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Overview
Arcanium: Part One – a box set
1 – Fortune He's the reason to be careful what you wish for.
2 – Carousel These days, she's traveling in some unusual circles...
3 – Aerial Friends are supposed to stick together, but now they can never let go.
Welcome to Arcanium, the Circus of Lost Souls. Stay a while and feast your senses on the world-famous collection of human oddities and marvels, with death-defying daredevil acts and breathtakingly beautiful performances of strength and skill.
Unbelievable talent, undeniable passion, unspeakable horror! You won't believe your eyes!
Just take care not to make a wish in front of the fortune teller or threaten any of the cast, or else the denizens of this demonic circus will ensure there is hell to pay. Literally.
These are the stories of the cast of Arcanium—and the wishes that bind them there.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781839433702 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Totally Entwined Group |
| Publication date: | 02/25/2020 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 943 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Copyright © Aurelia T. Evans 2020. All Rights Reserved, Totally Entwined Group Limited, T/A Totally Bound Publishing.
“Young lady, if you don’t start behaving right this second, I’m going to leave you at the circus and go home without you. Do I make myself clear?”
A tired, sunburned little girl who was about eight or nine replied, “Maybe I want to join the circus. I bet it’s better than being with you.”
“That’s it, missy,” her tired, sunburned mother said. She grabbed her daughter’s hand. “We are going home right now, and I’m sure your father will have a few words to say when we get there.”
“It’s just as well,” Derrick said, as he slung an arm around Maya’s shoulders. “Didn’t she see the signs?” He nodded at the carved wooden signs at the circus’s entrance.
Adults Only after 8 p.m. Wayward children will be fed to clowns.
“That’s not going to help anyone’s coulrophobia,” Maya said with equal amusement.
Derrick could joke, but the pale skin under his copious freckles was brighter red than the girl or her mother, which told Maya that however jovial Derrick was now, she’d get an earful in the morning. ‘Why didn’t you remind me to wear sunscreen?’ he would moan, conveniently forgetting or pretending to forget that she’d tried to get him to put sunscreen on multiple times. Each time he had declined the offer, saying he’d keep to the shade or didn’t like the smell of coconuts.
“When did they start including a circus at the Renaissance faire anyway?” Derrick asked, squinting at the tan canvas faire tents to try to read the signs posted along the rows. It was hopeless, because Derrick also disliked wearing his glasses.
“I think this troupe started out here during the Halloween festival, and management thought they’d be good in summer with different costumes,” Maya said. “They said something in the paper about that.”
“Doesn’t seem very Renaissance-y,” Derrick said.
“Well, a lot of the stuff here isn’t very Renaissance-y,” Maya said. “It’s more like Indeterminate Fantasy Time Period Before the American Revolution. But they can’t fit that in the brochures. Besides, you’re not very Renaissance-y either,” she added, poking his side.
After much cajoling on Maya’s part, he’d deigned to wear a tunic-like shirt that could pass for peasant. And his leather sandals got points for effort. But Maya was pretty sure neither medieval nor Renaissance men nor men of Middle Earth wore board shorts.
Maya, on the other hand, had gone all out. Her corset was one of the main reasons Derrick had agreed to the peasant shirt in the first place. She wore a peasant blouse of her own underneath, but the buttons were completely undone over the top of the corset, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. What the hell—it was hot outside and the corset was binding enough. Her legs got some air too under the flowing skirt.
And she had put on sunscreen.
“You want to go in?” Derrick asked. “There’s still a few rows of vendors we haven’t hit yet.”
“What? You want another fabulous jester hat?” Maya asked.
“I can be your one-man circus, baby,” Derrick said with a grin. “I’m your clown, your juggler, your magician and you can be my flexible acrobat.” He leered at the generous view of her cleavage.
She usually didn’t expose herself like this, preferring to keep everything contained and maintained, but faires were different, like Halloween—one of the few times and places during the year where a lot of skin wasn’t out of the ordinary. She’d seen enough busty ladies this afternoon to feel she’d have been more out of place wearing one of her normal, more conservative outfits.
Anyway, the costume was kind of freeing, and how Derrick looked at her now—and the way that any number of people did a double take as she passed by—made her feel not powerful per se, but desirable.
The feeling didn’t suck.
“I’m not exactly sure where you expect me to be flexible. My corset’s not Victorian regulation, but I can’t really…bend,” Maya said, demonstrating. “But yeah, sure, we can see the circus. I mean, the faire’s going to close soon anyway. You know, I think I read that the circus is supposed to have a human oddities section. I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“Human oddities? You mean like a freak show?” Derrick asked.
“The article called it ‘human oddities’,” Maya said.
“Politically correct for ‘freak show’. That could be cool. Or not,” Derrick amended, from the plaintive expression Maya shot at him. “Unless my nearsighted eyes deceive me, I think there’s a midway down yonder aisle.”
“A medieval pirate cowboy at a circus,” Maya said. “Saints preserve us, I’m confused.”
“Nothing more multiple-personality than a cosplay venue,” Derrick said. “Midway, milady?”
“Yes, let’s see more impressive feats of noodly-armed strength for dollar-store crap,” Maya replied.
Derrick glared at her, and Maya understood she’d stepped over that arbitrary line between humor and seriously questioning his manhood—a line that shifted on different days, as though Derrick hadn’t known her sarcastic self intimately for the last three years.
Then again, Maya had known about Derrick’s little sensitivities for the same amount of time. She hadn’t figured out when to shut her mouth yet either.