Page 39 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part Two

Two men suddenly appear on our far left, from the direction we were going.

Movement behind them confirms they’ve stepped through from a curtained-off area.

Or we’re in the curtained-off area. Still chuckling to themselves, they head toward the control panel by the corridor to the office.

Both are brown-haired, and bulky like shifters.

I can’t immediately read their essence, though, and I’ve never seen either of them before.

“That little shit actually thought someone would come for him,” the taller of the two says.

The short one scoffs. “Crying like a baby now.”

Kitty stiffens. But in defiance, not fear.

The shorter of the two checks his phone. “They’re ready.”

The taller flips a few levers or switches on the control panel, and a section of the ceiling slides open above the Monet.

The sound of a crowd amicably chatting— celebrating, even— filters down to us.

“Fucking toffs.” The tall male flips a third lever, peering down at some gauge or readout on the control panel.

A motor whirls underneath the Monet. Then the platform begins to rise, becoming a pedestal that lifts the painting toward the opening in the low ceiling.

We’re in some sort of theater space. Below the stage, at best guess.

This is an illegal auction of rarities. But not just antiquities and art.

Kitty is on offer as well. The young awry might even have been intended as the main event.

I’ve never attended such an atrocity. But I know that it didn’t get thrown together at the last minute.

Sick to my stomach at all the thoughts I’m cobbling together in my head, I tuck Kitty closer to me.

Snatching the kids on this specific night had to already have been planned.

Was someone waiting until one of them manifested as awry?

Was it their mother? That’s what Kitty wouldn’t outright say, wasn’t it?

They weren’t supposed to take Tommy, she said.

Just Kitty.

But Tommy was already ready, waiting. He had been since even before he approached me at the literacy event and repeated what he’d once heard somewhere, from someone.

That people with purple eyes are locked away for their own protection.

“Now,” Coda murmurs through my phone speakers.

The tech awry is right. We need to move.

More platforms are rising. The grating churn of the mech that powers the pedestals should cover our retreat if we’re careful. The Banksy angel starts to lift even as we move away.

Transferring my hold to Kitty’s wrist so I don’t lose my grip on her hand if we need to run, I keep as much to the shadows as possible.

Trying not to blindly bump into more displays.

The way to the office is blocked now, and we haven’t yet found Tommy, so I head to where the men came from, toward where we heard the pained cry.

Instead of trying to find the opening, we skirt the thick black velveteen curtain that I wasn’t close enough to see from deeper in the room. On the other side of the curtain, only one much larger platform occupies this section beneath the stage.

This platform is large enough to hold a metal cage. The steel bars of the cage are so thick I’d have trouble closing my hand around them, but with enough space between them that the slight figure huddled within is clearly discernible.

Tommy.

And Tommy isn’t an awry.

He’s something … else …

With my own essence loosely twined around me, I can sense the tenor of Tommy’s power even through the heavy-duty protective essence entwined around the cage.

Kitty twists free of my hold, dashing toward her brother before I can caution her. Fortunately, my fear makes my own reaction quick enough that I’m up on the platform only a moment after her, snatching her back before she makes contact with the bars.

She opens her mouth to shriek. But Tommy’s hand, thrust through the bars, closes over her mouth to muffle her indignation.

Tommy, who is shirtless, hisses in pain.

The skin on his bare arm sears, then blisters, from the essence coating the metal bars.

His hiss isn’t human at all, and neither is his malformed jaw.

Kitty cries out a second time, grabbing Tommy’s arm and trying to shove the limb back through the bars.

He withdraws, cradling the seared arm against his chest. His other shoulder is clearly dislocated. The bruise capping that shoulder deepens further in color, as do the blisters on his arm. Yes, even as I watch.

Tommy is healing, and too quickly for a not-wholly-manifested eleven-year-old. He’s barefoot, his toes misshapen and partially clawed. He’s wearing only jeans, torn at the knees and frayed at the hems. Though they might have been that way before he was kidnapped.

