The Bones of Ruin

by Sarah Raughley

  “Not mad. Just ready.” Adam lowered his head. “ ‘Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning,’ ” he said. “ ‘And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: Verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.’ ” He paused as she stared at him in confusion. “Luke.”

  Iris trembled. “The Bible?”

  “My mother made me memorize it the moment I could read. She said I should be prepared. And I am.” He slid his hands away from her. “Iris, like me, you’ve seen cruelty. You’ve suffered at its hands. You’ve seen how evil the people of this world can be. So what do you think humanity’s fate should be?”

  Iris pounced on him, pinning his arms to the bed as she let her anger explode. “And if I say destruction, what about you? Are you willing to die?”

  “Yes,” he said with a voice and expression so calm, so at peace, it shook her heart. “I’ve been ready for a long time, Iris.”

  Iris’s shaking hands found his neck. This boy raised by a doomsday cult and a puritanical mother. This boy destroyed by his trauma and cursed by his own intelligence. She squeezed so hard she could feel her nails digging into his skin.

  And yet Adam only looked at her with affection.

  In a moment of insanity, she pressed herself against him and kissed him deeply and desperately, letting the wetness of his lips slide across her mouth. Surely this was all he wanted. He’d be satisfied with this. But when she looked at him again, his eyes, now half open, hadn’t changed. He was resolute. The slight hint of lust in his expression did nothing to change that.

  The clock struck ten with a deep, low knell. The sound reverberated through her flesh. Through her…

  Through her bones.

  “This is too much.” She slid away from him and jumped to her feet, pulse quickening as she scurried to the desk. “This is just too much. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Then I’ll give you time,” said Adam as he rose and headed for the door. “Ten o’clock. The final round will begin soon. You and your team should still fight.” He opened the door. “It’ll be good practice for you as you prepare for the end.”

  47

  Dear Agnus,

  I have a confession to make.

  Iris sat at the desk, writing with a quill she’d taken out of its inkwell.

  You were right. I was once a military woman of the Dahomey. Decades ago, I tried to kidnap you and your sister, Anne, in the middle of a raid. It’s what we did. I would have brought you back to King Ghezo as slaves, or perhaps you would have joined the ahosi like I did. But as fate would have it, the three of us had another foe. And after an unsuspecting attack, we all ended up being taken to England as Marlows. As entertainment for Europeans.

  But there was nothing at all entertaining about the life we lived.

  With a frustrated sigh, Iris crumpled the paper and threw it onto the floor along with the rest. Then she lowered her head into her hands. She just wanted to see Granny again. To hold Egg in her arms. To go back to knowing nothing. She felt as if she’d flown too close to the sun. Where she was now… where she was going. She didn’t know. She just didn’t know.

  It was almost eleven o’clock. The final round would begin at midnight. Soon, the people she’d come to know would be battling to the death for the entertainment of evil men.

  No. She wouldn’t let it happen. No matter who she was, she couldn’t let that happen.

  And so she prepared herself. The moment Adam walked through the door again, she punched him hard in the face and shut the door behind him. Then, after he’d collapsed to the floor, she gripped his neck.

  “Uma has your father’s journal, by the way,” she said, relishing the sight of Adam’s eyes narrowing in confusion as he struggled to breathe. Finally, something she knew that he didn’t.

  “My body is my own,” she hissed. “My heart is my own. My fate is my own.”

  “If it…” He coughed, his windpipe crushed beneath the strength of her hands. “If it be your will, Iris. But our story… isn’t yet over…”

  Her breath hitched. She released his neck and took in the sight of him, utterly distressed. No, she wouldn’t kill. Never again. Instead, she knocked him out with another punch.

  She would disappear. Yes, that was what she needed to do. After she did, Adam would be too busy dealing with Bosch and Uma to look for her. Hopefully, she’d never see him again.

  Her will was her own. She wouldn’t devolve into a killer no matter which cruel god had created her to be one. That was why she needed to end this tournament. No more killing. No more pain. No more loss. No more death.

