walls the majority of the time.”
“Too much time to think, that’s what I think,” I tell her as I get up from the bed and make for the door.
“What will you do?” she calls after me.
I stop with my hand on the doorknob and turn to face her. “For all your grand scheming, you failed to take one key detail into consideration.”
Celeste tilts her head to the side as if pondering a puzzle. “And what is that?”
“I only like grand schemes when I think of them.”
34
Sapphire
There’s another girl in my room now.
This girl is younger than me, though you’d barely know it from the painted face she wears to perform.
They say she is an even better dancer than I ever was. More shapely than me, with a body that looks like it was built for pleasure and not for snapping in half accidentally like mine. The patrons love her. Maxim loves her.
They even call her Sapphire, though it makes little sense because she doesn’t have one green eye and one blue.
This all came from Ruby, after she hugged me so tight I thought she might kill me.
Maxim still hasn’t spoken a word to me.
“Are you still a virgin, though?” Ruby asks me.
We’re sitting in my new room.
This one is a level lower than my last one, still above the massive pits the circus pups sleep in, but not on the same level as the performers. It’s cold and damp, with a constant dripping that keeps me awake for long hours in the night and only candles for light.
I shake my head. “No.”
Her face fills with pity, and she scoots across the thin sleeping mat to pull me in for a hug. “I’m so sorry.” When she draws back, the pity has gone and her eyes narrow. “Was it him? Did he hurt you? How many? Tell me everythi—”
“It wasn’t like that,” I reply, shaking my head.
“What do you mean it wasn’t like that?”
I don’t really know what I mean.
I don’t know what it was or wasn’t like.
I’ve been here for two nights now and spoken to nobody except for the unknown guard who brought me here. I’ve had countless hours to think about what it was like, and I’m still not really sure myself.
So I start at the very beginning.
I tell her everything.
The tank and the face paint and the fighting cage. The games he used to play with me. The girl in the room next door. I don’t mention the things Celeste told me, about the curse or the safe place or Baron’s agenda, and I pause for a long time considering if I should tell her about the baby or not.
But the child will show soon enough.
And if I want it to be healthy, I need proper food and pills.
I need to know if she thinks Maxim will give me that.
“You’re what? How far along are you?”
I shrug. “Not that far.”
Ruby nods. “Okay, okay. Don’t worry. I’ll fetch Scout. You know his grandmother, the old witch who does the tarot? She has plants that’ll take it away. We just need to find a way of paying her.”
“No.” I grip her hand tighter. “No. I don’t want that.”
She puts her free hand to her mouth and looks at me like I’ve just committed some heinous act. “Sapphire, you’ll be ruined. If we can find a way to be rid of it, maybe we can convince Maxim you’re still a virgin and he might take you back. You’d get a new name and costume, but you could go back to your old life.”
Just the thought has a heavy weight sitting in the pit of my stomach. “I don’t want my old life back.”
“Then… a new life. It’s not so bad, Sapphire. You get used to the clients. Remember what I told you about building the castle? You don’t even think about it.”
I shake my head. I can’t give him up. He’s the only part of Baron I have. “I can’t do it.”
Ruby leans back and looks around the room. Well, what she can see of it in the dim light from the single candle. “Then we must tell Maxim. You can’t stay here.” She shakes her head before looking back at me and clutching my hand. “Maybe he’ll put you in the room with the other expectants. I hear it’s not too bad. The food is better.”
The other expectants. That’s the place you go to wait out your pregnancy. You get food and warmth and shelter, and in exchange, you