He’s definitely not an awry but a shifter of some sort— and seemingly stuck in the middle of a transformation.

I can’t get a solid read on the energy underlying this partial shift.

Perhaps the protections coating the cage are fucking with my senses.

But it feels as if an ancient power, completely different than the essence that fuels me and Kitty, pulses through his veins.

“You came,” he rasps through his misaligned vocal cords. His eyes are bright with fever, or with the power of his beast. “Mirth. You came for us.”

“I did,” I say, perfectly steady. “Always … we’ll make sure this never happens again, but I’ll always come when you need me.”

“Okay.” Tommy closes his eyes, slumping in the center of the cage and carefully avoiding the bars.

“What have they done to you?” Kitty sobs.

“Shot me up with something,” Tommy says wearily. “It triggered me … my essence. They thought maybe I was awry. Like you.” He laughs harshly. “Boy, were they wrong.”

“They could have fixed your arm. Clothed you,” I say, completely pissed, and not quite certain why I’m fixating on those details over the kidnapping itself.

Maybe because I’ve nearly been kidnapped — or at least solid attempts have been made to kidnap me — so I’m used to it …

It’s probably best to not pick at that bit of possible psychosis right now, though.

“They said I should fix it myself,” Tommy murmurs. “That it would make me more valuable to fully reveal my beast.”

“Not forced like this,” I snap. “You’re still too young. Your body might handle it, but your mind will …”

Tommy offers me a twisted smile. It looks like it hurts. “Maybe … you can worry about that for me, hey? I’m … I don’t want to hurt anyone, but the cage is making me sick.”

“Stay here, darling,” I say to Kitty.

She hunkers down on her heels obligingly. Then she raises her phone and takes a picture of Tommy hunched and partially transformed in the cage.

“Hey!” he protests.

“Evidence,” she says with a shrug.

I skirt the cage, looking for the latch. When I find it, it appears completely manual. But it’s coated in the essence that burned Tommy so badly.

“Out of my realm,” Coda says. The tech has been very quiet, though I have no doubt they’ve also been continually working in the background.

Aware of the children watching me, I take the phone off speaker and press it to my ear. “There’s a powerful mage involved.”

“Multiple mages,” Coda says. “But don’t worry, your men are on their way to you now. There was … an incident, but it gave the earl a chance to flex, knocking everyone out with one of his light tricks. He just, ah, inadvertently blinded Bolan at the same time. So the healer had to step up.”

“Permanently blinded?” I ask, completely cool. But remembering Elias’s story about how his power first manifested.

I’m not numb. Just perfectly in control, focused.

“Ah, no. The wolf keeps shaking his head and grumbling about it. But like I said, they’re only a few minutes away now.” Coda suddenly hoots, completely distracted. Then they add, “I’m in!”

“Who the fuck are you!” a deep voice shouts.

I glance over my shoulder.

The shorter of the two backstage crew members is moving toward us. The second guy is behind him a moment later. Both definitely shifters, judging by their speed.

Kitty cries out.

Coda says something in my ear, but my hands are already falling to my sides, my phone tumbling to the pedestal.

I straighten. My already awoken power pours from me, lapping around my ankles and curling around my hands, eager but obedient. Because I’m not a fifteen-year-old girl who’s just been rejected by her soul-bound mate. I’m not in fear for my brother’s life.

I’m not scared of the responsibility that comes with this power anymore. Not concerned about what my father will demand of me, demand I do with it.

I’m a princess with a sworn duty.

I’m an awry with an inherent responsibility and the sheer power to protect other purple-eyed essence-wielders like me. Like Kitty.

I am Mirth.

I apply all that intent, all my focus, to the two charging shifters.

The shifter farther away from me has a phone to his ear. I rotate my wrists, unfurling the power curled around my forearms. With another casual flick of my fingers, and a long whip of pure essence for each, I wallop the two men directly in their chests.

Their eyes widen.

They stumble, their phones clattering to the ground.

Then they laugh.

