A DENSE FOG SKIRTED THE MENAGERIE TENT, the white sidewalls almost invisible in the mist. A sign with the words Hungry Lion, Keep Out hung by a wire on a rusted stake stabbed into the entrance pillar of the tent. Leanna had only a moment to read the carved words before being pulled through the curtain flaps.

Though her heart pounded a maddening rhythm, Leanna's screams warped. Her fight too dwindled when her eyes fell upon the beautiful beast sleeping regally inside of an intricately carved gold and red wagon. Leanna blinked away the sawdust drying her eyes to take in the majestic sight. Having read much about them, never would she have imagined them to be so large, and in a troublesome paradox, so frighteningly gorgeous. Its caramel mane kissed by reddish strands glowed under the faint gaslight, infusing the terrifying creature with a dreamlike quality. But looking to the large paw that dangled from in between vine fashioned bars, Leanna could only think of the nightmare she was set to endure at the mercy of that lion.

"Ben, the keys!" Tomas growled suddenly into the shadows. Leanna sucked in a breath and held it, afraid as the lion rustled at Tomas' booming voice. Thankfully, it didn't waken. She tore her gaze reluctantly from the sleeping animal to the shadowed corner Tomas called to.

Squinting, Leanna noted the silhouette of a child dozing off on a wooden stool tipped back onto two hind legs. She could barely see him as light did not follow into this dark corner. Only his snores were audible, and small black boots visible in a rogue stream of light.

"Ben!" Tomas roared again. This time the young boy jerked awake with a startled moan, his stool tipping forward. Her eyes now adjusted to the dark, Leanna watched as he pushed his red cap back away from his eyes. His head downcast, he fetched blindly for a ring of keys looped on a post. With a weighty sigh, Ben stepped into the light.

Leanna bit back a gasp. Why, he was not a boy at all, rather a man! In fact, he appeared to be older than her father, though much shorter. What remained of his silvery hair was combed over gaping baldness, half of which vanished under the hat barely hanging on his head. He shuffled toward them, scratching an ear. They were pointed.

Ben turned his little eyes to Leanna and smiled a smile of few teeth. "Come to see the lion have you?" he said merrily and jingled the keys in tune with his squeaky words. He then handed them to Tomas. At this, Leanna could no longer contain her fear and screamed louder than before, her nails digging into Tomas' seemingly impenetrable skin.

Ben cringed at the piercing shriek and his hands shot to his ears. "Why so frightened? It's only a lion," he said, but Leanna hardly heard him through her screams. Tomas tucked her under his arm and walked toward the cage, promptly sliding the key into the tarnished lock.

As if detecting the coming meal, the lion yawned. At once, Leanna quieted.

"Wait! I'll do it! I'll do it!" she said in heated whispers, not wanting to stir the sleeping creature any more. When the words left her mouth, she regretted them instantly. However, faced with two rows of sharpened teeth--and with escaping Tomas being as impossible as, well, as impossible as standing in the sun--Leanna pled with much more vigor. "Tell Finvarra I will do it, I will be his tightrope walker!"

Tomas stopped. Paralyzed by fear, Leanna shut her eyes tightly, now quavering like the last leaf on a vine. Would he toss her in anyway? she fretted. Heavens, would she really die this way?

A tense quiet settled above them, as if the world was holding its breath to hear her words echoing in the silence. In the void, Leanna's senses stretched and heightened, until catching the scent of vanilla and hyacinth lingering in the air. She realized then that the world wasn't the only one that heard her words.

The curtain flaps lifted with a sharp rustle. Leanna's eyes snapped open at the sound... as did the lion's. Leanna sucked in a breath with which to scream, but it withered when from the corner of her eye she saw Finvarra slowly walk into the tent, emerging from the night. The cold winds that carried his scent dispersed the surrounding fog, blowing it around Leanna.

Shoulders back, Finvarra strode forward, catlike, determined. His wintry eyes fixed solely on Leanna, he walked around the cage slowly, watching her in between its gilded bars. He trailed his hand behind him, letting a single ringed finger collide with each passing bar, one by one in even beats.

