The Immortal Circus: Final Act (Cirque des Immortels) (19 page)

The world screams.

Fire billows from every horizon, the sky blotched out from smoke, the ground black and charred and dead. Yet still the fires come, blistering against concrete, oozing from char. Even the burnt-out things are burning. Even the dead are dying another death.

I float above it all, surrounded by soot, drifting on smoke, watching as the world below burns.

But it’s not all gone. Not all life is destroyed. There are shapes down there, dark shapes, bound and chained, dragging together in long funereal processions. I know they are people. Humans.

“I have to thank you, Oracle,” says Kassia in a searing voice. She floats with me as well, her body ashen, her hair shimmering with flame. Her robes are ribbons of fire, her hands charred black with blood. She turns away from me, smiling, and surveys the world below. “I could not have done this without you.”

“Me?” I whisper. The word catches in my throat, burns with a different sort of venom.
I did this?

“Of course,” she says. “This is the future you created. These are the choices you have made.” She turns back to me, her red eyes flash white heat. “You’ve led the Courts against each other; you’ve ensured they will fall. And when they do, I will emerge as Queen. Faerie and mortal shall bend knee, and the worlds will know my rage.”

Something shifts on the horizon. The people below begin to run away; they don’t move fast enough. Within moments, the burning horizon distills into shapes. Three shapes. Three blinding comets filled with hate. And the moment they reach us, fire rains down from the heavens before us; the people below scream and turn to dust.

“Yes,” she says. “This is where I rule with my friends. This is where humanity becomes what it was meant to be.”

She comes closer. Her heat splits my skin, but the pain is distant, a memory of hurt.

“Our battle comes. But there is no hope for you, no hope for mankind—no matter what, I will rule. Your actions have ensured it.”

I wake up in my trailer, and the vision slides from recollection like water off oil. But the transition isn’t smooth; my stomach is sick with dread.

For a while I can only lie there, staring at the ceiling, waiting to wake up. Everything feels like a bad dream. One long, horrible dream. Then, like a hammer strike, pain shoots through my temples. And it’s not one of those mild pressures; this is a full-on migraine. My sight blurs around the edges as nausea creeps up my throat. I squeeze my eyes shut. A tiny groan escapes my lips.

“Already?” comes Kingston’s voice.

Although I shift over in bed, I don’t open my eyes. I know that if I do I’ll vomit. There’s a rustle when he stands, a slight sway to the trailer when he walks over. Then his hand is on my forehead and the familiar longed-for sensation of his magic drips through my veins like morphine. It dulls the pain. But it doesn’t make it go away entirely.

I open my eyes to see him standing there, a few inches away, his face so close to mine we could kiss. Again.

“Hi there,” he whispers with his crooked smile. A dark strand of hair drops by his eye; I want to brush it back, but I can’t move.

I open my mouth to speak but can only groan again. I squeeze my eyes shut as another wave of nausea washes over me.

“Shit,” he says, his voice echoing through my haze.

The trailer moves when he stands. I don’t think he leaves—the door doesn’t open—but the ache is so great I start to drift away, out of the trailer, away from the pain. I float in the ocean of agony; I wish for nothing more than to drown in its depths and slink into oblivion.

Kingston’s hand on my cheek what feels like an eternity later draws me back down.

“Open,” he says. I feel my mouth open.

“Drink,” he commands. And my throat chokes something down.

The liquid is viscous and sweet and terribly cold, but it numbs my throat as it goes down, calming the torrent in my head. My stomach stops churning when the liquid reaches my gut. Moments later, I feel okay.

I open my eyes and lick the cold blood from my lips.

“Thanks,” I mutter.

“Mab said it would be worse now that your powers are back,” he says, leaning back. He plops down into a chair and sets the empty vial on my desk. I don’t ask whose blood it is; I don’t want to know nor do I care at this point—I’ve got more than enough guilt for a few lifetimes. Kingston’s in his usual jeans and a faded T-shirt, and his tiredness seems to have vanished. He looks just as spry and wild as the first day I met him. He looks damn good for a recently dead man. “You’re going to need blood a lot more often to control your powers, otherwise they’ll burn through you. When was the last time you fed?”

