by Meg LaTorre
When they neared the line of trees before the city, Gwen spoke with several performers before passing the unconscious Marzanna to them.
“I want to see Marzanna and any more of the critically injured after… after the contract termination process is complete.” Gwen’s gaze settled on Abrecan. “Congrats on your combined victory.”
She could barely think past the racing of her heart.
Now that they were back at the palace, she could only think of one thing. How was she going to harvest thirteen more acts tonight?
She was still exhausted from her sleepless night in the library with Bastian—not to mention the day spent in the company of a dragon. All she wanted to do was fall into her bed and never wake up. But if she was to protect herself and the cyborgs from the Mistress, she had to reclaim their implants.
With a final nod to Rora, Gwen turned toward Bastian.
It was time they snuck back into the true dragon’s lair.
Without another word, they headed for the city.
For the second time, they climbed up the rope in the garden to Bastian’s rooms. They bathed and stashed their things before leaving his room to an escort of watchmen.
By the time they entered the theater, the final acts had been selected from the raffle, and the winners congratulated on their victory.
In the corner of the theater, the scarlet dragon crouched in a massive, fireproof cage. Fully awake now, it studied them with catlike eyes, its pupils narrow and alert. It tried to stand but slammed back down in the small cage. The dragon’s wings were curled around itself, and it let out a rumbling growl from deep within its stomach, its mouth collared shut.
“Isn’t she a beauty?” Celeste appeared before them.
Gwen didn’t bother to speak. Not that she could, anyway, with the fear squeezing her chest.
I can do this. I must do this.
But the idea of retrieving implants from the losing cyborgs again made Gwen want to retch.
“You know.” Celeste paused, turning to Bastian as several of her apprentices carried the caged dragon on supporting beams toward the animal housing center—a separate warehouse within the castle. “If you ever want to return to the fold, we could use an experienced hand with the dragon. It will take some time to make sure it’s… docile.”
“Good luck potty-training the dragon,” Gwen said, somehow finding her voice. “Bastian is done being whipped like one of your beasts.”
After the day’s events, she’d lost whatever tact she might have had.
Beside her, Bastian stiffened.
Celeste turned to Gwen, perfect eyebrows arching. “Ms. Grimm, I’d been looking for you today. Where have you been?”
Gwen did her best to keep her expression carefully neutral. “I… spent the day with Bastian.”
We were just fucking. Nothing to see here.
She recalled their farce—the story they’d wanted the watchmen to believe.
Celeste nodded. “My watchmen told me you’d spent several days in Mr. Kabir’s chambers, not coming out for food once. But when I summoned you a few hours ago, I was told no one responded when they knocked on your door.”
“We must have been asleep,” Gwen said.
“Were you?” Celeste’s nails clicked together where her hands were folded demurely in front of her. “Because when my watchmen unlocked the door, they said no one was in the room. Care to adjust your story now?”
Several watchmen who’d been lingering not far off came closer to them, somehow sensing the turn of the conversation.
“We wanted privacy.” Sweat beaded on Gwen’s brow. “The watchmen have been constantly on our heels, so we made a little escape.”
“The watchmen are here for your safety,” Celeste said.
Liar.
“So, where were you?”
Swallowing, Gwen couldn’t find the words, the right lie.
Celeste stepped toward Gwen, eyes skirting down to her legs. “I told you what would happen if you stepped out of line again.”
Several watchmen swooped in all at once.
When they hit Gwen with the club this time, it wasn’t a warning strike. They swung at her legs to break.
But Gwen was ready.
When the first wooden baton struck, she punched the watchman in the throat. He stumbled back before he could strike again. Pain shot up her leg, but she ignored it. More watchmen moved in. Did she dare use her pistol or the knives sheathed in her boots? Somehow, she knew bringing out her own weapons would earn her a far worse punishment.
She managed to avoid several more blows, swinging out of the way, but she moved right into the arms of another watchman.
He latched on to her, hands encircling her biceps.
When the batons struck this time, pain ignited in her legs. Again and again, they struck, hitting her thighs and calves. They hadn’t broken bones yet, but fuck. They would soon.
Her traitorous eyes skirted up to Bastian, pleading with him.
Help me.
But why would he? Despite his intervention with the dragon, he wanted to be a part of the show management team more than anything. Why risk his position and contract for her? Especially if she was clearly a lost cause. Not to mention, he’d been willing to let Marzanna die all so they could avoid intervening in the competition. He wouldn’t intervene now.
Air and hope whooshed out of her as another baton struck. Head hanging, her body absorbed blow after blow. She tried to hold on to the image of Rora in her mind’s eye, but she couldn’t think past the agony in her limbs.
“The library,” Bastian cried. “We were in the library.”
For some reason, the watchmen stopped, as though by some unspoken command. They didn’t release Gwen, but they looked at the Mistress, awaiting her order.
Gwen gasped, uncertain if it was from shock or pain.
Did he just choose me over the circus?
Above, Celeste studied Bastian, her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“To find a safer way to extract cyborg implants and fix the ones that aren’t working,” Gwen grunted. “And to have some stars-forsaken privacy to fuck in peace and quiet around here.”