  Hiding Adam’s body on the other side of the bed, Iris ran out of the room, down the stairs, and through the door only to find Jinn still waiting for her on the steps of 19 Melbury Road. The moment he stood up and turned to her, she fell right into his arms.

  “It’s okay.” Jinn squeezed her so tightly it almost hurt as she cried. “Remember what I told you.”

  Forget everything. But she couldn’t forget. She couldn’t avoid it.

  “Jinn,” she said, quickly wiping her face. “The final round of the tournament will start soon. I have to stop it.”

  She half expected Jinn to stop her. Instead, he gave her a solemn nod. “Then we need to hurry,” he said.

  It would’ve been an hour on foot, but Iris had taken some loose coins she’d found in Adam’s room and used them to pay for a carriage. “Please, as fast as you can!” she told the driver.

  “What’s the plan?” asked Jinn as the horses whinnied.

  “I originally promised them the truth,” Iris answered, staring out the window, her heart thumping in her chest. “Adam told me once that the Committee wants a monopoly on the secrets of the world because with knowledge comes power. I can blackmail them: stop the tournament or I’ll share those carefully hidden secrets in front of all of Club Uriel. Let them all fight over what to do with them. It’ll become a catastrophe worse than their Spring Massacre.”

  “I suppose that’s the only card we have to play.”

  There was too much traffic on the road, more than Iris had expected—carriage joyrides, barrels of produce, carts of hay, and pedestrians crossing without a care in the world. Iris checked the pocket watch Max had given her. At the thought of him, the pit in her stomach only grew larger. “Have you seen him? Max, I mean?”

  Jinn shook his head. But they’d see him soon. She was sure of it. Max was their teammate. He would support them in the end.

  It was eerily silent when she stepped through the entrance of Club Uriel on Pall Mall Street, probably emptied out by the Patrons for tonight’s event. No Max. Deserted lobby. Not a sound, not one person inside the gentleman’s club—

  “Iris.” Jinn grabbed her hand and pulled her behind him because he’d seen it too. They both saw it at the same time.

  The trail of blood leading up the staircase.

  Splatters. All the way up to the second floor.

  Iris’s steps sounded louder than they should have for how lightly and carefully she placed each foot. Like the clang of a blacksmith’s hammer against an anvil, ricocheting through her very bones. The moment she stepped onto the second floor, the sound of boots on wood captured her attention. Hurried footsteps—Max’s. He rushed out of the gentlemen’s room with a sickly pallor, covering his mouth with his hands as if he’d seen hell.

  “Max!” Iris ran toward him.

  The moment they locked eyes, he stumbled forward and gripped the railing with a hand. She held him up, both hands on his waist, trying to look up into his face, but his gaze stayed on the blood on the staircase below.

  “Max, what’s happene
d here?”

  “Iris…” His chest trembled against her hands. He could barely speak.

  “Max,” she started, but then stopped. It was past midnight. Had the fighting already begun? Was she too late? But all the mayhem was going to take place in Cerberus, the underground arena. That was the plan, wasn’t it?

  Jinn went ahead to the gentlemen’s room while Iris stayed with Max, trying to calm him down. She bit her lip, trying to think of what to say. Finally, she placed a hand on his cheek. “I know everything is upside down right now,” she said. “I don’t know what you must think of me. But just know that I’m still me. I’m still Iris. Please don’t be afraid of me. I… I do not want you to be afraid of me.”

  “I killed Carl Anderson,” Max whispered. “I poisoned Cordiero.”

  Silence. Iris pulled back, staring up at him as if he’d gone mad. “What?” she breathed.

  “Adam asked me to be part of his team from the beginning. Before you came to the Pit. He told me about you. Asked me to help push you into joining the tournament. If I did, he would give me a lead on the headhunter who took my sister.” He shook his head. “I had to do it. I had to. I couldn’t afford not to. But that wasn’t enough for him. He had me do other things…”

  No. It couldn’t be. Max wasn’t a murderer. Jacques had shot the man who’d killed Carl Anderson. And Max—

  And she found Max inexplicably outside Bellerose’s residence. Wounded. So much had happened since then that she hadn’t even had the chance to think on that.