I slowly push myself up to sitting, waiting for the headache to smash back at any moment. Save for the dull ache, nothing happens. Is this what it means to have my powers back? An eternal throbbing headache and no badass skills? Because save for my head, I sure don’t feel any different.

“I don’t know,” I say, trying to focus on his question. “A few days?”

Days.

My heart stops cold.

“What day is it?” I ask.

He raises an eyebrow, lips quirked into a grin, like he's in on some joke that probably involves me. Gods, I missed that expression of his. I push the feelings aside.
Weapons don’t have emotion.

“That’s it?” he asks. “No, ‘I missed you Kingston’ or ‘My heart broke without you here’?”

“What day?” I hiss.

My tone cuts his humor short.

“I don’t know,” he says. He slumps, his grin gone and his raised eyebrow more wary and less seductive. “I just got you here a few hours ago. It’s not even dawn yet.”

Dawn.
If Mab kept her word—and I know faeries have to keep their word—it’s only the day after I entered Faerie. Which means Austin’s still out there, and hopefully still alive. I still have time to save him before Oberon attacks.

“I have to go,” I say. I push myself out of bed. Even if I didn’t have Austin’s rescue as an excuse, I’d be leaving. I want to be anywhere but here—not because it’s awkward being back with him, but because it isn’t. It’s comfortable. It’s so, so easy to imagine walking over and curling up on his lap, letting him kiss the problems away. Having Kingston in this trailer makes everything else seem like an interlude, the time he was dead a mere intermission to the actual show.

And I know that soon, very soon, we’re going to have to have the conversation. I'll have to tell him about Austin. Everything about Austin. Secrets don't last in shows this small.

“Vivienne, you just got here,” he says. “I mean, we just got back. There are still hours before the attack. I think we have some catching up to do.”

“I can’t,” I reply. I step to my tiny closet and pull out a sweater. He reaches for my arm. When I flinch, he stands up.

“Okay, seriously, what the hell is going on? I was just dead for six weeks, and you look at me like I’m a monster.”

I shake my head. The fact that he doesn’t make some “sexy zombie” reference tells me just how serious he is.

“Kingston…”

“Would you look at me, Viv? I know Oberon said some things before he killed me. I know you probably still think I betrayed you. And yeah, I did, I guess, but I didn’t have a choice. Did you at least get my message?”

His message, of course: the message left in Penelope’s obsidian pendant. Basically:
I never wanted to betray you, even though I did, but I still actually fell in love with you.

“Yes,” I say, turning to face him. I can’t stand that there are already tears in my eyes. I don’t want to have this conversation with him. Not now. Not ever. “But Kingston, things have changed.”

“I know, Viv. I know about the new contract, about the coming battle. Mab told me everything.”

“Did she tell you about Austin?”

As expected, that stops him short. He stares at me, mouth slightly open, like I’ve punched him the gut. He knows who Austin is—he was there when my old lover visited the show, months ago. But I had a funny feeling Mab would leave this particular conversation to me. She’s kind like that.

“What about Austin?”

“She brought him back, Kingston. Only a few days ago, she signed him on to the show. And now Lilith’s run off with him, and I need to get him back before she turns him into a human skin suit.”

“Lilith wouldn’t do that,” he says.

I give him a look. Sometimes, his thinking so mirrors Mab’s it makes me question if they’re really are separate entities.

“I mean, sure she’s psychotic,” he says with a grin, “but not in that way. She’s more of a burn-them-alive type of girl.”

“Are you even listening?” I yell. I take a deep breath to try and calm myself. There are stars in the corners of my eyes, and I don’t know if they’re power or just rage. His shit-eating grin dissolves. “She has Austin. She’s free. She’ll kill him if she knows it will get to me.”

“What does it matter?” Kingston asks. He shrugs, doing his best to make light of the situation. “I mean, you barely know the guy.”

That pisses me off—precisely because Kingston knows what I
shouldn’t
know.

“I remember.” I growl. “I remember everything about him.”

His mouth opens slightly. “Oh.”

The word is so simple, so pained; it drops like a guillotine, severing whatever hope Kingston and I had for a happily ever after.

“So you remember loving him, too.”

I nod.

