When Night Breaks

by Janella Angeles

  17

  Kallia couldn’t sleep when the bed felt nothing like her own.

  Her silk sheets itched against her every time she turned away from her bedside table. Her lush-cloud of a pillow demanded more fluffing. She felt too hot, too cold. Her body begged for sleep, for dreams.

  All night, her eyes wandered back to the small table.

  The black brass knuckles watched her from the dark. Thick black curves of cold metal, frozen with stolen pain and memories best left forgotten.

  Kallia entertained the idea of shoving them under her bed. Hell, throwing them out the window sounded appealing. But every time she reached over, she pulled back.

  The thought of touching them again, even for that, unnerved her.

  “Ridiculous,” Kallia hissed. She shot a glare straight at the door, through the lock, hoping Jack might feel it.

  Before he’d taken off for the night, he promised to stay somewhat close. Certainly not stationed in her own room, but not too far away, either. Not if the bodyguard act were to be believed.

  Kallia couldn’t ignore the practical advantages. It meant having his magic—some kind of power, at least—and all that came with it. No one would dare bother her with him at her back.

  It also meant staying close together at all times. He would have to escort her from room to room, accompany her on walks. Keep a steady watch on her through meals and parties. Dutiful, obedient, always at her side.

  The more the ruse came to life in her mind, the more she regretted suggesting it in the first place.

  Sleep was her only breathing space alone. The most time she would have to herself in this world.

  And even that was ruined.

  Kallia threw her head back into the pillow with a frustrated growl. The bastard had to have known what giving her those brass knuckles would do. Before, she’d accepted the memories he’d taken were simply lost. Just collateral damage in a convenient, cruel means to an end that left him unscathed. Disposing of the evidence should’ve been just as easy as well.

  And yet he’d held onto them. As if for the day when they might be returned.

  It never occurred to her that they could be, though that still didn’t make it honorable. Maybe he saw a step in it, but she saw no great leap. Just an empty gesture. They were hers, after all. Not his.

  Perhaps that’s what made it so frightening.

  The candle lights around her flickered before flaring to life as she rose, forcing herself to sit up against the headboard. Rubbing and dragging her hands down her face, she couldn’t stop her sideways glance to the object.

  At least you have the choice.

  Any choice of hers was gone if she felt even a splinter of fear. The chill of nerves up her spine, that flutter of doubt in her chest, even the grating itch from avoidance—there was only ever one way to make it stop. Pretending only prolonged it.

  A pang of curiosity existed as well. If she could stomp that out, all the better.

  Without thinking too hard, Kallia snatched the brass knuckles. Muscles tense, she weighed them in her palms, deciding which hand to crown before sliding them on her left.

  Her fingers curled into a fist to stop her from tearing them off too soon while she waited for sensation to take. Some strange feeling to unfurl. Jack hadn’t described what would happen if she decided to wear them, so the silence disappointed her. Surely a flash of familiar, or an image would take shape.

  Though if Jack had worn them every day, there had to be some trick to them. Not at all something that unlocked at will without permission.

  Kallia let out a deep sigh, relaxing the tension in her shoulders. Nothing would come to her if she didn’t welcome it inside.

  When Kallia finally closed her eyes, she heard it.

  An echo.

  Soft as a faraway bell. A warmth unfurled in her chest as she followed the gentle sound, growing louder. Clearer.

  Before her own scream thundered in her ears.

  And flashes like lightning struck between them.

  Her, running through the doors of Hellfire House, where the vast front lawn met the hard soil of the Dire Woods.

  Her, in a different dress, curiously walking along the forest’s edge.

  Then jokingly hopping near the rocky path as if challenged to a dare.

  One, where she had just tripped before a shadow rose over her. A few times, when she finally looked back, her mouth falling open in disbelief. The word on her lips, always the same: Jack.

  His name was a question. A scream.

  A whisper, then a laugh.

  The dream took her through. Strangers she’d never seen before danced across her vision. Above them soared the blurred faces of patrons from the club. Grins widening madly and top hats falling like rain. The recollections shifted from stranger to Jack, to her and Jack. So many to choose from, passing her by.

  The clearest one came at the knock on a door.

  At the sound, the lines of a room sharpened on command. Oddly familiar, with the shapes of the windows showing the night—

  Jack crossed the moonlight-streaked floor to answer the knocking on the door. Persistent as a drum.

  Who was on that other side?

  Not a friend, from the strained breath that rattled out of him. He pressed his brow against the frame, lost in thought, before he reached for the door handle.

  Kallia squinted as the door swung slightly ajar. It was still too dark to fully make out the figure on the other side, until she caught that first wink of glitter from a show costume. Black hair shining in waves past her shoulder. A wicked red smile that blazed fresh from a performance.

  It was her.

  A little bemused, Jack tilted his head. “Ah, firecrown. What brings you to my—” He cut deadly when the Kallia before him answered by lifting her hand. The shape of them was off in the fingers, with odd streaks running down to her wrist. “Is that blood?”

  “See, this is what happens when you decide to leave right after my act,” she huffed. “You miss the brawls.”