Finvarra stopped and took in a deep breath as if savoring the remnants of Leanna's words that hung in the air. He said, "Do the winds deceive my ears, or have you chosen to accept my offer?"

Leanna looked to the lion. Though her muscles quavered, she willed herself to remain still and pinned Finvarra with a glare of a thousand daggers. "I hardly consider it a choice," she hissed through clenched teeth.

Finvarra arched a brow, coming around the cage. Unsmiling, he released the last bar and held his hand out to Leanna. "We are all given a choice, and I have given you yours: the lion or the circus."

"Why not just let me go?" Leanna countered. "You can have any girl! Droves of them, more beautiful and talented would be here in a day's time if they knew you needed a new tightrope walker!"

Tomas released a breath, clearly agreeing. Finvarra tossed him a glare and then looked back to Leanna. "I don't want other girls, Miss Weston, or their beauty. It was you who brought back the necklace."

"Why does that matter! My mother could have given it to any of my sisters!"

"Indeed," Finvarra said with a single nod. "Yet she gave it to you..."

Leanna shook with fury and frustration. "Why can't you understand? I can't do this! I told you I won't tell anyone what has happened tonight. Let me go and I promise you will never see me again!"

Finvarra lowered his hand slowly, his gaze narrowing in the same drawl. He tilted his head to one side ever so slightly and regarded her for a curious moment, his eyes very blue.

"I've waited far too long for you, Miss Weston," he said finally, just above a whisper. "How could I possibly let you go now?"

Leanna blinked, speechless against this man who stared at her as if having revealed the most obvious of truths. The world seemed to slow once more as the events of the night pieced themselves into a devastating reality. Leanna paused. It couldn't be that Finvarra thought—no, surely it couldn't be that—

"You think I'm her..." she muttered dreadfully.

All the blood drained from Leanna's face as Finvarra only stared and exhaled a slow white cloud. Heavens, he did!

An arched cry mixed with a humorless laugh exploded from Leanna's mouth. "Surely you can't! I am nothing but a girl—"

"Whatever you are, Miss Weston, you will be the death of me. I need you..." The overwhelming vulnerability warring against the ice in his stare left Leanna breathless, wordless, and confused. He said, "Maybe, just maybe, we can free each other."

Finvarra cut off any attempts at speech, extending his hand once more. His wolf eyes were steeled, and Leanna knew she would get no answers, not until she answered him. She lowered her eyes to his outstretched hand and twined her fingers, hesitating.

"The cages then," Finvarra ordered, whisking aside like a black brushstroke.

"Wait! I said I would do it! I... I will be your tight rope walker," she said, adding only, "And I'll have you know, you are still the most insufferable human being on this entire earth!"

"Insufferable, yes. Human being..." he shrugged unsentimentally, and held out his hand once more.

Leanna crossed her arms tightly over her chest. "I said I would do it... but I have a condition," she said, hoping her voice didn't quaver an awful lot.

Finvarra squinted his eyes with a lazy smirk. "You trespass into my circus, and are now standing mere feet from your death--a rather gruesome death, might I add--and are proposing a condition?"

"Indeed I am." Leanna held her chin a little higher. What did it matter anyway? After all she was set to die, and very gruesomely at that.

Finvarra leaned back onto the gilded bars of the cage, a dangerous amusement flickering in those very blue eyes. "And this condition," he waved his hand absently, encouraging Leanna.

"I must be allowed to go back home to say my goodbyes. I couldn't bear leaving my Papa to fret over my life without as much as a word." Leanna lowered her eyes, remembering their discussion that morning. He would never forgive himself upon finding her missing, and the thought birthed a knot in Leanna's throat. Sure he'd cared more about establishing Lydia and Sarah, but Leanna was sure he loved her in his own way--a guilt induced love perhaps because of her heart, or a responsibility driven love because she was her mother's favorite, but love nonetheless.

