“Of course not,” he bit out. “Eva and I always worked—”
“Together? Is that why you’re here and she’s not?”
Cold blood thundered in his ears. It ripped away the numbness like a curtain drawn back, revealing more. All that he’d missed and ignored so often.
There was him, every time he took final bows at his past shows, grabbing Eva’s hand so she could join him. And her fingers trembled. Always trembled in his hold.
Then the shadows under Kallia’s eyes—he’d seen shadows like that before. Exhaustion plagued them after every performance.
Though he felt none himself.
“I didn’t—” Daron couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. “I didn’t know…”
It never would’ve occurred to him when that wasn’t how the world worked. Magic couldn’t just abandon the magician and latch onto another, prey on another.
“No, you didn’t,” Lottie noted with genuine dismay. “Eva never even told me outright, but I’m good at connecting dots. I remember this one time when she showed up at my apartment late one night, practically halfway to death, while you were off at a post-performance party.”
Daron’s chest seized once more. “How could she say nothing?”
“She didn’t want you to know,” she scoffed. “Didn’t want your name tarnished … not only to protect your stage act, but because she’s your sister.”
“And I’m her brother,” he gritted out. To hell with their stage act. “I would never want to harm her in any way.”
Lottie flattened her lips, as if debating whether or not to say what she wanted to. But Daron already knew. Intent was a false shield when the harm was already done. Even if he hadn’t known the whole truth, the signs had been there. Even clearer with Eva.
Those moments of irritation. Comments that sniped at his starring role before deflecting with humor. The days she didn’t wish to practice with him. The long hours before their last performance when she wouldn’t smile. Not until she hit the stage.
Somehow, his mind had parted with these glimpses. As if grief only wanted to hold onto the good, the happy, and never anything else.
There was so much wrong he had to make right. So much broken he needed to fix.
His temple nearly banged into the window from the rocky jerk of the coach. The motion jolted him with an icy awareness of the trees outside, the weathered velvet of the seats. Zarose, he’d almost forgotten where he was altogether.
“Don’t worry Demarco, I have no plans to add more fuel to the fire.” Lottie inspected her fingernails. “Lucky for you, gossip never lasts. You’ll be fine not being Soltair’s golden boy for now. You’ll survive people hating you, losing whatever Patron privilege came with your name before everyone forgets—”
“Do you think any of that matters to me?”
His outburst shook the carriage, caused even the winds outside to fall still.
He stared hard at his palms, nausea roiling in his stomach. These hands, that had stolen so much. Careless. Thoughtless.
And deep down, he’d always felt something was wrong. Why else hide away after Eva had gone, from his aunt, from the stage, in the years that he’d become nothing?
Not nothing, something worse.
Daron suddenly wanted out of the carriage. He didn’t care what the Dire Woods would do. He needed to stop. To breathe. To scream so loud, the woods would bend.
“If you knew…,” he whispered, brow furrowed. “Then why say nothing, all this time?”
There had always been that fury in Lottie’s eyes. Even now, beneath her strange shadow of calm. “I couldn’t be sure until I met Kallia, but she wouldn’t have believed me. Nothing I said could change her opinion of you. Or keep her away,” she said with a small eye roll. “But aside from that, what good would that do to hang you out to dry?”
“You could’ve turned me in to the Patrons.”
A snort of a laugh. “I’ve been shouting about magician disappearances for years and it’s gotten me nowhere. The one time I covered one as a death, they actually cared enough to show up to the ‘funeral,’” she said, miming stiff quotation marks. “Now that the papers are all churning out the strangest shit I’ve ever seen, maybe they’ll finally take notice.”
Daron gave a wary nod. The stories spreading throughout Soltair would reach their notice, one way or another. With every terse, casual correspondence from Aunt Cata that week, it was the last worry on his mind.
“And besides, ruining you would only make you hate me more,” she continued. “And I’d rather see this to the end now that we have another shot.”
Daron blinked. “Another shot?”
“To do things differently.” Lottie’s thumb twitched, as if itching for a pen that was no longer there. “Searching in our own corners before didn’t bring us any closer to answers. And now—”
Her lip quivered as she stopped, but Daron knew that hope. “You think Eva’s still out there, too?”
He hadn’t dared voice it before, but the thought haunted him. She and Kallia had both vanished through mirrors, so reason stood that they might’ve landed somewhere similar.
The possibility fired up his pulse, but Lottie didn’t appear nearly as optimistic. “I don’t know. We can’t assume. Time matters so much in the case of a missing person, and a lot can happen in a day. For Kallia, it’s been a couple weeks. For Eva…”
Years.
Of nothing. Silence.
“It’s harder to tell when years like that pass…” The faraway look in her eyes cleared. “But our recent lead with Kallia is strong. So let’s take it.”
“With what?” Daron shook his head. “Without that club, there’s nothing else.”