Celeste nodded to the watchmen around Gwen.
Before she realized what was happening, the watchmen landed a few more blows in quick succession with their wooden batons to the gut. Several landed punches to her face. One slammed into her human eye, and she knew at once she’d have a black eye. Though they carefully avoided her cyborg eye.
Two strikes.
A third meant the Mistress would take Gwen’s eye, and she didn’t doubt the woman’s word for a second.
Then they dropped Gwen like she was a sack of useless performance props.
She crashed to the ground, her entire body throbbing. Biting back a groan, she couldn’t stop a hiss from escaping her lips as she tried to stand and couldn’t.
“Next time you go to the library, I want to be informed,” Celeste said.
“Yes, Mistress.” Bastian waited until the Mistress and watchmen strode to another part of the theater before coming to Gwen’s aid. He looped an arm through hers, hauling her to her feet.
“I didn’t think you were going to step in there.” She hissed at the pain and was forced to lean heavily on Bastian.
“This is why we should never have intervened,” Bastian said. “I warned you what happens when you cross her.”
“She’s a raging bitch having a temper tantrum.”
That much was true. But Gwen had been injured before during pirate raids when she worked as a ship tinkerer. This beating—uncomfortable as it was—was nothing compared to when she’d been run through with a blade and nearly died from the resulting fever.
“It’s a few superficial wounds. It could’ve been worse,” she admitted. “Celeste was just flexing to get the information she wanted. Lucky for us, we broke a few rules, so she only needed to know about one.”
He sighed. “We’ll have a healer see you as soon as we finish harve
sting tonight. I’m afraid there isn’t time now.”
Slowly, they hobbled over to Gwen’s office.
In the theater behind them, the watchmen gathered the acts selected from the lottery for harvesting, forcing them into a line outside of her office.
Bastian located a tall stool somewhere, which he placed in front of the table. Nearly falling into it, Gwen clutched the table in front of her. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the edges.
The pain in her legs and face was nothing compared to the terror churning in her gut for what was ahead.
“I can’t do this again.”
I’ve all but killed Marzanna. How can I possibly hope to help these cyborgs?
She was no more a cyborg tinkerer than she was an ally to these people. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t actually helping them. She was the fucker wielding the blade in the slaughterhouse.
A hand gently squeezed her shoulder. “We must. Let’s try to save as many as we can tonight.”
She didn’t miss his use of “we.”
Shaking her head, she bit back the resulting wave of pain. “Thirteen acts to terminate tonight. And thirteen more acts after the final competition. That’s at least twenty-six people who will leave here in the coming weeks crippled or dead at my hands.”
“One more competition,” he persisted. “Then the ten final acts will perform for the emperor, and this will all be over.”
“Do you know what the final competition is?”
“No.” His eyes strayed to the unmoving watchmen standing outside her office door, at each exit, and the ones surrounding the tearful performers awaiting their fate. “After being unavailable for the Mistress today, I doubt I’ll be given any details. It will be a surprise for us both.”
She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “I hate surprises.”
They gestured for the first performer from one of the losing acts to enter. Two watchmen dragged a man into her office and strapped him to the table.
Gwen swallowed back tears. Whether it was from the pain in her legs, from having nearly killed Marzanna, or from the thought of what she was about to do, she wasn’t sure.
The screams of the cyborgs echoed in the theater throughout the night. She lost all sense of time, place, of herself.
Blood soaked her tunic and pants, running into her boots until she left scarlet footprints. Somehow, they kept going until they reclaimed all but one implant.
As she sliced through skin and tendons, reaching for the final performer’s implant, the man looked up at her, his face splattered with his own blood.
In a gurgling hiss, he uttered two words that cut down to Gwen’s very core.
“Grimm Reaper.”
Chapter 20
As Gwen poured a bucket of water over her head, body wracked with sobs, a fist pounded on her bedroom door.
What now?
Her bath was dark pink from the blood the Grimm Reaper drew.
Again, a knock sounded at the door. Swallowing back tears, she finished washing, wrapped her hair in a towel, and hopped out of the tub.
She still shaved half of her head. The scars from the incisions had started to fade somewhat. She wondered just how many scars she’d left tonight.
Don’t think about that right now.
There wasn’t time to deal with that. If she allowed herself to linger for too long on the hours she’d spent disfiguring perfectly healthy cyborgs, she’d never leave her room again. She’d address the horrors she’d committed once the competition was over and the cyborgs—those who remained—were safe.
Slipping into a bathrobe, she swiped her pistol from the bathroom counter. She was under no illusion that the remaining performers held any fondness toward her. They were scared, and scared people tended to lash out. As she walked across the room, she paused.
The project she’d been tinkering with for weeks sat on her bed. She’d pulled it out before stepping into the bath. Gears and wires stuck out in all directions, which held a strange metallic glow in the artificial light of her gas lamp. Now, anger swelled within her at the sight of it, and she shoved it into her wardrobe before heading toward the door.
The person outside her door knocked again as she opened it.
Behind her back, Gwen cocked her pistol. When she saw who it was, she lowered her weapon.
