Chapter Twelve

 

 

 

She felt like there was a vice in her abdomen that closed tighter and tighter around her stomach as Madoc led her to the big top. The sky was still dark, no sign of dawn. Caroline didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious or how long Colm had been waiting for her to save him—if he believed she’d come at all.

She entered the big top and walked toward the ring. Almost every cast member of Arcanium sat in the previously crowded bleachers, space between them that a nightly performance would never allow.

Their expressions would also never be seen during a performance—no sign of wonder, awe or arousal here. Caroline processed their horror and sympathy before she processed the man lying face down on a bench in the center of the ring, wreathed in the spotlight. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was wearing a ruffled red shirt—but that was just his back.

Caroline clapped her hand over her mouth. She might have fallen, but Madoc caught her. She retched, almost threw up.

The Ringmaster stepped into the spotlight from the darkness on the other side. The whip wrapped in a loose circle over his arm dripped with blood. He didn’t look human, more like a waxwork mannequin of a ringmaster, carefully sculpted and eerily unmoving, but his eyes… He was alive there, the blackness darker than the sky as he stared at her, into her.

She felt as though she had been stripped under his gaze, that he imagined the ruin of Colm’s back was hers. He looked at her with the knowledge that she had been his original victim before Colm had volunteered to take her place.

And he would be more than eager to stripe her skin if she stepped out of line again. He wouldn’t care that she was young or that she was a woman. Just like Colm, she could give him what he wanted. As the clowns craved flesh, the Ringmaster craved pain. In just that one tableau, a diorama of a warning, Caroline understood. Her fear excited the darkness in the Ringmaster’s eyes, and he tightened his grip on the whip.

I’ll be saving this for you next time, he seemed to say.

Caroline couldn’t approach until the Ringmaster had stepped back into the shadow, away from the bench where Colm twitched in pain.

As she went to him, a series of hisses shot at her.

The clowns had a front-row seat. Murphy had become the monster he never truly hid, his tongue writhing in the air and his teeth slavering wet. He clenched his clawed hands furiously. Comedy was also angry, carved from stone and solemn under the happy face paint. But with Tragedy draped over his back and shoulders, he stayed calmer than Murphy. Tragedy nuzzled Comedy’s cheek. Then she stepped over the barrier of the ring.

Caroline froze halfway to the spotlight’s edge.

“Get away!” Riley yelled from the other side of the ring. Pain tightened his voice. He hadn’t been whipped, but Caroline had been unconscious for what had happened to him during the rest of the fight. She didn’t even know the full extent of her own injuries, since she’d woken up after Madoc had tended to her. “Don’t you go near her! I wished it. You don’t get to have her.”

Tragedy hissed in the direction of Riley’s shouts, but she closed her mouth again when she returned her gaze to Caroline. Caroline smoothed her hands over the short skirt of her dress to smear the cold sweat off her palms. Then she walked forward to meet Tragedy. They stood face to face, eye to eye. Their shoes had nearly the same height, so it really was like looking into a complementary mirror, more disturbing to Caroline than the teeth that Tragedy concealed.

Caroline moved slowly, trying to gauge Tragedy’s reaction and giving Tragedy time to withdraw. She brought her arms over Tragedy’s shoulders and guided her into a loose embrace. Caroline wasn’t sure why she did it, since the clowns had basically wanted to kill and eat them for what she’d done. But it seemed like the thing to do. The only thing she could do.

She felt Tragedy’s arms around her waist. The tulle of Tragedy’s skirt brushed her thighs.

“It wasn’t personal,” Caroline whispered, keenly aware of the rows of predator teeth close to her neck. All Tragedy needed to do was bite down once and let biology and physics do the rest. “You do what you have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do.”

Caroline tasted bitterness as she added, “Think of all the ones I can’t save. The ones I’ll never know about.”

Tragedy trilled against Caroline’s skin. It wasn’t the purr that meant she was happy, but it wasn’t the chitter that meant hunger or the hissing that meant anger. Caroline allowed herself to relax a little, especially when Tragedy held her closer for a few moments.

Tragedy rested her hands on Caroline’s hips to guide her away. She met Caroline’s gaze then pointed to Colm, nudging her in his direction.

Go tend to your man.

Caroline nodded. She swallowed as she turned her back to the clowns again.

Love, any kind of love, rarely made sense.

The conflict with the clowns not necessarily ended but at least dealt with, Caroline hurried to Colm.

“Sorry,” she whispered, kneeling beside him. She stroked his hair. Blood had splattered in droplets into it like rain, but he was dry on the side of his head that he rested on. “Diplomacy. We have to live with these people.”

“Speak for yourself,” Colm rasped. He winced. His face was stained pink where blood had mingled with sweat and tears, but he appeared composed, as though he were simply exhausted and not beaten so badly his back was nearly unrecognizable as anatomy. “I can’t feel anything.”

