Twisted - Esme Devlin Page 0,4

long for this world, I can’t remember the last time I saw one as old as she is. I look her over, deciding that she was beautiful in her youth, and though her face is cut in deep lines, she has not lost it entirely.

Inside her tent, and going against the precedent out here, the lights have a reddish hue. This woman does not avert her eyes when she looks at me.

In fact, she holds my gaze completely.

“You,” she says, putting down her deck of cards and pointing a frail-looking finger at me.

I don’t respond.

“You will not speak with me?” She raises her eyebrow, and a smile grows on her lips.

I’m momentarily baffled. No one smiles at me.

“There is nothing you could tell me that I don’t already know.”

“You sound so sure for one so young,” she says.

I chuckle at that. “And what makes you think it is a young man who stands before you?”

She smirks and lowers her eyes, picking up her deck of cards and shuffling them.

The rest of the group are gathering around, but even without the audience, I have no interest in this garbage.

“Come,” I say, nodding toward the main tent. “We have waited quite long enough already, don’t you think?”

3

Sapphire

My time is almost up.

I always follow Ruby. She’s one of the most popular girls here and always fetches a high price after the show because she’s so damn cheery. The carnival’s sweetheart.

Every girl here is worth something, simply because of the fact that we were born.

We survived.

Our mothers, by virtue, must have survived, too. But Ruby has a lot of fans out there, so she’s like a grand semi-finale.

The higher the price, the higher the risk. Which makes me the highest risk of all.

People literally come every night to see if one of us will die, or at least be seriously injured. Maybe a disfigurement. I still remember trying to wrap my head around that as a child. People pay, either with money or goods or services, to watch men put women’s lives at risk.

Denim refused to explain it to me, saying I’d never understand.

Ruby, who is a few years older than me—though no one really knows how many—had no trouble.

“It’s like a fetish.”

“What’s that?”

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Never mind. Imagine this really rare thing, okay?”

“Chocolate?”

“Right… chocolate. So there are hardly any chocolate bars left in the world, but there is a man who keeps a big stash of them.”

I nod my head. “To eat them all himself. That’s what I’d do.”

“Not quite. This man doesn’t eat the chocolate. He destroys it. Burns it. Stabs his fork into it and then throws it in the bin.”

“Why would he do that?”

Ruby shrugs. “Because people pay a lot of money to watch him do it. Because they don’t have any chocolate, so they pay to watch him destroy the chocolate he has. And then, if they’re lucky, sometimes he lets them lick the bar after the show.”

I shake my head at her. “I don’t think I understand.”

She smiles now and rubs the flat of her palm across my head. “You will one day, kid.”

I think about that conversation as I peek out from behind the curtain and watch her. She’s in the center of the ring, a swirl of red fabric and gorgeous brown and gold skin, dancing over hot coals as if they’re no different from the sand that surrounds her. A loud drumbeat matches her steps, and the crowd cheers her on by clapping in sync with every beat. The ring is lit around the circumference by fire torches, so the crowd is just a huge swathe of black against the shadows.

Letting the curtain fall back into place before I’m noticed, I try to locate Romanov, my partner. Instead, I see Maxim deep in conversation with Denim and Conrim.

Maxim never bothers to grace us with his presence backstage, so something is amiss. I make my way toward them, intending to keep to the shadows so I can eavesdrop without being seen.

“He looks bored,” Maxim says.

Denim furrows his brow. “He does? How can you tell?”

“He’s resting his chin in his hand, you fucking idiot! This will not do. Can you imagine? He returns to the hotel and tells his clientele we are uninteresting? Where the hell is Sapphire?”

I pause for a moment while they look around, taken aback by his angry tone. It’s only when Denim’s eyes find my own that I take a step forward. “Here, Maxim.”

“You will dance tonight.”

Dance?

I am