  “Brawls?” His next breath burst in a low growl. The door swung wide after him as he stalked back into his room with the smooth wave of his fingers lighting every candle in the room. “What the hell happened?”

  “Just rich fools being rude fools.” Kallia wasted no time strutting in and making herself comfortable. She perched herself on the large cushioned armrest of the soft by the fireplace. Legs crossed, bloodied fist held aloft. “I might’ve thrown a punch or two, as well.”

  “You sound pleased with yourself.”

  “Anyone stupid enough to steal a kiss deserves all the damage I inflict.”

  Before she’d even finished her sentence, Jack had already turned toward the direction of the door, a look of murder storming over his face.

  A long-gloved hand stopped him from behind.

  “It’s fine.” Kallia reeled him back in, slightly amused. “I took care of it. Trust me, his nose looks worse than my hand.”

  Jack’s frown hardened as he glanced down at the hand splayed by his chest. “While I don’t doubt that at all…” He stepped out from under her arm, placing it back on her lap. “I don’t tolerate that sort of behavior in my club, and everyone knows it.”

  “I can assure you, he more than knows that now. Same with everyone else.” She lifted her injured hand with a hopeless shrug. “A little help?”

  When he took a closer look, a slight hiss came through his teeth. “What happened, did you punch a knife?” He grimaced. “You should’ve fixed yourself up earlier.”

  “Bones are a more complicated puzzle, you know that.” She lightly kicked him in the shin from where she sat while wearing a pout. “Please?”

  Please.

  With his own quiet plea, he tipped his head back in deliberation. There was no denying the mischief in the pair of eyes before him.

  “All right, give it here.” Jack relented, cradling her injured hand in one of his while his free hand hovered over hers. “Hold still, it’ll hurt.”<
br />
  “I don’t need the warning.” The girl yawned, masking the small intake of breath. The bloodstains faded from her skin as though absorbing back into the veins. A soothing, calm minute of silence—before the quick little crunch that evened out her fingers.

  Kallia jerked, but made no sound. Even as the angry swelling around her fingers had begun to lessen, her expression remained every bit as closed. Only her eyes had turned glassier, just a little.

  “I just set your bone back into place,” he said, applying the finishing touches. “You don’t have to pretend like it doesn’t hurt.”

  “It was only a pinch.” She exhaled at the immediate relief once her palm fell to his.

  “You would sooner die than shed a tear.” A quiet laugh rolled in his voice. He bent each finger gently, experimentally. “How does that feel?”

  Kallia was too preoccupied by the room to answer. “So these are your chambers…” She took in every wall, traced each window. “It might be the only place in the House I’ve never seen. Sire never let me in, and now you, too.”

  Jack raised a brow. “I like my privacy.”

  “You like hiding.” After finishing her exploration of the room, her gaze dropped to their hands. “I wish you didn’t.”

  The silence seared in the space between them. Neither of them breathed, just as neither of them pulled away. As if allowing something to grow for a moment.

  Just a moment.

  “It’s late.” Jack eased her off the armrest to her feet and firmly let go with a step back. “You must be exhausted.”

  Jack had barely pivoted toward the door before Kallia stopped him again. This time she stepped closer, tracing her newly healed hand up the path of buttons on his casual shirt. A slow, leisurely journey that paused where the buttons were left undone at his collarbone.

  “I’m not tired.” She lifted her gaze to his in question.

  There came no answer as he refused to look back. The wind howled outside the window, trees shaking and clouds drifting, while they stood frozen for the first time.

  Or maybe they’d already been here before, and just hadn’t known. It could’ve been either. It was all so familiar, and new.

  Complicated.

  The shadows deepened beneath Jack’s eyes. As if he were the tired one among them, fighting sleep when it would be all too easy to fall right now. “You should go to your room.”

  Kallia stayed, head tilted in earnest. “Aren’t you curious?”

  “About what?”

  “I think you know.”

  Yes. The word breathed around them in sighs and echoes. Yes, yes, yes.

  Jack’s face stayed closed as a fist. Unyielding. “Curiosity like that makes people go places they cannot come back from.”

  “That’s no reason to not try,” Kallia countered. “We’ve been in this place together for a while now, just circling each other. Knowing each other, and learning more.” She walked her fingers up the collar buttons closest to his throat. “I want more.”

  More.

  It was the thing that came to Kallia in pieces, but never the whole. Never everything. And she no longer wished to choose what to keep and what had to wait in order to get what she wanted. She wanted it all.

  And he wanted something, too. Every time he looked at her.

  The candlelight flickered hard around them, the dark keeping the light on its toes. Jack drew back all the more quickly. “That’s not what this is about, Kallia,” he said slowly. “Or what it’s supposed to be.”

  “Then what is it supposed to be, Jack?” For every step backward, Kallia followed. A give and take that formed the dance they knew so well. “Because I don’t even think you know.”

  The air between them was charged, the tension so thick that neither of them hardly breathed. Kallia did a much better job at hiding it. Jack, not so much with the strain in his jaw. “I’m not—” he began a thought that quickly died. “I just know this wouldn’t work.”

  “How do you know this already?” she demanded. “We’ve done nothing.”

