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  Madoc lifted three bottles of bright blue liquid from the coffee table and handed them to her. “The potion is topical. It must be applied into the wounds with your hands. Do you understand what I require of you?”

  Caroline nodded. If she couldn’t be there to watch the whip dig into him, Madoc wanted her to feel how deep the whip had gone. Her skin crawled at the thought, but she also knew she had earned worse and had been let off with little more than a slap on the wrist.

  And Colm had earned much better than what he’d gotten. It had been unbelievable enough that he’d sacrificed himself to try to protect her from the clowns. He could have died, just like her. He wasn’t a demon anymore. He was human with human weaknesses. How he could have chosen to sacrifice a wish and his hide to save hers…and Riley’s, of all people.

  Caroline had thought she could grasp him, thought she knew why he did the things he did. Maybe all this time, Colm had been more a mystery to her than he’d let on.

  “Did you know it would end like this?” Caroline asked, taking the bottles. “When you tricked me into wishing, did you know I could have died tonight?”

  “It was a possibility. So was what happened instead,” he answered.

  “You brought me into this knowing that you might only have me a few weeks before I became clown food?” Caroline asked. “Why would you do that?”

  “Is it the brevity that concerns you?”

  “I know I’m not promised a long and happy life, but I was kind of hoping for one. Instead, you brought me into Arcanium with a guillotine blade over my neck,” Caroline accused.

  “It’s been there since you were born. You could die in a car crash in five years. You could have a freak heart attack in ten. You could get cancer of the womb at thirty-five. You could get hit by a stray bullet while walking your children across a busy city street,” Madoc said. “The possibility of your imminent death should never be a deterrent, because it is always there. I don’t understand your irritation.”

  “You could have prevented it from happening at all,” Caroline said. “You didn’t have to hire me. I would have been safer. Maybe not much happier, but safer.”

  “You could have prevented it from happening,” Madoc countered. He took her face in his hands, brushing his thumbs over the healed places where Murphy’s claws had bored into her. “You didn’t have to accept my offer to join Arcanium. And you knew when you saved those children that it could end in death. You chose to anyway. How are my decisions more at fault than your own?”

  “Because you know more. The whole ‘power and responsibility’ gig.”

  “It’s not in my interest or nature to save people from themselves,” he said.

  “Only to punish them for idle wishes that they don’t actually mean,” Caroline said.

  “Yes,” he replied, as though she hadn’t challenged him, as though it were simply neutral fact.

  “How is that fair?”

  “It isn’t. I’m not always fair, nor am I meant to be.”

  “Isn’t that a choice that you’ve made?” Caroline asked.

  “Yes. One that I made before empires you’ve never heard of rose and fell. I have my purpose in this world, Caroline. I welcomed you into my Arcanium because you have a purpose as well. I don’t need your understanding or approval. I just need you to do your best for me, follow my rules and accept the consequences I have set, because while you reside within Arcanium, those are the conditions of survival.”

  “I’ve just given up one father for another, haven’t I?” Caroline said.

  Madoc smiled a little through his solemnity. “Not quite. You chose Arcanium. All choices have their consequences.”

  “Are you conveniently forgetting you tricked me into Arcanium by not telling me exactly what it was before I signed on? I didn’t choose all of it.”

  “We rarely do.” He ran the backs of his fingers over her cheeks in one more gesture of affection. “You should tend to your charges, unless you want them to suffer longer for you.”

  Caroline hurried to her feet then had to sit back down. Madoc waited for her to ease herself up and took her hand when she held hers out for help. He was more patient than she was—her men’s pain obviously meant much less to him.

  “The dizziness will go away the more you move,” Madoc said. “You don’t need to worry about the concussion. It just takes time for the potion to seep in.”

  “Do you think they’re rehabilitated? As in, that they’ve learned whatever lesson you wanted them to learn after what they did?” Caroline asked when she reached the door.

  Madoc paused, tilting his head. “You are considering repaying their wishes for you.”

  “That’s not all, but sacrificing themselves for me is about as unselfish as a person can get. Riley especially doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would set fire to the circus anymore. And Colm is no more unpredictable and destructive as you. Is there a reason to keep them here, other than my amusement?”

  “Is that not enough?” Madoc asked.

  “Not for a sane, compassionate person.”

  “I can be sane and compassionate, as you are well aware. But my conception of time and rehabilitation differ from yours. Are you sure you want to be responsible for loosing Colm back into the world, either in his old form or in his present one, but with a demon’s thoughts and desires?”

  “And this isn’t just some bid to keep him from coming after Arcanium again, now that he knows its ins and outs and what you’re capable of?” Caroline said.

  “No. Nor does it have anything to do with releasing a demon. That doesn’t matter to me. What’s important is that I’m not ready to let them go, and you might not forgive yourself if you do. So before you ask…if you make that wish, I will grant it my way, not yours. You can’t have everything you want, Caroline,” Madoc said. “I think I’ve spoiled you quite a lot already.”

  He sounded fatherly, but Caroline knew better than to mistake his warmth for parental propriety. She also knew he was right. For a morally gray jinni who didn’t hesitate at cruelty, he had given her so much. To expect generosity would end badly for her—for him too if he didn’t want to hurt her, and she didn’t think he did. She really believed that. She couldn’t say why, except that she didn’t think Madoc lied a lot—evaded the truth, maybe, but he didn’t seem to lie.

  “Souls cursed into my service in retribution can incur some of my good will,” Madoc said. “Protecting you is still protecting the circus, even if they were protecting you from consequences of an act that undermined Arcanium. However, I do have a suggestion, something like a compromise.”

  Madoc opened the door and gestured Caroline outside. Already, she was steadier on her feet. She gripped the bottles. She didn’t want them to fall.

  “If you still have a wish left when your year is up, ask me again,” Madoc told her. “Perhaps by that time, they will have impressed me as much as they have impressed you.”

  He would probably be harder to impress.

  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.

  T
he 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.

&nb
sp; “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.