A familiar, beautiful man stood behind the robber, plum eyes darker and more dangerous than I’d ever seen them. Night tugged the dagger out of the man’s throat and booted him off me.
Lying on the ground, I watched as Night turned on the rousing attacker, the size of a tree trunk.
But even he had enough sense to know when to run—and that’s what he did. He scrambled to his feet and bolted back into the trees.
Dagger tight in his gloved hand, Night rounded on me.
I almost cringed back from the ferocity of his stare, but I forced myself to push up from the ground.
“Good timing,” I said, brushing dirt from my crumpled ruffle skirt. My stockings were beyond salvaging. “A second later and I would have been roadkill.”
Night studied me as he lazily twirled his dagger in his hand. The silence thickened into something uncomfortable and I had the urge to fill it.
“I overslept this morn. That’s why I wasn’t there to meet you.”
He withdrew a rag from his pocket and wiped his dagger clean. “You put up a good fight. I would have been pleased to have you in the tournament.”
“They were going to kill me,” I said. “I had to fight.”
Night picked up my bloodied dagger from the dirt and ran his rag over it. “You’re tough,” he said, and handed my weapon back to me.
I tucked it into my belt. “Apparently not tough enough.”
Those unreadable dark eyes of his rinsed me over.
A smudge of blood stained his temple at the edge of his combed hair. I tapped my own temple. “You’ve got a little something there.”
Night touched his fingers to the stain of blood, but didn’t seem too bothered by it. That uncomfortable silence swept back over us, and I shot a glance back at the patient carriage driver—who, I hadn’t forgotten, did nothing to help me in my fight.
“I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for,” I said. “I need to get to the circus.”
Night checked his pocket watch, then looked up at the sky as though he could tell time from the sun and clouds. “Did you give any thought to my proposal?”
So the alliance was still on offer.
I couldn’t explain why, but a rush of anxiety and relief hit me. Despite what just happened, I didn’t trust Night.
I didn’t trust the shadows that danced in his eyes, and I didn’t trust his impeccable timing, or that he happened upon me so often. But to face men like the robbers alone was something I couldn’t worry about every minute of the game.
“Yes.” I gave a firm nod. “That’s my answer, I mean. Yes.”
Night nodded, not relieved, not disappointed. I had a prickling suspicion that he harboured some frustration with me. Was he upset that I’d overslept and missed our meeting, or that I was so far behind in the game already?
Despite not trusting him, I found that I didn’t like disappointing him.
How could a part of me surge with want for him and another part linger with unease? I wanted his approval, I wanted to never see him again.
This, I imagined, was how the girls back at Crooked Grove felt when they fancied an off-limits boy—a boy who came from another village, or a Knave who travelled with his unit across Hearts.
Night advanced on me lazily, and I thought of wolves eyeing a meal on a full stomach. “We’ll meet at the court in two hours, before sundown.” Darkly, he added, “Let’s see if you show up this time.”
Biting back my cut pride, I nodded and watched him leave without another word. Two hours wasn’t long, but I made good time to the circus in the carriage.
I hardly recognised the circus from the night before.
This, I thought. This is what I wanted to see.
The bland hat-shaped stalls now burst with life, flowing downhill like a sparkling river of rainbows.
Each sold something different, from cream pies and jester costumes to frilly dresses, fortunes and axes.
Performers danced around the lane, swirling ribbons through the air, setting off colourful sparks on the grass, and even balancing on unicycles.
Silver ribbons tied the stalls together all the way uphill to the vibrant red and black circus tent. At the corner of the tent, I could glimpse the chipped paint of the barn and other players slipping in and out.
More contestants bustled around the circus than I’d seen since I fell into the game. And as I noticed how many players swarmed the hill, I realised that their watch-globes were bright giveaways to their locations.
When we started to thin out, the watch-globes could be a major problem in the game—beacons to betray our positions.
But for now, there was no need for stealth.
Hand in my skirt pocket, I clutched onto the red juggling ball and marched into the tent.
Chapter 11
The tent flap fell into place behind me, and I was instantly sucked into the spectacle.
Crooked Grove wasn’t a village known for its wonder. Compared to the other settlements in Hearts, Crooked Grove wasn’t particularly bright, or colourful, or musical. It smelled like Catherine’s Bakery treats and sea salt, a dash of mud and a lot of karvka from the tavern. Not too many people lived in the village, not too many people visited.
So it wasn’t a place for a travelling circus. And it wasn’t until I entered that tent that I realised how much I needed a circus in my life.
I didn’t know where to look. At one point, I went cross-eyed, trying to drink it all in at once.
Jugglers tossed hoops into the air, and before they could touch the ground, tortoises leapt through them. Above on the trapeze, acrobats in sparkly leotards used their toes to grip onto the wire and whirled around in circles.