That explained a little.

“I can’t feel anything but pain, but that makes it…just there. And I’m not.”

He was delusional. Not good.

“Everyone’s here,” Caroline said.

“Enjoying the show. I know. Everyone likes a good public beating, pet.”

“I have a potion thing. It’ll heal you. Do you want it here or do you want me to take you somewhere else to recover?” Caroline asked, pressing her forehead against his.

She should have just whipped out the bottles and been done with it before he lost consciousness or sanity, but Colm had been a spectacle for so long, it seemed important that she ask whether he wanted to be one any longer.

“Where would you take me?” Colm asked. He closed his eyes and coughed. His face strained from the pain of it.

“Anywhere but here.”

“There,” Colm said, turning his head. “Take me behind the curtain. Then you can do whatever you want with me. Cut off my head. Shoot me in the heart. I welcome it.”

“Shut up. I’m going to fix this,” Caroline said. She peered out into the audience, but now that she was in the spotlight, it was as though the world beyond it had fallen away. She thought she spoke in Riley’s general direction when she pleaded, “Help me. I can’t carry him on my own.”

Riley wasn’t as bad off as Colm, but the spotlight illuminated with sharp definition the deep scratches over his chest, back, arms and face, the bleeding in his left eye, the chunks bitten off from his arms and legs and a place on his hip.

Caroline closed her eyes. She was flawless, healed, unpunished, but the wounds on each of her men cut deeper than teeth or whips.

These were the things she should have suffered but Colm and Riley had taken on instead—to spare her, even though they hadn’t known her for long and she hadn’t thought of them when she’d committed her crimes. She couldn’t regret saving the children, but Caroline also couldn’t ignore what her actions had led to. They had chosen to help her, chosen to take her place, chosen to sacrifice, and yet their sacrifice was as keen as a knife in her stomach. Could she do this to them again?

How could Madoc make her choose between cruelties?

No one else but Riley joined her under the spotlight. She remembered what Kitty had said about the shunned of Arcanium.

“How do we get him out of here?” Caroline asked. “I don’t want to lift him. He’s in too much pain just where he is.”

“We lift the bench, carry it on our shoulders,” Riley said.

Caroline shoved the bottles of healing potion into the bra part of her dress. It was the best place she could think of. It wasn’t like she had pockets.

She immediately knelt under one end of the bench and slid her shoulder underneath the beam. She could hold the weight. She and Riley weren’t the same height, but at least he wasn’t much taller than she was, so Colm didn’t slide off when they carefully stood up.

“Show’s over,” Caroline murmured as they walked out of the spotlight and behind the curtain.

 

* * * *

 

She poured some of the blue potion onto her hands and stared down at the mess that had been made of Colm. She saw muscle. She definitely thought she saw bone and maybe more deeper in the wounds down his sides.

He had been stripped before being beaten. His buttocks and thighs also displayed the bloody marks of the Ringmaster’s whip. She didn’t know where to begin, mostly because everywhere she looked was dire, and she didn’t know how much more the healing process would hurt him.

“I’m sorry,” she said—for everything that had happened and everything that was about to happen. She shifted on the chaise Riley had dragged out for her. He had no way of knowing it was the same one that the clowns had used with her, adding another layer to her guilt.

“Apologies don’t mean anything. Ah! Bloody motherfuckers!” Colm shouted when she set her hands at the top of his back, spreading them to his shoulders. “They only assuage the guilt of the apologist. Goddammit, slowly, woman. Gently.”

“I’m barely touching you, Colm.” She was beginning to think that three bottles of potion weren’t enough. She bit back another ‘I’m sorry’, though. “It’s going to hurt more before it gets better. I need to spread it over you, and you’re all exposed nerves and…other things. There’s no way this is not going to be painful.”

“Just do it,” Colm said. “And don’t apologize. It was my own fucking stupidity that led to this.”

Caroline lowered her head and smeared the liquid thinly over as much space as possible before pouring more onto her now-red hands. Her chest hitched every time she pulled on some piece of flayed flesh or dug her finger too deeply into a gash to push the potion in. This was macabre, like something out of some ghastly horror film, even if it was in the act of healing.

She was halfway through the first bottle and most of the way down his back when Colm’s moans took on a different tenor. Instead of pain, they telegraphed relief before his shoulders and spine started to settle him more loosely against the wood—boneless as bliss. The fibers of muscle and skin stretched and knitted together to cover the places where they’d been torn. Blood congealed until new skin scabbed, scarred. It took the rest of the bottle to reach his knees where the lashes ended.

Caroline took his arms and stretched them out over his head so that she could apply potion from the second bottle onto the clown claw scratches there. He obeyed without argument, just as he did when she moved his arms back down over the sides of the bench and lifted his head to tend the scratches there, smearing the potion over the wounds like she was wiping away his tears. If he was humiliated that she saw him like this, he didn’t show it. Instead, the eyes that had been bleary with pain were now bleary with its release.