  “That man shot me after I did it. I had no choice but to escape out the window.”

  He was the one. The hand she felt covering her mouth with a cloth, putting her to sleep before Carl Anderson could say too much too soon. All under Adam’s orders.

  An unexpected tear rolled down her cheek as Max finally turned back to her, his face already wet. He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his hands gripping the railing so tightly his veins protruded from his skin. “And Iris… I’ve done another terrible thing.”

  It was then that she finally heard a weak sound coming from inside the gentlemen’s room. She hadn’t realized Jinn had been standing in the doorway this entire time, shocked into silence. And when Iris ran to join him, she could see why he’d stumbled back.

  The floors, the red leather seats, the bar table and stools—all were littered with the corpses of Club Uriel’s esteemed members.

  At the back, in the leftmost corner of the room, cowered Cortez and Madame Bellerose, stunned as they stared at the two men, the only ones living, at the front of the room. Jacques’s bloodied ax rested against the wall on its own as he bowed his head. His right fist, which he held close to his lips, was clutching a rosary, the crucifix dangling in the air. And next to him—

  Iris’s stomach heaved. Gram, his stringy gray hair, wide face, and pale white skin. He sat upon a desk that once held wineglasses and platters of hors d’oeuvres: the particular tastes of the wealthy who’d thought they could control those beneath them with simple promises of riches and rewards. Now, as Gram’s long black jacket draped to the floor, the flesh of the rich satiated his particular tastes.

  “You—” Jinn whispered, his hands suddenly shaking against his legs.

  After Iris’s scream cut him off, it was Jacques who addressed her. “It was all a lie,” he said. “This tournament is meaningless. The world will end. Nobody’s family is safe.” He looked up at her. “Are you the one, girl? The one who’ll bring calamity upon us all?”

  Iris’s mouth parted and closed again. The smell of death seeped through every pore, leeching all feeling from her skin, making her numb.

  “How did you…,” she finally whispered, stepping back and bumping clumsily into a figure behind her.

  It was not Max.

  She turned her head. Behind her, Hawkins gripped her wrist, his expression grim. And beside him, Max shook his head again, his plump lips stained with his own tears.

  “I told you,” Max said. “I’ve done a terrible thing.”

  A black hole opened up behind Hawkins, and he took Iris with him into the dark

  48

  CERBERUS WAS INDEED A MIGHTY arena, perhaps not as big as those during the times of the Colosseum, but one fit for the upper echelons of a gluttonous society nonetheless. Except they were all dead and gone now. Only the gladiators were left inside this dark space illuminated by gas lamps hanging from the flat ceiling.

  Max and Jinn had followed Hawkins through his dimensional rift. It made no difference to him. Hawkins went to join his teammates at the opposite end of the ring as Jinn ran to her side.

  Hawkins, Cherice, and Jacob.

  Lucille, Henry, and Mary.

  Rin and Bately, still missing the arm Gram had taken from him.

  They stood and faced Iris inside the arena, a fair distance away, though the tension among them was no less palpable.

  It was Jacob who spoke first. “Is it true?” he asked, and though Iris found sympathy in his voice, his expression was stern and ready. “Are you going to kill us all one day?”

  To her right, Jinn stepped in front of her. “How could you possibly know? Who—”

  “Max…,” Iris whispered, and glanced back at him.

  Her teammate, who remained a ways behind her, couldn’t look her in the eye.

  “S-so? You have a problem with it?” Cherice piped up, folding her arms. “He was spooked to hell yesterday and needed someone to talk to. Of course he told us everything. I can’t believe you lied to us! You’ve been fooling us all this time, haven’t you? Haven’t you?”

