My eyes swing up at Trish’s voice as she sneers down at me. She takes a purposeful step forward, threatening to step on the square. I snarl, but that just makes her laugh. She kneels down in front of my face and flicks me on the forehead, just to belittle me further. “What, trying to protect Heathcliff now?” she asks. “You’re a little late. Where were you all this time? Week after week, when he got beaten and punished because of you—where were you then to defend him? Fucking hypocrite.”
I shake my head and squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to know…
“You listening, bitch?” Welk hisses at my side, his hand suddenly in my hair, wrenching my neck back. “We don’t get to leave. You still got that collar on your neck, don’t you? That’s because you’re his fucking property. Just like the rest of us.”
I expected their physical blows. I expected for my skills to be pushed to the edge. But this...this emotional onslaught is shattering me. Crippling me. Making my spirit crack.
The things they say are more debilitating than the lazy hits they serve me in succession. A heel to my leg, a slap against my cheek, a kick to my ribs. Those are secondary. Those, I can handle. I’ve been conditioned for it, and I’ve endured far worse in the past. But their words saturate me, coming down like a torrent, a cloud of wrathful brutality that soddens my courage until I can’t keep my head above the flood.
Somewhere high above me though, someone is screaming. I turn my head enough to look up along with the rest of the troupers, and my eyes land on a dangling Freddie.
The beam has tipped all the way over, and he slid clear off of the end of it. The only thing holding him up from the fatal vortex of magic spinning right below him is the fact that his small hands are clutching onto the black rope as he holds on for dear life.
Cliff—I don’t even know how—is awake. Maybe Freddie’s blood curdling scream yanked him into awareness like it did me.
With two broken legs straddling the beam, he starts to crawl, scoot, drag his way toward the little boy. But it’s inch by agonizing inch. He can’t manage more than that.
He’s trying. So goddamn hard.
He’s trying to force his broken body to move. To save the little boy he doesn’t even know, but he can’t. He collapses, panting with breath, his whole body shaking as he tries to hold onto the beam while pushing himself to make it over to Freddie.
And as I’m lying on the ground beneath the middle of them, completely disabled as my troupe members continue their onslaught, my heart just shatters at the sight.
Tears like lava scorch down my cheeks, the bitter salt of my heart mixing with the blood on my face. Because for once in my life, I’m not strong enough. I’m not fierce or tough or capable enough.
I’ve been beaten. Truly, irrevocably, cruelly beaten, right when it mattered the most.
My animal cries inside of me, a heartbreaking keening sound that lifts up with Freddie’s screams and Cliff’s labored breaths. It mixes with the pained grunts that pass through my own lips and the riotous crowd in the dark.
Freddie is going to be killed. Cliff will fall to his death next. I’m going to be ripped apart limb by limb, until I’m just left in scattered pieces on this crude stage.
My life doesn’t flash in front of my eyes. But my regrets do.
I regret not telling Cliff how much I loved him. I regret not kissing Jericho one last time. I regret...so many things.
I try to lash out, to yell at someone to stop this, to step in, to help, but the troupe just laughs at me. Taunts me. Spits on me. Basks in my torment like they truly believe I deserve this.
The audience is eating it all up. Kaazu is grinning like a wolf. My entire body, no, my whole fucking being feels maimed.
I have never felt so utterly alone and helpless as I do in this moment.
And that’s when I hear a roar.
27
Jetta
For a moment, I think a real storm has rolled in.
My brain doesn’t connect the sound with the truth for a few seconds. No cloud could make that enraged sound. Yet with the commotion of the attack, I don’t put it together. Not at first.