The sound burbles up within them, pouring out of their mouths completely involuntarily.

They clutch their throats, falling to their knees while roaring with peals of gleeful laughter. Clutching their bellies, then their heads, in extreme, unfettered, mind-melting joy.

The nearest guard falls face-first to the floor, convulsing. Still laughing.

“What the fuck?!” Coda shouts — darkly delighted and talking over the speakers of Kitty’s phone now.

Both of the kids just look at me, wide-eyed and a touch fearful. Not even a hint of amusement in their gazes.

“It’s all right,” I say. My voice isn’t gentle or sweet or all that cool anymore. “You belong to me. I would never, I could never, hurt you.”

Kitty, pointedly not looking at the still-convulsing shifters, skirts the cage. She pauses to pick up my phone but is already reaching for my hand as she straightens.

I take the phone from her, then I take her hand. Her skin is a little cool to the touch, so I rub my thumb across the back of her hand.

She blinks up at me, intently holding my gaze. “Tommy. The cage. And you … Mirth,” she whispers.

Her vision, she means. She’s just seen her vision realized. She smiles.

“Let’s go home,” I say, my tone a little softer.

“Yeah,” Tommy says. His voice is ragged with pain. “We … Kitty and me … our mom … she … we can’t go … home.”

“I’m going to get you out of the cage. I’m going to get you healed. Then you’ll both come to my apartments here in London, and you’re going to eat and sleep. In whatever order feels best. Tomorrow, we will start sorting out all the rest, okay?”

“Okay,” Tommy says gruffly. His gaze flicks to his sister.

Kitty, still gripping my hand, just grins back at him. No doubt still ecstatic at seeing her vision realized.

He huffs, exasperated. In that way that only an older sibling can be exasperated at a younger.

And I smile. I smile at the remembrance of Armin huffing like that at me.

It still hurts. It’s always going to hurt, but it’s not debilitating.

I wind a thick tendril of my essence around my hand, then grasp the latch of the cage.

But before the essence protections sealing the cage dissipate under my touch, the sound of motors rumble awake all around us, above and below.

A section of ceiling directly above us slides open.

The pedestal underneath us jerks into motion.

Kitty stumbles into me.

Tommy shouts.

“Fuck!” Coda cries through Kitty’s phone speakers. “That’s not me!”

I could grab Kitty and jump from the pedestal, abandoning Tommy.

But I don’t.

I wrap my power around myself, around Kitty — who clutches at my hand even harder — and around the cage. I peer upward as the mechanical pedestal carries us into the theater overhead.

We’re propelled through the floor and thrust onto the stage above, the platform fully sealing the hole that appeared overhead. I close my eyes against the bright lights flooding the area. But I can still sense the space open up around us.

A heavy hush falls over the crowd gathered beyond those bright lights. A silence so deep I swear I can hear Kitty’s quick, panicked breaths and Tommy’s heart racing.

I open my eyes, blinking against the lights for a moment. Thankfully the main spots are focused on the display — no doubt in the process of being auctioned off — to my right.

The Banksy. With the purple-eyed angel in the bulletproof vest.

Just a little ironic.

I sweep my gaze across the crowd before me.

If this was once a traditional theater, the raked seats have been removed, though the golden gilding and deep-red velvet curtains remain along the walls, pillars, and sconces.

The patrons of the illegal auction are arrayed at round tables, six or seven people at each.

Deep, large booths are set along the sides of the room, and a few upper balconies fan out alongside the stage.

Every single patron, all of them decked out in suits and pretty dresses and expensive jewelry, stares at me, frozen in uncertainty that quickly edges over into unrestrained fear.

Because my eyes blaze with the power writhing around me and the children. My unfettered essence undulates across the raised stage, primed to cascade over the edge and into the audience.

I smile, fierce and biting.

When I open my mouth, it’s not my sweet princess tone that gently flows through my words.

“I’ll deal with the rest of you entitled, soulless assholes in a moment. But which of you sick fucks thought you could kidnap children in my fucking realm?”