Page 106 of Caging Darling

Relieved that Astor is still alive, I turn back to the problem at hand.

Venus pulls at the trigger for the door, but it’s stuck. She screams, slamming her open palms at the door, begging to be let in.

“It’s okay. The captain won’t hurt you,” I say, trying to appease the hysterical girl.

She turns to me, watery eyes bloodshot and crazed. “He already has,” she seethes.

I blink, slightly dizzy. “No, it’s alright. Vulcan can’t hurt you anymore.”

The girl beats against the door harder, wailing now. Another muse joins her, pulling her from the door and trying to fiddle with the trigger to get it to work. She’s crying too, tears smearing her mascara against her cheek.

Something tastes like bile in the back of my mouth.

“We’re dead,” says Venus, who’s curled onto her knees now, weeping through her fingers covering her face. “We’re dead. I wasn’t ready…”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“Should have just taken my chances running away. At least that would have been a faster death. At least I wouldn’t have had to…” Venus is still muttering, hardly able to hear me apparently, so I turn instead to Pheonix, who’s just run up to us and is fidgeting with the jammed door.

“What’s going on?” I ask her.

“Vulcan put out a contract on us like he did for most of his major enemies. If he dies, the muses are to die too.”

I almost choke. “Why?” I spit out, though as soon as I do, I realize how naive it makes me sound.

You would think that by this point in my life, after all I’ve been through, I would have come to expect evil rather than be shocked by it.

“Incentive for us not to kill him ourselves,” says Phoenix. “But I think part of him couldn’t stand the idea of us ever being with another man, even if he was already dead.”

My stomach churns, but I nod. I’m about to speak, when a hand grabs me from behind.

I kick and jab with my elbows to fight whoever’s dragging me from the parlor, but then a voice tickles my ear. “Just me, Darling.” His voice is gravelly, breathless from his recent fight.

I scan the room to find limbless bodies scattered across the floor, staining the rug. The body count includes Vulcan, whose corpse is still bleeding through his shirt. They’re not all dead, though. There are still more guards filing in through the hidden doors in the side of the room. Even if there weren’t, there’ll be a bounty on Astor’s head now, as large as the sum of Vulcan’s stash of wealth in the bank.

Minus whatever sum he’s paid to take out the muses, of course.

Astor’s shoving me through the front door, the cold night’s air slapping my face, renewing my lungs with invigoration, when my senses return to me. “Astor, stop.”

“Now’s not the time to pause and make a plan,” he says. “Though I do so know how you love to overthink.”

I shake my head, gripping at the hand he has sutured to my waist. “No. Astor, we have to go back.”

“That’s not happening.”

“The muses,” I say, breathless as Astor picks me up by the waist and carries me down the stairs. “Astor, stop. We can’t leave them.”

“I guarantee they’re scrappy enough to make a new life for themselves, though your generosity is charming.”

I grit my teeth, half-yelling, “Vulcan took out a bounty on them.”

Astor halts, with me still kicking at the air. He sets me on the cobblestone and then spins me around to face him. His hand grips my shoulders, clinging to me. “I’m not putting you at risk,” he says, his eyes piercing me.

“Astor, please. We can’t just leave them.”

Like Astor left me. Like Astor’s mother left him.

Astor takes one hand off my shoulder, runs it down his face with his eyes closed, and groans. “Why must you always have a death wish?”

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