“Lie down,” Caroline said when she’d finished with his face and he tried to rise. “I’m going to use the rest on your back again. Then I’ll do you, Riley.”

“I didn’t realize you were going to,” Riley said. He had been sitting next to her on the chaise, mesmerized while she worked. “I can do my own. I can hardly complain.”

“Okay. I’ll do what you can’t reach. The third bottle is for you.”

She didn’t bother putting the rest in her hands, just poured it over Colm’s back to pool in the valley of his spine and slide down his sides. She rubbed it in like massage oil, less gentle now and more insistent, digging into the muscle when he didn’t protest.

“God, that’s the good stuff you have right there, girl,” Colm breathed against the bench. “Potion costs thousands a pop these days.”

Caroline marveled at the way his skin transitioned from a dead grayish color and scar tissue to pink new skin, then the pale cream that it had been when she’d met him—a few dark freckles here and there, but all scar marks gone, even some he might have had before.

“Why’d you do it?” Caroline asked, kneading his lower back.

His ass clenched every time she pushed deep into the restored skin.

“You told me not to go after the kids because you knew what might happen. But you came after me anyway,” she said. “And you used up one of your wishes to turn your back into raw meat instead of mine and Riley’s. What kind of a damn fool thing was that to do?”

She had the same questions for Riley, but to a lesser degree. He was a human being with capacity for empathy. It wasn’t that she just expected Riley to follow her and do the right thing—it had been amazing that he had. Not everyone would. It just hadn’t made her question the foundation of his very nature.

“You’re not much use to me dead,” Colm said. “And I doubt you’d be in the mood for having a go after the both of you were beaten, even with the healing potion—which is fucking amazing. Have I mentioned that? God, that feels good. You feel that, boy?”

“Apparently not,” Riley said, rubbing the potion into the clown bites on his shoulder. His face was already absorbing the blue liquid, but like with Colm, the healing was delayed.

“Don’t do that.” Caroline held herself back from slapping his cheek. It wouldn’t be hard enough to hurt, but she had to remind herself that he’d had enough things hitting him for a while. “Don’t lie to me. People don’t martyr themselves for selfish reasons, unless they’re pathologically masochistic.”

“I was ridden like a horse for almost fifty years,” Colm said.

“Not by choice. You don’t put yourself at risk of death then take a beating that might kill you just to get laid,” Caroline said. She finished rubbing in the potion. There was nothing left except moisturized skin and pliant muscles under her hands.

She sat back on the chaise, moving her hands to her lap instead of him, in case they were too much of a distraction. Her palms were unbelievably warm, partially from Colm’s heat and partially because of the magic, which would explain why it felt so good to him once the pain had receded—like a hot oil spa treatment.

“Maybe I just want one specific person, and it would leave me with a massive case of blue balls if that person was taken from me,” Colm said. He slid his hands underneath his body and pushed himself upright. There were still bloodstains on him and on her hands. But she too had her own bloodstains on the rest of her body. They were all dirty. That was the least of their concerns.

“I think you’re full of shit,” Caroline said.

“That’s your prerogative.”

Caroline turned and inspected Riley, her cheek against his shoulder as she looked over his back to make sure he had been able to reach everything. He had. She ran her fingers over the wings of his shoulder blades anyway, closing her eyes.

“I mean, I know why Riley did it. But his wish, while still a sacrifice I might never be able to repay, wasn’t as dire as yours. A person who isn’t a saint doesn’t take a beating like that for someone else, especially for people they hate. Is it a pride thing, you not answering me straight? You don’t want to be the demon who did something good?”

“I didn’t do anything good, crazy girl,” Colm said. “And I’m sure as hell not going to do it again.”

“Do what again? Help save me?” Caroline asked.

Colm grabbed her by the back of her neck. The action startled her, and she screamed a little before she could remind herself it was just Colm, that she wasn’t in any danger.

“Is that what you think I did?” Colm asked, lips thin and cheeks twitching from the clenching of his teeth. “You think I saved you and your boy? You think I saved your life because of some romantic notion of love and loyalty? You think I wanted anything more than this?”

He stood and bent over her, still holding her neck but also bracing himself against the chaise to control his brutal kiss. Colm grunted as he bit at her lip to make it swell, manipulated his tongue inside deep enough that she almost gagged before he entwined his with hers. He squeezed her neck so hard she thought he’d make it snap. The way he loomed over her, he forced her head back so that it was difficult to breathe, especially with him kissing her like that.

“This is all I wanted,” Colm murmured before biting her jaw.