Finvarra was silent, to where Leanna swallowed her hurt and played to his logic. "A-and it would benefit you greatly. If they discover me missing, they will come looking for me. To be honest, sir, you don't have the best reputation when it comes to girls—missing girls. I have no doubt that this is the first place they will come looking for me."

Finvarra arched a brow. "Is that a threat, Miss Weston?"

Leanna gasped. "Of course not! But sadly, it is the truth. They will think you are holding me against my will—which you are—but you needn't worry. I won't tell them that. I will say my goodbyes and come back." Leanna braved staring into those frigid eyes. "Besides, how could I not come back? You said I'd be the death of you. That is simply a pleasure I could not pass up."

Finvarra mirrored her stance and crossed his arms over his chest. "And this family you wish to go back to is the same one you said thought you a burden, and wouldn't miss you were I to want your heart?"

"I suppose so, yes," Leanna said quietly. It all sounded so much worse when said out loud.

"And the ones that wouldn't have allowed you to come to my circus, nor believe you if you told them of what has happened to you tonight, but rather they'd lock you in an asylum?"

Leanna's lips tightened. She had said that, hadn't she?

She nodded.

Finvarra was quiet for an added moment, thoughtfulness in his stare. Another moment and he pushed off from the cage. Leanna's heart took to savagely beating against her chest as he neared her. But despite her desire to flinch, Leanna willed herself to freeze as Finvarra poked a cold finger into her cheek.

He retracted his hand, and a line creased his brow. "Are you sure you're not a troll? They're the type to make strange bargains like the one you've just made me, and well, I utterly despise trolls."

"Nasty little lot they are," Ben murmured from behind. Tomas hummed in approval, and Finvarra too nodded.

Bemused, Leanna opened her mouth, and closed it. She opened it again, and shut it once more. A troll?

Finvarra sighed slowly. "I suppose I will have to wait until morning to see whether you are or not. Until then, if you are still alive by the end of rehearsals tonight, I will consider letting you go home." He extended his hand.

If she were alive? Leanna wondered. What could he possibly mean by that? Leanna bit her lip and surveyed his hand. "How am I to know that I can trust you?"

Finvarra's face turned very serious. "You shouldn't," he said. "Now your word, Miss Weston?"

Boring her eyes into his, Leanna shoved hers hand into his hold without hesitation. With a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, Finvarra's fingers coiled gently around Leanna's hand and the corners of his lips curled like the wrought bars on the lion cage.

Before Leanna could wonder what she'd just agreed to or what on earth Finvarra found so amusing about their agreement, Finvarra pulled her closer and spun her under his arm in one fluid move, the only music being Leanna's sharp intake of breath. Finvarra pressed her back tightly against his chest, their flushed bodies facing the cage.

Just as his hands kept her captive, it was his soft voice against her ear that now imprisoned her, saying, "You have given me your word." He said nothing more. There was no need. Proof of what would happen if she went back on her word slept in front of her behind golden bars.

Finvarra held Leanna there an added moment, quiet, his fingers gripping her upper arms tightly... gently... until releasing her. Leanna's mind urged her to move away. Before she could heed its guidance, a sparkle caught her eye.

Slowly, Finvarra lowered her crystal necklace until it rested on the delicate skin beneath her collarbone. A shiver curled through her, cascading down her backbone at feeling his hands on her neck. Leanna all but turned to ice.

"I believe this belongs to you," he said. His breath strummed lightly against the nape of her neck, a warm comfort in the coolness of his touch. Finvarra's hands lingered there, not abandoning her for another moment. A breeze then blew, and she felt him no more.

Leanna spun wildly, insults on the ready. Her mouth opened, but no words came. She looked at Tomas, and then at Ben, but Finvarra was gone.

Shocked, she could only let herself be led to the curtains by Tomas.

"Miss Weston," Ben called from behind them. They both turned to the small man who retracted the keys from the wagon lock and jingled them once merrily. "Welcome to Finvarra's Circus!"

A short time later, and Leanna trembled, digging her nails into the wooden pillar she clutched savagely. In front of her, Kioyo ran a hand frustratingly through cropped black hair that he fisted at the nape. He stomped his bare foot on the wooden platform... a platform leagues in the sky.