Somehow, her smile deepened. “Just because Hellfire House was a dead end doesn’t mean there’s nothing. Only way to start figuring it out is by going back,” she said, pounding at the ceiling above. “And finally getting out of this—”
Their carriage slammed to a stop. Daron almost flew out of his seat as Lottie buckled forward with all of her papers sliding to the floor.
“What the hell”—Disheveled, she gripped the velvet seat to push herself back up—“was that?”
Head ringing, Daron helped her up. A chill numbed him at the jarring stillness, the alarm in the air.
And distant shouting, outside their window. Hoarse cursing from their coachman, at someone or something.
Odd. He’d never encountered other travelers in the woods before.
Daron opened the carriage door, shaky on his feet as he leaned out. “Everything all right?”
The hulking coachman whipped his head around with a grunt. “Delightful. Bloody white gloves and their little caravan won’t get out of my way until I declare my business.”
Daron’s stomach dropped. “What?”
“You sort this out.” He spat. “I’m just the reins. If I get taken in for driving some sad fool through these horrid woods day after day, I swear to Zarose…”
There was only muffled grumbling from there as everything inside him went cold.
White gloves.
A dull roar thundered in his ears. Before he knew it, he was suddenly out of the carriage. Lottie’s faint protests faded behind as he staggered out to a blast of fresh air. The world gone quiet once his foot touched the ground.
The Dire Woods.
Never walk through it. Every warning clung hard to him as the shadows of the trees pressed harder.
Among them, a surreal line of glossy white coaches blocked their path ahead, pristine as game pieces dropped across the board.
Your magic, and mine …
Echoes of Kallia’s voice swirled on the wind slicing through the trees. For a moment, he swore he saw her lounging atop the branches overhead, observing him hungrily like a bird watching a worm in the ground.
For a moment, he swore he was imagining those white carriages. And the person walking out.
Daron blinked hard, unsure which was the dream. Which was reality. Thos
e were the games these woods liked to play. The kind no one could win.
When he opened his eyes, Kallia had vanished.
The white carriages remained, as did the white-gloved woman walking out from them. Palms out, ready for a fight.
Daron’s fists remained at his sides as he took in every detail from afar. Even with swirls of silver, her hair was as dark as his, wrapped in an unforgivable bun. Angular spectacles framed around sharp, challenging stare. “Daron?”
Blood thundered in his ears at her voice.
She was no dream. No matter how many times he blinked, she remained standing there before him. And there was no other choice but to answer. “Aunt Cata.”
2
The spotlight found Kallia the moment she rose to her feet.
Applause followed. So startlingly loud, she froze. Her heart pounded, every desperate beat a question. Where, how, who? Every time she looked out for the answer, her vision watered against the piercing light.
So bright, dizzying.
The crowd cheered on, even when she shielded her eyes.
Never in her life had she ever wanted silence more.
Pulling in a breath, she forced her gaze downward, for something still. An anchor. That was the trick to balance whenever she spun over dance floors: focusing on the dirtied tops of her shoes and the smooth polished ground.
Kallia stilled, taking in the same shade of wood. Same lines and indents.
Even the smell—that old oaken scent that chilled her every time she breathed it in before a performance.
She was back. In the theater of the Alastor Place.
The applause raged even harder. Whistling, cheering.
Kallia
Kallia
Kallia
The song of her name was intoxicating as this spotlight she’d longed for like a fire in the cold.
It took everything in her not to close her eyes and enjoy.
“Kallia.”
She turned at the voice, lost in the roar of the applause.
Before it was all shattering glass—over her skin, numbing her ears against the shower of mirror shards in that endless dark. One moment in the Court of Mirrors, and the next, receiving a standing ovation on stage.
As though she’d just come off the greatest show of her life.
Kallia
Kallia
“Kallia.”
Her eyes flew open to light harsh as the sun. She searched for that voice. Those footsteps.
The smallest swirl of smoke entered in one thin tendril, pluming into a dark cloud, like night vanishing the moon. In its place, a figure slowly stepped into view, taking all light with him entirely.
Kallia edged back from the darkness he brought, familiar as the silhouette—the hint of a lean muscled frame in the sharp suit she’d know anywhere. “Jack.”
Not a question; a certainty.
He walked on, unfaltering. “Keep talking to me, Kallia.”
While his steps grew louder, the applause fell softer. The shadow rows of velvet seats behind him parted in strange whirls of smoke at his movement. A dream coming apart the deeper he cut into it.
“What the hell is happening?” Her voice broke as the walls bled, creeping to the stage. “What are you doing to me?”
Jack paused, his dark eyes narrowing. The regal tilt of them, sharpening. “You think I’m doing this?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” As if she didn’t know exactly what this was.
He’d gone back into her mind, as he did in Hellfire House. Soon she’d wake up recalling nothing, only to find his hand outstretched to her in concern. A hand she knew all too well. Kind and gentle at first, until it twisted.
She’d been here far too many times.
“Kallia, the longer you believe in all this, the longer it’ll keep you.” He dragged out a long breath, gesturing all around him. “You have to pull yourself from it now.”