He unfastened the bra part of the dress. The straps over her shoulders fell down her arms. He shoved the leather off and pinched her left nipple, swallowing the whine that caught in his second kiss. He slid a knee onto the lounge then grabbed and pinched both nipples. Every time she squirmed, they pulled away from her body and intensified the sensation.

Caroline was scared. She was confused. And terribly, terribly aroused. Pleasure tumbled in the tumultuous waters of her fear. She shoved him away then pulled him closer, unsure whether the noises she was making were encouraging or discouraging.

“All I wanted was your body, wicked girl,” Colm said again, his forehead against hers as he twisted her nipples sharply to make her squeal.

He shut his eyes tight, his face contorted in the same way as it had been after the beating and during the healing. His cock was fiercely erect and leaking, bumping against his abdomen where he bent over. That must have been some healing potion.

“Your tight, beautiful, tasty, fuckable body, because it’s the one I know, the one I know will let me in like the wicked slut you are. All right? That’s all… That’s all I wanted. That’s all you are to me. That’s— Damn you.”

He palmed her breasts, his hands a balm after the pain of his fingers, and he was kissing her again as she wrapped her arms around him. She surrendered to the new kiss, the real kiss—the one where the anger dissolved into lust and whatever ran deeper inside of him that he’d tried so desperately to hide.

She guided him beside her on the chaise, running her hands over his back. It was a reminder to both of them that he had willingly taken the punishment for her and she had been permitted to heal him.

Heat and softness sheathing steel alerted her to Riley getting closer from behind, unzipping the skirt of the dress. He peeled her out of it as he kissed her shoulder. His hands clashed with and accompanied Colm’s on her breasts. Colm abandoned her mouth for the place on her neck that he loved and always made her moan. She turned back so that Riley could taste those moans. She kissed him as hard as she could to let him know that although Colm had proved more fragile and broken, she hadn’t forgotten what Riley had done for her as well.

She shivered from the breeze that the air conditioners created backstage. It was too cool on her warming skin. Caroline pulled her men closer to her.

“I want inside,” Colm rasped in her ear.

She nodded.

Colm lay on the chaise much as she had, but she didn’t hold him down, just let him arrange her over him before she slid back over his thick cock, taking her excruciating, sweet time so that she could feel herself close over every last inch of him. Riley was a great shadow over both of them, marking each of her vertebra with kisses and reaching around her to stroke her clit and labia, feeling where Colm split her.

She raised herself up before pushing down his length once again. His need was urgent, but hers wasn’t. She caressed him with the wetness and softness that covered the intent muscles of her cunt clenching around him. Colm kissed her chest, her swinging breast, then fell back to kiss her arm and her hand before giving over to the sensations. It didn’t take him long. She bit her lip to thin a moan as he grabbed her hips and thrust his up, slamming inside her. He came, emptying the full extent of his desperate pleasure.

He immediately pulled her off him, surprising her. “You next, boy,” he said. “You give your mistress the pleasure we survived to give her. She’s the only reason the Ringmaster didn’t mark you tonight.”

Caroline pitched forward as Riley took Colm’s place inside her from behind, pushing through the moisture of her arousal and Colm’s hot cum with his cock. He groaned, helpless to keep himself from pounding in.

Colm stayed underneath them, his eyes half-lidded as he watched them lose themselves in their bodies. The movement of Riley’s hands over her became rougher, less caressing and more a handhold to his unspooling self-control. The place where their bodies met with increasingly forceful thrusts throbbed with carnality—eroticism in the sound of their thighs slapping together and his scrotum striking her clit, his groans rumbling through her body and her own heightening shouts distant to her ears. She met Colm’s eyes, but she cried Riley’s name, rubbing her clit and clenching around his cock.

The ends of her jagged hair brushed Colm’s face when she lowered her head, panting. Riley thrust through the flutters and twitches that followed her orgasm, until he too froze with a prolonged groan against Caroline’s shoulder, his cock the only part of him not paralyzed as it shot his release into her.

Colm parted the curtain of Caroline’s hair to run his thumb along her lower lip and caress a line up her jaw. The skin around Colm’s eyes showed anger, but the set of his mouth suggested otherwise. She raised her head and stroked Riley’s hair behind her while he recovered.

“Time to go,” Caroline said. “Shower or carousel?”

“Yes,” both Riley and Colm answered at the same time.

Caroline gathered up her dress. It was tangled up in its straps. She didn’t bother to put it back on. The whole circus knew what they all looked like naked, and if that bothered them, that was their problem.

 

* * * *

 

After they had each washed the blood off their skin, they returned to the cool, bright carousel cabin, walking through the dark rainbow lights to reach the cocoon. She took off her shoes, turned off one of the lights then lay down on the bed with her men.

Their limbs knotted together. It was difficult to say whose was whose as sleep offered them a brief respite from the worst of the night. In the midst of monsters and men, Caroline slept safe for now.