Leanna's eyes darted around to the surrounding open space. The lights from below did not reach up toward her nightmarish heaven. Only the glow of the lamp beside her offered any console, as did the small glow of the mirroring lamp on the opposite platform. The light however was faint, and the wire seemed to vanish in the distance, swallowed by darkness.

WIth what little she knew of Finvarra, Leanna thought it to be all an illusion. There was probably no rope, she thought morbidly. He had said if she made it through rehearsals alive. Her heart quavered a little faster. If only she'd held out and refused Finvarra a little longer. If only she'd fought Tomas a little harder... if only she'd listened to her father....

"Are you listening to me, or do you want to fall head first? Tell me now. I'm better off pushing you to your death than wasting my breath!" Kioyo said angrily. He jabbed a pointed finger into his temple with each word.

Leanna begged her body to move, to at least nod in agreement, but arrested under her frantic heartbeats, it simply wouldn't listen. All she could do was grip the column tighter and stare at this boy who, though not much older than she, spoke to her as if she were a stubborn child. His ears pointed slightly, and his nose was very pronounced. He was beautiful in a feral sort of way, as one might think a lion, or rather a wolf howling at a harvest moon.

But his wolfish beauty could not hide the utter disdain he felt for Leanna. How passionately he had argued when told by Tomas how he was to train her. Kioyo's glare then could have branded Leanna's pale skin. That had been what seemed like lifetimes ago to Leanna, and in the hours passed, the idea had yet to grow on Kioyo. Evident as he held an open palm toward her with four fingers at attention before his face.

"You have four days to learn this routine—four! If opening night arrives and you haven't learned it by then, you're on your own. You will not embarrass me, you will not embarrass Finvarra, and you will not embarrass this circus. Now, on the count of three, I will step out onto this rope. You will then take my hand and join me," he said extending his hand sharply. "And whatever you do, for heaven's sakes, do not look down!"

Leanna's eyes instantly darted south. The ground zoomed out, lengthening the distance in her blurred eyes. Her stomach lurched painfully and Leanna jerked back with a pitched cry. "I can't do this! I can't!" she cried. "I am listening, but you talk so fast—this is all happening so fast! I shouldn't be up here! I am not fit to do this!"

Kioyo scoffed, his black eyes unforgiving. "And you believe in magic?" he posed mockingly.

"Yes! I believe in magic! I believe in card tricks, and rabbits being pulled from top hats--just like I believe in falling to my death!"

"For the love of Forever, you will not fall!" he said for the umpteenth time that night. And as with each time, his passionate conviction struck Leanna oddly to where she was tempted to believe him. Maybe she wouldn't fall. But just as times before, Leanna looked down over the platform and her bravery shrunk like the ground below.

"It is only a rope! A rope on which to walk on like you would walk on the ground! The audience expects you to dance, suspended in the air, save for this blasted rope just as I've showed you, yet you can't even walk across it!" Kioyo groaned irritably. "Ellie never fell, and neither will you!"

Kioyo stood there, waiting for his words to take root. They did. The bitterness in his voice only grounded Leanna's fear to her heart, and her feet to the platform. She cluthed her necklace tightly. "Can't I at least wear a harness?"

"Ellie never wore a harness," Kioyo retorted through clenched teeth, then thrust his hand out again while shifting back onto the rope effortlessly.

"Of course she didn't. She floated to the ground with little trouble," Leanna snarled passionately, aware of how crazy it all sounded. "What of me, then? In case you haven't noticed, I don't have wings sprouting out from my spine. I can't fly!"

Sensing no sympathy from Kioyo, Leanna groaned. "I've never so much as ridden a horse, much less climbed a tree. This is beyond my abilities. P-Perhaps if we start a little closer to the ground where I'll have the possibility of living to try it all again when I fail?"

"Excuses," Kioyo muttered and paused. His midnight eyes, that slowly grew yellow, much like a feline's eyes, narrowed. "And when you're done with them, we will proceed."