A woman in a top-hat and red tailcoat wielded a whip with a black tuft of fur at the end. Each lash of the whip on the stage sent the performers into a frenzy.
Acrobats switched from toes to teeth.
Jugglers swapped their hoops for fiery squares.
Puddles of goldfish bubbled until the water shimmered with pastel blues and pinks, and the goldfish morphed into clownfish.
I had to blink away the chaos before me, until my attention was drawn to one act. It drew me in, closer, and tickled my belly with the excitement of the mysterious.
Night’s effect on me sprung to mind.
Mesmerised, I stood in front of the bizarre walrus, taller than my own horse. Surrounded by a ring of fire, it balanced on a giant red ball, not unlike the smaller one in my skirt pocket.
Lips pinched, I studied the ball it balanced on. Was this my clue, I wondered.
Long tusks drooped from the walrus’ whiskered mouth, stained apricot orange like its flippers.
I made to reach out for its sad face when someone barged into my shoulder.
Pulled from my trance, I grabbed onto the hilt of my dagger on instinct. But the man who bumped into me muttered a low ‘sorry’ and rushed out of the tent.
He brought too much attention to himself. It took a single blink of the eye before a group of players slipped out after the chubby man.
Alone and against four other contestants, the round-faced man had no chance of keeping whatever clue he’d just discovered. If he was lucky enough to survive the attack, he might learn to use discretion after spotting a lead.
I turned back to the miserable-eyed walrus. I didn’t know a great deal about the animal, but there was an old tale that mentioned them eating all the baby oysters left on the shores of Hearts. Walruses weren’t a beloved creature.
As I stood there, gazing into its tired eyes, I wondered if it was pain I saw staring back at me.
To balance on a ball, caged in by a ring of fire all day long … it was a life of torture.
I stepped closer.
The heat of the flames hissed at my torn stockings and tickled my skin with the threat of burns.
Still, I reached out for the walrus and my fingers trembled above the flames, unafraid of burns, but wary of bites. I hesitated by the walrus’ hot nostrils—our gazes m
elded together for a pause.
Then a low, weary whine crawled up the animal’s throat, and all reluctance I had suddenly collapsed.
I touched my hand to its snout.
“Aren’t you something.” My voice came out in a gentle whisper, as if to hush its pain away. “I’ve never seen a walrus before, you know. I saw a sketch of one in a book once, and you look a bit like it, but … you’re bigger than I thought you’d be.”
I stroked between its hooded, silvery eyes. Intrigue stirred in them; a pot of liquid mercury. Terribly different to my own ashen eyes. Where mine were dull and cloudy, his were vibrant and rich with life, but I was the one alive and free, and he was the one trapped in fire.
“You’re really quite beautiful,” I said softly.
The walrus held my gaze the whole time. Thoughts danced in its mercurial eyes, as though it could understand what I said, or tried to plead for her help. A heavy pull tugged at my heart.
Guilt.
I was party to the walrus’ pain.
Words and pats weren’t enough to smooth away what it endured, because once I left to chase another lead, it would still balance on the red ball in the middle of a fire trap. My bile-scorched stomach couldn’t stand the idea of it.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered. “I’ll get you out of here.”
I grabbed the bucket of water by the chalk station and heaved it back to the walrus, who didn’t take its eyes off me.
None of the performers paid much attention to what I was about to do, and I wondered if they simply didn’t care or they hadn’t noticed.
Maybe this really was my lead, what my clue demanded of me. A test, perhaps?
Then again, it could have just as easily been a distraction. A ploy to pry the weak-hearted from the race.
There was only one way to find out.
I shoved the bucket onto the fire and watched the water slap out in waves. Flames sizzled and hissed into wisps of smoke. Before the last flame gave its final flicker of light, I was grabbing the walrus’ flippers and helping it down from the ball.
All I had to do was slip under the tent and take the walrus to the barn. It wasn’t much, but it was the best I could offer. A short reprieve from the walrus’ gruelling life.
But soon, someone would notice the walrus wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
The waddling creature beside me was hardly inconspicuous. Same went for the glowing, humming ball that followed us closely. Still, we moved like shadows and stuck close to the fabric walls, and nobody stopped us.
I made sure the walrus crawled out of the tent, then I followed, careful not to rip my stockings anymore than I’d already done.
As I rose up behind the marquee, opposite the barn, I noticed tufts of pale hair at the back of the walrus’ head. Human-like hair that matched its eyes, silvery like the sky as a storm brewed.
Could it be a Mock Walrus, I wondered?