  The look in her eyes. This was the girl who’d brought her food when she was upset, who stayed up with her and gossiped. A friendship that shattered right before her eyes.

  Max crouched down, sliding his fingers in his thick, curly hair.

  “You gave her up?” hissed Jinn.

  “No.” It sounded as if it had taken every ounce of strength he had left just to speak. “Cherice… I didn’t want this.”

  “This isn’t about what you want, Morales.” Henry rolled his colorful glass marbles in his right hand ominously. “This is about survival.”

  From the other side of the ring, Iris caught Rin staring at her intensely, mouthing something in Fon that Iris couldn’t understand.

  “Is that why you had Gram and Jacques butcher Club Uriel?” Jinn asked darkly.

  “They did that themselves,” Hawkins replied, and couldn’t suppress a shiver at the thought of them. “Not what we intended. But they also had a right to know. You offered us the truth, Iris. This is the truth we’ve been told.” He pointed at her. “That you were born a demon meant to destroy us. That you created us Fanciful Freaks. That you exist to end the world. Do you deny it?”

  “W-was that your goal all along?” Iris was surprised the timid Mary would speak, but she did, her strawberry-blond braid bobbing against her back as she shook next to Lucille.

  Iris couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “My… my goal? No. No!”

  “Did you know the whole time?” Henry pushed.

  “No!” Iris cried. “I didn’t know! I didn’t know any of this!”

  Bately smirked. “So you don’t deny it.”

  To see Bately, Hawkins, and the rest of Max’s friends standing together despite their history. To see them advancing on her. Only one common goal could bring them in lockstep with each other: survival. Iris drew in a shaky breath and kept silent as she thought of what to say next. She looked back at Max, but his head was on his knees. She looked up at Jinn, but he was struggling as hard as she was to find an argument to make in this arena that had somehow become the setting of an impromptu trial.

  “Wait a second, now, wait a second!” Jacob stretched out his hands to stay the mob. “Iris is our friend. Let’s not jump to conclusions. We need to hear her out. She deserves that.”

  Everyone stopped where they were. Hawkins lowered his head while Cherice sniffed back tears. Despite their harsh word
s, Iris could see the toll this was taking on them. The slight quiver of Hawkins’s fists. The trembling of Cherice’s little body. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t fair.

  “Iris.” Lucille. She was wearing a new face now, grim like a schoolmaster’s. “What happened to the man you had me impersonate to infiltrate the Basement?”

  Iris’s body seized up. She clenched her teeth.

  “You said he was a member of the Crown’s research team who disappeared. Everyone we met in the Basement seemed to think he’d disappeared too. So where did he disappear to? And how could you know his face in such detail? A random man you saw for just one second inside the dark Crystal Palace?”

  Iris lowered her head.

  “None of that matters,” Jinn said, waving her off. “Stop trying to trap her. Iris isn’t your enemy. She’s only—”

  “I killed him.”

  The words flew out from her lips before she could stop them. Team Hawkins stared, mouths open, aghast, heartbroken, unable to say a word. As Jinn looked back at her, as Max lifted his head, as Rin’s eyes narrowed, as the Fanciful Freaks glared at her, Iris stood her ground. She no longer wanted to lie. She was tired of it. Tired of secrets. Tired of hiding what she was. So she told them.

  She told them what she saw in the Helios.

  Told them what she’d done to Mr. James with only a touch.

  Told them about her visions. The massacres she’d committed. And how her regeneration in South Kensington changed the course of their lives forever.

  As she spoke, a burden lifted off her. She felt lighter than ever before. The truth. The treasure she’d sought for so long, had fought so hard for. And yet, ironically, it was the truth that dug the pit beneath her that much deeper.

  “Those envoys mentioned the white crystal and the eclipse at Marlborough House,” said Hawkins, stunning Iris. “Everything they said seems to correlate with what you’ve just told us. But sadly, that only corroborates how dangerous you are, Iris.”

  But the envoys had spoken in Yoruba, a language Hawkins shouldn’t have known.