At once he came at her in one lithe move. Before Leanna could process his words or the change in his appearance, she was cradled in his arms being carried across the rope. The ground below drifted by as smears of reds and browns, light and shadow, until the opposite platform once again blocked her view.

"When you are ready to stop complaining, cross over to the other side," Kioyo snipped. Just as quickly, he deposited Leanna on the cold wooden platform and spun on his heels. Leanna reached for his arm--that was much hairrier now--but it slipped through her fingers. She could only watch wide-eyed as he walked across the cord and climbed down the only ladder, scowling at her with each step taken. Breathless, Leanna called to him, but against her pleas, Kioyo vanished through the tent curtains. Only Tomas remained standing guard at the door, staring out into the night.

Fear a poison, Leanna crumbled to her knees. The splintered wood dug into her stockings, but she flattened herself against the platform. Grasping the edge tightly, she didn't dare move. She could only scream continuously, desperately.

One by one, the gas lights below extinguished, and no one came.

The night wore on, growing colder. Leanna lay, gazing up to the black and red stripes on the canvas roof. Her cries of help long faded to hoarse whispers, to silence once it became clear no help would come. Time too fell to a void. Finvarra must have cursed the night with his timelessness, Leanna thought fleetingly, as the darkness seemed endless.

Lost to despair, morbid thoughts drifted within Leanna's mind playing as smoky figments in the black canvas above. Clearly she could see her lifeless body tossed amongst the brambles and downed leaves of Abbey Forrest. Her brown curls, matted and knotted, would shield her vacant expression and pale face.

Goodness, what would her family say when told of her demise? she wondered. No doubt Finvarra would take nothing of her body seeing as he did not find her beautiful, nor did he want her heart. No he wouldn't be blamed. Would her family think that winter had claimed her? Or that maybe her heart had abandoned her? No, Leanna thought. They would say she was foolish for having wandered so far from home, knowing that her heart would fail. Her poor, poor heart...

Leanna clasped a weary hand over her chest. A gentle pulse hammered just beneath her skin with a steady, unyielding melody. Tears brimmed in her eyes, and in the lonely cold, a merry sound bubbled in her throat. It spilled from her lips as laughter. How wrong they would all be! That heart that struggled within her, though broken, beat. In the face of fear and scorn, of loneliness and cold--on top of the world with death being the only way down, it beat on.

Somewhere in the middle of manic hopelessness and dazed lunacy, Leanna pushed up onto her elbows. She blinked away the lingering tears and glanced across the wire, stiffling the laughter. No, her heart would not be the end of her, neither would the cold. She would not die a coward.

Another breath, and Leanna slid her dangling feet onto the platform and rose. The journey to the other side seemed never-ending, but Leanna's crazed determination was not swayed. Perched on the edge, she tacked her gaze on the opposite platform and sucked in a breath to steady her quavering. Her muscles stiff and aching, she slid one bare foot forward. Cautiously she felt for the cord. It wobbled, but much less than she imagined.

Maybe Kioyo was right, her conscience whispered. Maybe she could do this...

Leanna held fast to this notion and curled her toes around the thick wire. Extending her arms at her sides, Leanna steeled her back as Kioyo had said, and slid her hind foot onto the cord. Not breathing, she slid the back foot forward along the rope.

One step.

Another.

At once, fear triggered tears and blurred the platform in the distance.

Leanna blinked.

Instead of riding her eyes of tears, the action wiped the fogginess of her mind, and she sucked in a breath realizing that she stood on a rope about to walk across! The spell now broken, fear buckled her knees and the rope jerked beneath her violently. Too late to turn back, Leanna screamed, twisting her toes around the wire. Her hands waved frantically at her sides, grasping the open spaces for balance. But there was only air, and it slipped through her fingers. The fabric of her red dress billowed in the wind as she fell, a crimson leaf in the dead of autumn.

Leanna shut her eyes and the world slowed as she fell...

And fell...

Until she fell no more.

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Thank you for reading! Please vote and comment if you enjoyed the chapter!

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