There was no choice when Jack was by her side already. Far too close, too fast, that it forced her back a half-step—
And the rest of the theater disappeared.
Quick as a candle snuffed out.
Darkness stole over the world, and cold air ruled it. Pure as ice, whipping across her skin until she shivered. There was just barely enough light in this night to look down at herself, all tatters of her red dress. Scratches and cuts scored down the split hem, with the graceful swoop of her neckline left dirtied and frayed. Absolutely destroyed.
Yet when Jack presented himself, he looked infuriatingly perfect in his sharply fitted suit. Unaffected, save for the relief relaxing his stance. “Good. You’re out.” The tension in his shoulders dropped a fraction. “I was worried you might—”
Her fist connected with his nose.
Bone cracked.
Jack staggered back with a shocked grunt. If it left something broken and bleeding, it still wouldn’t be enough.
“Stay away from me.” Seething, Kallia shook out her fingers and turned. There was nothing more to say, and she wanted nothing at all to do with him.
“Kallia, wait.”
She kept walking. In which direction, she couldn’t tell. Anywhere far from him seemed the safest option.
“Do you even know where you’re going?” he called out. “You can’t go off alone.”
“Of course you would say that,” Kallia snarled under her breath. Just like all those times he’d told her to never go to Glorian because anything else just wasn’t for people like them.
Lies.
“Why would I ever listen to—”
At the hand on her arm, her blood seared. Her vision twisted red as she shoved him back hard in the chest. “Stay away from me.”
When he drew back this time, his face appeared no different than before. No blood or swelling, just the bone popped back in place without any hint of redness. Zarose, what would it take to make him bleed?
The burn in her chest raced all the way to her fingers in spears of flames.
She released them like daggers.
Jack flinched back. “Kallia, stop.”
His face glimmered from the fires coming for him—before he ducked away again. She didn’t mind when her name broke on his lips. The sweet fear in the sound. “You, telling me to stop?”
That never stopped him.
“I’m not going to fight you,” he said, watching her carefully. As though he wouldn’t hurt her, not even if she came at him with an axe dipped in poison.
“Good. Then this will be quick.” She’d waited so long for this, and one punch wasn’t enough. Her breath hitched as she pulled again, against the tug of pain in her chest, driving everything back into her palms.
All her rage, her fury. All the times in Hellfire House she couldn’t remember, and those fleeting moments when she did.
They would not go forgotten. She held them all and screamed as the tide roared out of her in a blistering wave.
Jack backed away, deflecting with the quicksilver glow of his palms.
More.
Kallia wanted him to burn. She gritted her teeth through that next pull, that sharp, terrible knife twisting—
Before it stopped.
The pain, the fire.
Panting, she blinked down at her dark hands. Nothing flickered in her veins. Just warmth growing cold and a hollow ache.
Come on.
It was there, she felt it.
She shoved everything she had into the next spear of a flame, her panting shortened when the spark died before hitting the ground.
Nothing.
She heard nothing, felt nothing.
Nothing.
“Kallia, stop.” Jack advanced, jaw set. “You’re going to draw—”
“What’s wrong with my magic?” She snarled, half-tempted to kick him down if he took another step. Her power was never an unsure element, never the flicker of uncertain light that pulsed within her now. It all felt different, wrong.
Nothing.
Without magic, she was nothing.
Silence followed, a beat too long as Jack’s eyes slitted. “You’re accusing me as if I wanted this?” he asked, his voice low. Deliberate. “As if I wanted to come here?”
Each word brought him a prowling step closer. Kallia didn’t flinch back, not even when they were almost chest to chest. Like a dance about to begin, a lead waiting to be taken.
“If I remember correctly,” he said, head tilting down at her, “you pushed me through the mirror.”
Kallia blinked slowly, the Court of Mirrors wrapping around her again. Only this time, there were monsters in the reflections, the world breaking in the mirrors that caged them.
This only ends by giving them what they want.
And then Kallia had pushed back. Pushed them both through.
“You remember now?” Jack bit out a laugh. “I see it on your face.”
He thought he knew her so well, thought he could read her so plainly.
“You were at the start of this, and clearly knew what it would take to end it.” She gave him nothing more than a cold, indifferent shrug. “I figured the only way to stop a monster is to give it another.”
After a long moment of silence, a low chuckle rose. “But even I’m not so monstrous as to touch your magic, if that’s what you’re implying. I would never dream of stealing that from you.”
Stealing.
The word thundered in her ears. Magic was in her blood. Immoveable. It didn’t even sound possible, before she remembered the way Demarco’s power abandoned him—
Kallia stilled as a faint light flickered in the back of her mind like a blur.
I would never steal magic from you. Not like him.
Jack’s words dug into her heart like a knife, and she shoved them out. “That’s not possible.”
“And when has that ever stopped magic?”
Lies. Treading over them was like walking a tightrope. She knew firsthand where it would lead should she fall: back in Jack’s hand, waiting to catch her.
When Night Breaks Page 2