He closes his eyes and takes a long, slow breath, his hands clenched at his sides. When he looks at me again, he runs his hand through his hair and examines me like he’s seeing me anew. He doesn’t seem pleased by what he sees.

“Well then,” he says. His voice is deadened, void of emotion. “That explains it all. Let’s go get your loverboy back.”

“It’s not like that—” I begin.

When he steps forward, I step back and shut up.

“Oh, but it is. I die. You’re off the hook, and you fall for someone new. It was so
easy
for you, wasn’t it Viv? It’s not like I died for you or anything. It’s not like any of that matters once blast-from-your-past comes back on the scene.”

“Don’t you dare.” The rage from the last few days builds in my lungs, burns through my words. Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve been forced to see. “Don’t you
fucking
dare. You have no idea what I’ve been through. You didn’t die for me. You knew you couldn’t die, not really.”

Then something clicks. Some horrible piece in the clockwork. Everything that shouldn’t make sense does.

“You knew you’d come back,” I say, incredulous. “You told me in your message that Mab forced you to bring me there, that it was all part of her plan. But your death was part of it, too, wasn’t it? Get me to avenge you or some shit like that.”

His face goes slack. He doesn’t say anything.

I shake my head. “You’re disgusting.” I make sure to look in his eyes when I say it. I want it to hurt him every bit as much as he’s hurt me. The fact that he doesn’t try to deny the manipulation makes it worse—all of this was part of Mab’s plan. And now, I’m starting to wonder if he’d been in on the planning as well. Maybe he was never a pawn like he said. Maybe he was the one pushing the pieces.

“You know what?” I continue. “It doesn’t even fucking matter. I chose you, okay? I fucking chose
you.
”

And now he really looks confused.

“What do you mean, chose me?” he asks. “How is saving your ex choosing
me
?”

“I don’t have time for this!” I yell. “Ask Mab next time the two of you are scheming. Ask about Tír na nÓg and what I had to do to get your sorry ass out of Summer. Why don’t you ask her what
I
had to sacrifice for you?”

Something in my voice must convince him I’m not taking this lightly, that I’m not just sleeping around. His expression changes in a heartbeat. Maybe because he knows what I’m talking about, or maybe because he knows any deal with a faerie ends in disaster.

“Viv, wait. I’m coming with you.”

“Like hell you are. You’ve already done more than enough to ensure I’m stuck with you forever.” I take a step toward the door. He grabs me and this time, I don’t flinch. I shove him back. Maybe it’s magic or maybe it’s rage, but he flies against the tiny desk, spilling pens and ticket stubs all over the trailer floor.

He stares at me like he doesn’t know who or what I am. But he doesn’t stand up. He doesn’t move toward me at all, and I have a feeling he never will.

In the back of my mind, another dream from Tír na nÓg dies. I have to stay in the show to avoid Oberon, but it’s definitely not going to be a loving life with Kingston. No castle, no kids, no faerie-tale ending.

But that’s okay.

There aren’t any faerie-tale endings. Not for me. Not anymore.

No one is outside the trailer when I leave. The sun is barely up, and there’s frost on the ground. My breath comes out in small clouds. I fully expect Kingston to run from the trailer and try to stop me. A few months ago, he would have—he would have done everything in his power to make sure I was okay. But he doesn’t. I’m halfway across the grounds, right beside the pie cart, before I stop dead in my tracks.

I have no idea where Lilith is.

“Fuck,” I curse.

I need to get Kingston. Without his magic I’m—

No.

I don’t need him. I don’t need any of them. Mab gave me back my powers, and I know she’s used me to locate people before. It’s time to use my powers for myself.

I close my eyes.

Show me. Show me where she is.

It’s not a burning, not really, not like every other time the visions struck. It’s an unfolding, the opening of eyes I never knew I had. And suddenly the world is shaking, shimmering, and the pitch around me wavers like windswept water.

They sit by a tree. Rather, Lilith sits. Austin is tied to the oak’s trunk, his wrists bound behind his back, great vines wrapped around his torso like the tree itself enveloped him. Lilith picks at blades of grass. They turn to ash between her fingertips, and she sprinkles them into the growing pile of dust before her. She hums a nursery rhyme while Austin, gagged, watches in horror.