The shorter woman’s dark skin paled. “Oh my gosh, Gwen. Are you all right?”
Having glanced in the mirror before her bath, Gwen knew her human eye was purple and swollen. She was covered in matching bruises, which her bathrobe did little to hide.
“No.” Gwen looked over Rora’s shoulder to the watchmen in the hallway. “I’m terrible company, but you’re welcome to come in.”
Slipping in, Rora shut and bolted the door behind her.
“Don’t bother.” Turning, Gwen strode into her washroom and placed the gun on the sink. Dropping her bathrobe, she pulled on a clean pair of sleeping trousers and a shirt. “The Mistress doesn’t respect anyone’s privacy around here anyway.”
The acrobat nodded. “Celeste had the watchmen unlock everyone’s rooms the morning of the second competition. Trust me, I know.”
Gwen toweled her hair before sitting on the bed. Rora sat down beside her. As she did, Gwen noticed how she carried her cyborg hand, cradling it in her human one.
With half a glance, it was obvious the implant was completely destroyed.
There were deep indents from the dragon’s teeth. Gouges in the metal exposed the wiring beneath.
Rather than asking for help—help she so clearly needed—Rora stroked Gwen’s cheek with her human hand.
“I ran into Bastian when he was returning to his rooms. He told me what the Mistress did to you.” Dropping her hand, Rora shook her head as her eyes fell to her lap. When she looked back up, tears filled her eyes. “You shouldn’t have come.”
Gwen flinched as though slapped. “And let you and the other performers be the only ones to risk your lives? Not happening. Besides, I had to help…”
Marzanna.
She’d hoped to get to Marzanna in time and fix her foot. And she’d been too late.
“But I didn’t help.” Bitterness rooted in Gwen’s chest. “Nothing I did made a difference, and I had to harvest innocent people anyway.”
Turning away, she studied the stone walls of her room. Stars, she couldn’t cry. Not right now. Not with Rora right there.
“It can’t be easy… being forced to hurt someone.” Rora’s voice was soft and not unkind.
The damn woman was trying to sympathize with her when she had a broken implant and was probably in as much pain as Gwen was, perhaps more.
Swallowing, she tried to push back the lump in her throat. “It’s not the first time I’ve killed someone.”
Her voice was harsh, wavering.
But she had killed several people tonight. Unlike the first competition, there were many performers who’d relied on their implants to live. And she’d taken those implants from them. Unfortunately, several of the eleven performers who’d died in the forest had been a part of larger acts. Acts she’d been forced to harvest.
A soft, human hand found hers. Still, she kept her eyes trained on the wall. Eventually, the tears came, trailing soundlessly down one cheek.
Rora’s thumb swiveled back and forth atop Gwen’s hand, her calloused skin rough.
“I killed in deep space,” Gwen said. “There were pirates, thieves, and other delinquents who always cropped up. When we were boarded, I killed plenty of people. It had been in defense of my trade and my life. But this… this was murder.”
Gwen wiped her cheek with the back of a hand. “Celeste threatened to take my eye back, among other things, if I don’t do as I’m told.”
The bruises peppering her skin said as much.
“Even still, I can’t do nothing.” Letting go of Rora, Gwen leaned forward and cradled her head in her hands. “Bastian insists that the Mistress will terminate my contract, and I won’t
be able to help anyone—to remove their implants safely or fix the implants of the performers who are still at this stars-forsaken circus. But all I can see—all I can think about—are the people I’m forced to harvest.”
Anger ripped through her as tears streamed down her face in earnest.
“And I haven’t helped a single person. I can’t even do my fucking job right. Marzanna is all but dead because of me.”
How had everything gone so wrong?
She’d taken the job with the circus not only to save her life but because she liked a challenge. She’d wanted to figure out just what it meant to be a cyborg tinkerer—and a good one at that. After the first competition, she’d stayed to help the cyborgs. People unwanted in the Crescent Star System. People like her. She wanted to protect them from the monster they called Mistress.
A monster who was willing to murder within the walls of her own home.
But Gwen had done nothing but hurt the people she’d stayed to protect. She was nothing like her parents, whatever their names were.
Helpless rage splintered through her as more of her memories were lost, slipping from her grasp like oil between her fingers.
How could you lose your memories from a simple cyborg implant? None of this made any sense.
The smell of rose and peach blossoms filled Gwen’s nose.
Rora didn’t reach out to touch Gwen. Instead, she sat quietly.
Waiting for me to calm the fuck down.
Eventually, she sighed. “I’m sorry you had to see this. I just… I can’t stand feeling… useless.”
Rora’s brown eyes were bright. “If not for you and Bastian, we’d all be dead right now. You did help us today. You risked your lives to save ours.”
Gwen winced, unable to hear those words right now. Not when something even larger loomed over her thoughts. “How’s Marzanna?”
“She still hasn’t woken up,” Rora said. “But the healer is doing everything he can.”
After she’d finished reclaiming implants of the thirteen losing acts, Gwen had spent hours with Marzanna. She’d done everything she could think of, but nothing helped. Nothing at all.
