time for questions after we’ve dried you out.”

My eyelids drooped. I wanted to feel fear at the words, feel worry or anger or anything—I could not. Sleep beckoned, and with it, that woman’s ghostly song.

I didn’t want to hear it; didn’t want to dream of red ribbon wrapping my limbs, of echoes of weeping and my own worthless sorrow. I did not want to dream of a wicked man with unfamiliar eyes, taunting me from Micajah Hawke’s cruel sneer.

I whimpered my distress.

His arm tightened around me. “It will not be easy,” he said in soft tones designed to soothe. “We will nevertheless persevere. Non omnis moriar .”

My Latin had not been utilized for far too long. I could not parse his intent.

“Who,” I mumbled again. My fingers found his side beneath the blanket, clenched into his shirt. “Please...”

The hand he’d used to brace me now stroked my hair from my forehead. “It has been entirely too long, I think. Oliver Ashmore, at your service.”

I stiffened, more out of habit than any true fear. It was as if the memories of it—the understanding that I should be afraid of this man—hammered at the door to my fatigue, and opium sealed the lock.

Long had I imagined my absent guardian a demon, always had I feared when his booted steps echoed down the halls of my childhood corridors. I had never gone out of my way to see him, always avoided him. Seven long years, and he had remained the demon I feared the most.

Ashmore paused, perhaps recognizing my worthless struggle for what it was. He did not let me go, nor did he allow me space to wriggle away—I could barely summon the will to try. With his arm wrapped around my shoulders, his voice dropped an octave. “I promise you thisY,” he intoned, with such lyrical rhythm as to be nearly mesmerizing. “You are once more in my safekeeping. Now rest.” What dregs of sudden panic spiked beneath the laudanum he’d fed me soon evaporated to bone-deep lethargy.

I would never have dreamed the word I whispered next. “Stay.”

“You have my word.”

The irony of my new predicament did not elude me. Saved from the madness of the Menagerie, only to be threatened with the loss of the one vice that kept my sanity in check. That the determination came from my guardian only made it all the worse, for long had I bemoaned his long-distance interference in my life. The naïveté of those days might have shamed me, were I not so eager to avoid thinking of anything at all.

For all my conceit, it took a demon to save me from the devil.

My eyes closed entirely. Part of me could not decide whether weeping or laughter would be most appropriate. With my head pillowed against Ashmore’s shoulder, I could do neither—only fall into a deep and trance-like state of sleep.