The Immortal Circus: Final Act (Cirque des Immortels) Read Online Free Page B

opened my mouth. But, like the entire ride back, I had no idea how to voice what had just happened. She had just rescued me from a cell in the Summer Court, had dragged my sorry ass halfway across Faerie and back into the mortal world. She'd taken me to my family home, to the nightmares that waited in the corners of my memory. And she had waited in the car while I went inside my apartment to learn more about my past. She had missed everything.
    She'd missed me stumbling into the kitchen and finding the spot where—months earlier—I had not only murdered my father, but killed my own sister in cold blood. The first kill had been self-defense; the second had been to save Claire from the apocalypse Kassia had been promising. Melody had missed my reunion with my mother, who turned out not to be my mother at all, but a magical construct created by Mab to fuck with me just a little bit more.
    And she had missed my confrontation with Mab herself; Mab, in a rage, when she told me that every carefully laid plan I'd made had been in vain. I had escaped Summer under the pretense of ending her rule, of leading a rebellion that would kick her from her own show. But she had known. She had known all of it. And she had turned it all against me.
    “I'm the ringmaster,” I told Mel. It was the first thing I'd been able to voice since I had stepped into the waiting car, my only words beyond my initial “We need to go back.”
    Melody looked at me like I was speaking nonsense. Maybe I was. It still felt too surreal, too sudden. Mab gave me the show so I couldn't fight back. She made her welfare and the welfare of her entire Court my responsibility.
    “What do you mean?” Mel asked.
    “Mab gave me the show,” I said. “She said that this is what I got for trying to defy her. She's going back home to prepare for the war.”
    “That's ridiculous,” she said. “You don't know the first thing about running a show.”
    I nodded. “I don't think she wants me to succeed. She said if the show fails, I die.”
    “That doesn't make any sense,” Mel said. “She needs you alive. She needs you to control Lilith—it's the only way she'll win against Oberon.”
    “And she knows this is the only way I'll fight for her side,” I said. “Because now you're my responsibility. Everyone's my responsibility. If I fail, you all die. She knows I won't let that happen, not after losing Kingston. She's won.”
    There was a fire in Mel's eyes. Melody, who had been rousing the troupe against Mab behind her back, Mel, who had tried to keep her shape-shifting powers secret just so she'd have an ace up her sleeve.
    “She hasn't won yet,” she said. “We can still fight back. We still have an army.”
    “No. We have a company that wants out of their contracts. And now, I'm in charge of them.”
    Mel didn't say anything for a while after that. Like me, she was trying to let the information settle in. Like me, she didn't want to believe any of it was true. In the last twenty-four hours, I'd not only learned my boyfriend had betrayed me, but I had watched him get his throat slit. I'd learned my entire family was dead by my doing. And now, I had a show to run.
    “I have to be on in an hour,” I said, my voice dull, my heart numb. “Otherwise I die. And so will you.”
    Mel opened her mouth like she wanted to protest. Then she saw the look on my face and changed her mind.
    “What do you need me to do?” she asked instead.
    I tried to steel my voice, tried to find some humor in the situation. I failed on both counts.
    “Help me into Mab's corset.”
* * *
    An hour before the last show of the night, I’m in front of Mab's trailer. She has the entire double-wide to herself, though now that she's not here it seems ridiculous to cart it around all the time. There are two doors on the side, and I stand before the one that used to lead to her office. I rest my hand on the latch, and I close my eyes, not certain if I'm praying or begging. Please just be