The Faire (Harrow Faire #5) - Kathryn Ann Kingsley Page 0,82

words. It’s a shame you won’t live long enough to appreciate the lesson.”

“You can’t kill me, Turk.” She shook her head. “We’re going to fight. Rudy, Simon, and I are going to rip you apart, and then you’re going to die anyway. It’s just senseless suffering. I don’t want to make this bloodier than it already is.”

“I can’t kill you, that’s true.” Ringmaster’s gaze flicked over her shoulder. From her…to Simon.

Cora had been worried about a fight.

She had been stressed all day about what would happen if there was an all-out war. How she’d do in a brawl against Turk and whoever decided to fight with him.

She shouldn’t have been.

She should have been worried about something else entirely.

Hands gripped her head from behind. Hands she knew. “Simon—”

“He can’t kill you, cupcake,” the Puppeteer crooned into her ear. “But I can.”

Cora had experienced a lot since arriving at Harrow Faire. She had a piece of her seity devoured by a man-eating murder-circus. She had been haunted by said circus. She had been stalked by the Puppeteer. She had been turned into the Contortionist. She had been shot in the chest. She had performed on stage and learned to love it. She had learned to love Simon—not in spite of who he was, but because of it.

She had been turned into the mouthpiece for Harrow Faire against her will.

She had been thrown into a pit and left impaled on a metal statue for three weeks.

She had become whatever-the-fuck she was now.

And now…

She knew what it was like to have her neck snapped.

Simon twisted her head to the right, and she felt the sickening crunch. It wasn’t anything like cracking her back. This was overwhelming. Total. Complete. And stole everything else away from her. It was as though someone had just picked the needle up on the vinyl record.

She fell to the sand but didn’t feel it. She was left lying there, looking up at the stripes of the tent and the shapes over her.

She felt nothing.

She couldn’t move.

Her thoughts were…fuzzy. Her vision was starting to blur. She could see people running around and screaming. But she couldn’t hear them. She could only hear a high-pitched ringing in her head that seemed to blot everything else out.

And all she could see was the silhouette of a man in a top hat standing over her.

I remember this dream.

I’ve seen it once before.

You tried to warn me.

“I’m so sorry, Cora…”

Who had said it? Ringmaster? Lazarus? Simon?

It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

Darkness took her.

20

Cora woke up tied to a chair.

Kind of a weird way to wake up, all things considered. All at once, like someone had just flicked the light switch on, she was alive again. Alive, awake, and tied to a fucking chair.

She couldn’t see what was keeping her wrists bound to the armrests, or her legs to the frame of the chair. She knew precisely what was keeping her there. Simon’s strings.

All at once, she remembered what had happened. “Si—”

A hand clamped over her mouth. A head was close to hers, whispering in her ear. “Shush now, cupcake.”

She clenched her fists. Instantly, her darkness was there at her command, boiling just at the surface. She was going to rip him to smithereens. She was going to tear him, and Turk, into mincemeat! She—

“Ah-ah, darling.” Simon straightened. She watched him flick his wrist just out of the corner of her eye, and something small, tight, and probably invisible cinched painfully around her throat. “You’re in my web, dear. One wrong move from you—one tiny bit of ink seeps into your eyes—and you’ll finally learn what it’s like to be killed by my strings. I don’t need you alive to rip out your seity. It’s just more fun if I get to watch your eyes when it happens.”

Damn it.

Damn him.

I should have known.

I’m such a fool.

Every man I’ve ever loved has betrayed me. And I’m the common denominator.

Tears pricked her eyes. His treachery stabbed at her like knives. She relaxed her hands and let the darkness simmer. The string around her throat loosened enough that she could breathe. “Now, that’s a good girl.”

She bit back a sob. She finally realized through the bright lights in her eyes that she was on Simon’s stage in his tent. Ringmaster was standing at the foot of the stage, watching the scene with disgust and resolve in equal measures.

Looking to her left, she jolted in shock. There was another chair next to her, and…a doll sat limply in it. A doll that