  It didn’t feel like nothing. It never did. And when the challenge in her voice dared him to finally stop thinking, to take, he addressed the taunt by taking.

  After another sharp look up at the ceiling—either a curse or a prayer on his lips—he stepped forward and took her face between his hands.

  The shock on her face was almost insulting. She didn’t think he would do it, didn’t realize how it would feel to be too close. He was always far too careful, too reserved to get too close to fire.

  His touch felt anything but careful, and their lips hadn’t even met yet. His hand slid slowly behind her neck, coarse fingers that pressed into the skin there. The brass knuckles, holding her closer with the slightest force and bite of pain.

  Her head tipped back, waiting.

  “Kallia.” His dark eyes, this close, held a certain light to them. She’d never noticed it before and wanted to remember it. To capture and bottle it for later.

  Jack’s lips coasted over her hair, pausing just over her ear.

  “Sleep,” he said.

  Kallia blinked hard in confusion.

  “I healed your hand, and that is all,” he whispered, watching her slowly drift away. Her body, slackening against him. “This conversation never happened. The adrenaline from the show exhausted you, and you went to bed right after I fixed your hand. That is all.”

  That is all.

  That is all.

  That is—

  Red exploded in her vision when Kallia awoke.

  Gasping, she clutched at her chest. Took in the scores of red across the walls and curtains and ceiling overhead.

  The color anchored her. Always had, which made the room the only thing she liked about the Alastor Place. Her heart drummed hard as she finally caught her breath when the dream began to fade. So vivid and sharp in some places, fuzzy in others.

  A bloody hand.

  The slow trail up a path of buttons.

  She was too dizzy to chase the rest of it, but more would come back.

  Clawing at the silky sheets damp with her sweat, she shuddered in relief when her fingers flexed out and formed fists with soft, little pops at the knuckles.

  She found the oddest indents marking the skin around them. For a few seconds she grazed over them in question, sharply curious before her eyelids began blinking slower, and slower. Fighting to stay open.

  Before finally, she succumbed to sleep.

  The party never stopped in a city that never slept. Though most of the magicians had turned in for the night, the streets still celebrated. The drinks still poured. Heels clacked like horse hooves against the cobblestone, while far more people loudly succumbed to the dirty, sticky ground with their bare feet and sweet sighs of relief.

  Jack snorted from the comfort of his roof. Resting on his back, both hands pillowed his head as he listened to the stragglers still roaming the streets. No night was ever peaceful when those on the streets fell into cursing matches or belted out drunken songs that nowhere near matched the melody playing on.

  It was the strange sort of music no one should miss, but Jack always found the oddest comfort in it. Hellfire House could never achieve quite the same symphony of chaos, though there were some nights when it had come close.

  And now he was back.

  You truly believe you’re indestructible?

  Any comfort he’d found earlier withered the instant he stared up at the sweeping darkness. It was better to be alone for this. This way, he felt more like an offering of bait splayed out on the roof, waiting.

  Every magician has his weaknesses.

  He waited for a whisper, a pull.

  A thought not his own.

  Jack waited for all of it in those hours beneath that dark, for something that might or might not come. Like a guessing game that only ended when the coin decided which side to fall on. There was always more terror in that uncertainty.

  That uncertainty that had haunted him, ever since he
left.

  Every illusion carries flaws.

  Jack was still waiting by the time more people had risen to explore the city again. The savory scents of street foods drifted all the way up to him, while a fresh, fast-paced melody started up in the air like the echo of a rooster’s crow marking the new day.

  At that, his eyes finally shut for a moment but found no sleep. Always beyond the reach of dreams.

  Nothing had arrived, but there was hardly any relief in it.

  Even a creature of both has his downfall.

  Jack looked back up at the darkness over him, wondering if all this time, the devils within had been waiting for him as well.

  18

  Can the Conquering Circus Actually Conquer Again?

  In an interesting turn of events, rumors have sparked that the not-so-quiet city of Glorian is once again playing stage to what is allegedly billed to be a glorious show by its current entertainers in residence, the Conquering Circus. Riding the aftermath of their disastrous competition debut, Spectaculore, who knows if this spectacle will actually promise wonderment, or once more end in unexpected dangers.

  Acclaimed show mastermind leading the Conquering Circus, Erasmus Rayne, insists the whispers of this new show is “nothing at all like Spectaculore” and will be “unlike anything Soltair has ever seen—in only the best of ways.” However true that may be, vague details invite more speculation.

  For such a fall from entertainment grace with their failure to secure a headlining act, it’s clear the Conquering Circus will need more than a few crowd-pleasing tricks to prove themselves as the Conquerors, or else become the Conquered—

  “How the hell did they get this out so fast?”

  Lottie snatched the paper right out of Daron’s hands before handing it over to Canary. “Need something to catch the bird droppings with in the tents?”

  “Even bird shit deserves better.” Canary took one look at the headline and burned the issue in her fist. In seconds, nothing but smoke and ash swirled around them. “Never much liked the New Crown Post.”

  That pleased Lottie. Daron, not so much, as he waved a hand about to clear the air. “Thanks,” he muttered. “Not like I paid for that or anything.”