The Carnival's Daughter: A Dark Dystopian Romance (Kingdom Duet Book 1)

by Esme Devlin

  I don’t even bother trying to shake my head out of his hands. What the fuck is the point. I close my eyes. “You’re sick.”

  “I know,” he says. “I know. I think there is a small part of you that enjoys my sickness, though. Else you wouldn’t tempt me so. Would you like me to make it better?”

  My eyes open at that. I try not to let myself get my hopes up. A trick? Probably. And if not a trick then at least a bargain. “What will that cost me?”

  He chuckles and rubs my cheek tenderly. “I would only have you beg for it.”

  I let out the breath I’m holding.

  He wants me to beg.

  It sounds like nothing, but when my pride is the thing he covets most… when it’s the only thing I have left…

  “Please.”

  He leans in close to my ear. “Try again, sweet girl.”

  “Please!”

  “Oh alright! If you insist.” He flicks his head dramatically and claps his hands together. Instantly, I panic. That was too easy. I wasn’t even begging, not really. I was working myself up to it.

  Far too easy.

  And just as I suspected, he doesn’t bend down and take the thing away. He crosses the room again, back to that dark corner, and I wonder what fresh hell he is about to unleash on me now.

  When he returns, he’s carrying a roll of duct tape in one hand and a long object with a ball shape on the end. “What is that?”

  He holds the duct tape up.

  Of course he does.

  “Not that!”

  “Oh, you mean this?” He looks at his other hand. “A vibrator.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. I’ve never seen one before.

  They’re like unicorns.

  In fact, when Pearl claimed one of her clients used one on her we all called her bluff. She said it was simultaneously the best and worst thing she’d ever experienced.

  We said it was a fairy story.

  “No one has those.”

  He shrugs. “China does. They cost an arm and a leg, but as you now know, I have many arms and many legs at my disposal.”

  He bends down again and pushes my legs apart, causing the pole to bash against my cervix. I whimper and he doesn’t even look up. He doesn’t stop until the thing is secured against me.

  As soon as he’s done, I close my legs, making myself a fraction taller and reliving some of the pressure.

  Baron straightens directly in front of me. “Look at me,” he says.

  I look straight ahead at his chest.

  He forces my head up at an angle and my eyes meet his mask. “I want to watch you.”

  His words take me back to his earlier confession. The thing that started everything. I can feel my bottom lip trembling.

  “I want to watch you while you fall apart.”

  He leans down and presses a button… flicks a switch… turns a key…

  I don’t even know what he does but I can feel myself melting.

  The sensations are utterly overwhelming.

  There is no searching this time. There is no trying to chase that elusive, magical cliff.

  No.

  This sweeps me away and practically flings me over the edge.

  He rests a clenched fist over the lowest part of my stomach and then pushes against me, hard. I almost come right then and there.

  I can’t stop the sounds that are coming from my mouth. I stare into those dark shadowy holes where his eyes should be. I imagine him grinning. Smirking. Loving this lack of control I have over my body.

  Loving the fact he can force it to do whatever he wants.

  I hate him.

  I hate him, but I don’t hate this.

  Not at all.

  I’m desperate for this. It’s as if my whole body revolves around the space between my legs. My knees go weak as fireworks explode inside my head. I almost buckle over in two — I would have if it wasn’t for the belt binding my arms and the pole impaling my body.

  Baron steadies me, finally letting me hang my head. He pets my hair. I think he says I’m a good girl. I think.

  It’s still buzzing between my legs and every second it continues, aftershocks jolt through my body. His hand moves around to the back of my neck and he rubs me there, leaning his head in close.

  “You’re going to think about that line you just destroyed. You’re going to think about it long and hard. You’re going to think about what you’ll do to rebuild it. And, sweet girl, you’re going to pray those batteries run out before you do.”

  With that, he drops his hand.

  He drops his hand and he walks away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BARON

  Never has a woman made me feel formidable and weak, both at the same time. That is what she does to me. I can’t even explain it. I can’t wrap my head around it. I just know she makes me feel everything.

  I never wanted that from a woman. I never wanted anything from a woman before her.

  Some men want to own them.

  I already own too many.

  They’re commodities. A means to an end. Tiny cogs in a much bigger system. Seeing them as anything other than that is a dangerous game. It is unacceptable.

  Until Sapphire.

  Now I don’t just want to own her, I want her to crawl inside my ribcage and hide there. Hide away from all the chaos in this world that would eat her alive.

  Except me.

  She can never hide from me. She can’t ever escape me.

  This world was made for me to eat her alive.

  That outcome was inevitable from the moment I set eyes on her. She was the only woman still alive in the whole damn tent. On this whole godforsaken island. I didn’t even know I was hungry until that point.

  What a sick and twisted thought that is, that her ability to flourish amongst ruins was the exact feature that sealed her decay.

  My poor, sweet girl.

  And she was beautiful. She is always beautiful, but that is when she is at her most astonishing. When she’s present. When her ill-suited eyes are speaking a language all of their own. One that I can read only on a primal level.

  Her eyes when she is dancing to save her own life. Her eyes when she is grinding against me to save someone else’s. When she is tied up in front of me, her body falling into ruin but her eyes still there, still focused on me, still telling me that I’m her whole world.

  I’m so tired of hundred-mile stares everywhere I turn.

  And my little monster is never miles away. She is always in the room. Always looking for me.

  I wish I could gaze into those eyes while I fucked her.

  Perhaps I will.

  She doesn’t even know what we’ll do together. The things I will bring her. The empire we will build. The legacy we will create.

  I won’t stop until I’m sitting on a throne, and she is sitting on my knee.

  But I do need to put a lid on my emotions.

  She is still so new to everything… so fragile.

  Every part of me is screaming to corrupt her, to make her the perfect reflection of me.

  However, things should be done delicately.

  Yes, she must fear me. Too much though, and she will hate me. And not the sort of hate that a long night of being secured on my cock can fix. That hate is normal. Healthy, even.

  I’m wary of the hate that festers and creates the conditions ripe for betrayal.

  I can’t let that happen.

  I must keep it on a leash.

  Hence why I’m here, locked inside the cage with the only man in the world who knows how to calm me down.

  “I lost control.”

  “Fucking right you did,” Andrei snaps, surging towards me with his gloved fist outstretched.

  I could have ducked out of the way before he got the chance to land the blow on my shoulder, but I didn’t. My body jerks as red leather and padding slaps against bare skin.

  For being a sadistic bastard, I don’t actually mind being hit. There is something calming about
it. Something grounding and real. In that sense, I can see the appeal in masochism. Still though, rather them than me.

  I swing back for him with my right arm, but land a jab with my left square on his jaw.

  He shakes his head quickly a few times. “No faces, prick!”

  “I’m sorry,” I laugh. “That was low.”

  Andrei is probably the better fighter, and that is why I enjoy sparring with him. He gets angry because it’s almost impossible for him to beat me, even though technically speaking I should have been flat out on my back ten minutes ago. It’s the frustration he does so little to hide that amuses me the most.

  And when I’m amused, I’m less likely to think dangerous thoughts.

  “Again,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I’m fucked.”

  “You’re fucked? Am I not the one trying to breathe through a thick layer of metal?”

  He sits down in one of the eight corners of the ring and unstraps his gloves, pulling them off and resting them beside him.

  Taking a moment to catch his breath, he stares up at the high domed ceiling. “I’d have killed you years ago if it wasn’t for that thick lump of metal.”

  I laugh and sit down in the corner across from him. “A fact of life I never forget. I’ll give you five minutes.”

  “I did my back in taking the third one down to the incinerator. I’m getting too old for this shit.”

  I chuckle. He’s not old. His hair hasn’t even started to turn grey yet, and there are barely any lines on his face. It’s difficult to keep track of ages — people rarely bother with that. But I think I was around ten when I met him, and he was hardly that much smaller. We’re probably older than thirty, but nowhere near forty. “Cry me a river.”

  “You’re the one who can’t control your own selfish whims,” he says. There’s an undertone there. A joke that’s not really a joke.

  “When I said I lost control I wasn’t even talking about that,” I tell him. Truthfully, I’d almost forgotten about Chen and his associates.

  “Course you weren’t! Who gives a fuck about consequences?” He’s not even bothering to hide the undertone anymore. “They were well connected, Baron. Leonardo’s brother owns Biocardtis. How do you think I set up the meeting with them in the first place?”

  “You failed to mention that.”

  He sighs. “I told you the day I arranged their safe passage.”

  I shake my head. He tells me countless things on a daily basis. Countless pointless things. He knows how I am — this is exactly why I have him. “And you didn’t think to remind me of it before I stuck the bullet in Leonardo’s head?”

  He laughs, but it’s completely joyless. “As if that would have stopped you.”

  I eye him up before letting my shoulders drop in a shrug. “Fair point.”

  Andrei stares at some spot in the middle of the ring. Probably a bit of blood the cleaners missed or something, who knows. Who cares.

  “We’ll tell the brother there was an unfortunate situation with one of the girls. Grabbed his gun while he was balls-deep inside her and shot him in the head or something. Stranger things have happened.”

  He sighs and then nods, picking up his gloves. “One more round.”

  Thank fuck for that. My mind is still too pickled to return to my room and face her. I don’t even know where to start.

  We circle each other around the ring.

  “You weren’t talking about Chen and his men when you said you lost control?”

  I let out a sigh and stop moving. I had wanted to speak to him about it, but now… not so much.

  That’s my problem. I’m good with words, but not when it comes to saying the right ones. I decide to start at the most logical place. The most pressing matter.

  “I left her lashed to the bedpost with a dildo up her cunt and a wand strapped to her clit.”

  “Fuck’s sake, Baron,” he huffs. He takes two slow steps forward and punches me in the stomach, frustration clear on his face.

  I stumble back from the impact and straighten, letting out a laugh. “Oh do calm down, Galahad. I wouldn’t have done it if I thought she couldn’t handle it.”

  “She’s not like the others, Baron. I can see that — and I’m not even allowed to fucking look at her. She is weak.”

  “She is not weak,” I snap. “She is… sheltered. And I happen to like that.”

  He shakes his head, lowering his fists. “What did she do?”

  I let out a sigh and turn my back to him. “She tried to take the mask off.”

  Andrei is quiet for a long moment, and when I eventually turn around he’s just standing there, staring at me.

  “Did I go too far?” I ask him. I honestly can’t tell. Andrei isn’t exactly the perfect example of a moral compass, but he plays the good guy so frequently it’s hard to remember that sometimes.

  He shrugs and opens his mouth to reply, but before he can we’re interrupted.

  One of my guards — I don’t even remember his name, Andrei does that — clears his throat. “We have a situation downstairs.”

  “How long has she been like this?” Andrei asks.

  The guard shakes his fat bald head frantically. “We heard screaming, but it wasn’t nothing out of the usual.”

  The brunette is sitting on the floor in front of the bed, clutching and hugging the metal leg as if it’s her best friend. The room is a mess, the bedsheets twisted and covered in speckles of blood. I take a few steps towards her and it’s like she snaps back into the room. Her eyes go wide at the sight of me and she starts chewing on the inside of her jaw. “Devil Devil Devil Devil” She’s whispering it like a curse in between chews and trying to back away, but she’s not even in control of her own movements.

  “Baron,” Andrei shouts.

  I spin around and give him a nod before walking back over to the group. Probably better he does it than me. Good cop / bad cop and all that.

  “The man who was with her, he has an explanation for this?” I ask the guard.

  The poor girl is delirious. I’ve seen the point just before the mind decays… the immediate aftermath of it splintering into a thousand tiny pieces. Those girls don’t generally chew on their own faces, though.

  “He claimed she just went all crazy on him.”

  “Did you search him?”

  He shakes his head again. “No.”

  Imbecile. “Then do it. Then take him outside and shoot him.”

  The guard doesn’t even pause before his shake turns into a nod. I have no tolerance for cunts who bend my rules.

  Alone now, Andrei looks over at me. “Ketamine?”

  “Probably,” I say.

  “How much?”

  I look the girl over. She’s back inside her own head, no longer in the room. “She’s going to the K-hole.”

  She’s about to become nothing. Her everything is about to become nothing. She’ll be thunder in the clouds, and then a particle twisting through the universe.

  “How long has she been with us?” I ask him.

  Andrei crosses the room and tilts her head back, opening one of her eyes. She stares blankly back at him. “Long enough, I think. I’d need to check the files.”

  I shake my head. “No matter. Get rid of her.”

  His eyes widen. “Like this?”

  “No, not like this! Lock her in a room upstairs until she comes to her senses. Give her a few days recovery. Then get rid of her.”

  He nods and lifts the girl into her arms. Her wild dark hair spills over and for a second she reminds me of my Sapphire.

  My Sapphire.

  “I need to go,” I tell him. “Deal with this.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SAPPHIRE

  Something hard is tapping against my cheek.

  My eyelashes flutter open. I lift my head and let out a sigh as soon as my brain clears enough to process what is staring me in the face.

  “Hello, pretty girl. Did you miss me?”

  I s
tare at him blankly, my bottom lip the only part of my body that has any energy left to tremble.

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to make it all better.”

  All better? Something tugs in my mind. He said that last time. He said he was going to make it better last time, and he did — but also so much worse.

  I take a breath, about to beg him not to start it again. I can’t. I just can’t. But he doesn’t let me. He presses a finger to my lips and shushes me.

  Then he reaches up and unbuckles the belt, letting it fall to the ground with my arms. Pain shoots through my joints as they drop, and my whole upper body feels like it’s about to go with them. Pressure aches deep inside me as my legs give way and I begin to fall.

  He grabs me and lifts me up into his arms, sliding me off that thing and wrapping my legs around him. I’m so over-sensitised I practically scream and buck when my center connects with his stomach. It doesn’t discourage him, he only hugs me closer.

  We go back to the bed and he draws back the curtain before sliding us both in. My mind is telling me to flee. Run. Get away. But my body doesn’t have the energy to listen to it.

  He cuddles me in close to him, his clothed chest against my bare one, his fingers tracing circles on my back. It’s nice. I think. I’m not sure anymore. I’m just glad he returned.

  How fucked up is that?

  He abuses me and saves me. Splits me open, then comes back to collect the pieces.

  A keeper and a master. A lover. My only friend. The darkest shadow and yet my only source of light.

  Why am I so special? So cursed?

  I don’t know if he’s preparing to love me or kill me.

  I don’t know if I care anymore.

  Also by Esme Devlin

  The Kingdom’s Son

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