Most regular walruses had been hunted to near-extinction decades ago—with the magic through the Glass Walls, they’d tried to bring them back, only the Mock Walruses ended up just like the Mock Turtles. Totally useless, barren, and lazier than me on a Sunday.
Once, they littered the rocky shores of Crooked Grove, all the way up to where sailors ported at Siren Sands, now a village of the past.
In those days, Crooked Grove needed oysters to sell to the nobles of Hearts. Oysters meant pearls. Pearls brought in money from beyond the Glass Walls.
But then, all the oysters vanished one day, until a fisher gutted a caught walrus and found all the oysters partially dissolved in its stomach.
Crooked Grove folk hunted and slaughtered all the walruses within the month. Neither the oysters nor the walruses returned to the shores of Hearts, and pearls became the rarest jewel.
I was lucky to have once seen a pearl.
Marybelle had a stash tucked into the hollow wood of her bedhead. Heirlooms, she called them. Passed down from when oysters littered the cold, pebble-beaches of the village.
The pearls weren’t round and white like I’d imagined they would be, but rather the shapes of squished, broach-sized lemons, the same shade as the Mock Walrus’ eyes and tufts of hair. Storm grey, mercurial, human.
Guiding the tired creature into the barn, I shook off the thoughts of human walruses and Marybelle’s hidden pearls. I found a cool spot near a pail of water to settle the walrus. It curled into a lazy ball on cubes of tied hay and lapped lazily at the water.
I stilled at the sound of a clang behind me.
Slowly, I looked over my shoulder to see Star, the animal carer. She leaned against a rickety table and peeled off her gloves finger by finger.
On her cheek, the glitter-star caught in the light of the watch-globe, but the light never quite reached her dark eyes that bore right into me.
A shudder ran up my spine, and I wondered if she had been there the whole time, or if she was like the tricksters, whose silent footsteps and quiet breaths made them excellent eavesdroppers.
“You wasted valuable time on an animal.” Star slapped her gloves to a chipped stool. “Do you not care about your place in this contest?”
My spine stiffened and an icy feeling bolted to my stomach. In a blink, I was on my feet and rounding on her.
“Someone had to help it,” I snapped. “Leaving it out there, balancing on balls, surrounded by fire—what is wrong with you?” I hit a stray curl from my twisted face. “You’re sick, is what you are. All of you. This game is nothing but a torture chamber. It’s messed up. The prize for us is escape, but the price these animals pay is imprisonment.”
Star studied me in silence.
A bud of guilt threatened to blossom within me.
I stomped it back down.
Star got the brunt of my anger, but it had been building since the attack on my village.
It was the indifference of the rabbit when I arrived, the uselessness of the jesters at the court, the librarian carriage-driver who watched two men attack me, and the performers in the marquee who ignored a Mock Walrus in pain. It was everything.
Star smirked, and the scar on her cheek wrinkled. “If you were right, you would be right.”
My nose crinkled. “What?”
Star waved her hand tediously. “You Hearts people and your sense. It makes no sense at all to be so consumed by it.” She gestured to the Mock Walrus. “If you were right, then you would be right. But you’re not, because that is no animal you saved. I’m an animal carer, not a non-animal carer.”
“Walruses are animals, whether you like them or not. If you have to be told that, maybe you’re not in the right line of work.”
Star’s face brightened. “Where is this walrus you speak of?”
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “It’s the only one in the barn.”
At Star’s blank, unchanged expression, I heaved an exhausted sigh and looked back at the massive animal.
Only, it wasn’t there anymore. Something—someone had taken its place, wearing the same silvery hair that the walrus had grown in tufts.
I placed his familiar storm-silver eyes the moment our gazes touched. The easy fall of his silky hair, a smirk on his cherry-stained lips, so wicked it belonged only in Netherland.
The masked thief.
Chapter 12
The thief lounged on the bed of hay, his porcelain skin gleaming under the glow of the watch-globe. Every bit of him.
He only wore the black mask over his striking face and the devilish tuck of his lips. His body was so pale that it brought to mind the brightest cloud on the sunniest day.
The sight of his bare body had my cheeks blazing. I bit down on my lips.
“Congratulation, Rose.” His voice was a seductive, low purr that froze my lungs and tickled my belly all at once.
He held out a small parcel, wrapped in blue paper and tied with a black ribbon.
“Keep up the good work,” he added. “I bet quite the sum on you.”
Dumfounded, I shifted my gaze to Sta
r.
She shook her head. “I bet on your companion, and I stand by my choice.”
“My companion? You mean Night?”
Star shrugged lazily, as if something as trivial as a competitor’s name interested her about as much as a whole face-full of paint. “Is that what you call him?”
Brows knitted together, I snatched the parcel from the masked thief’s hand.
“You can call me Paris,” said the masked thief as he stretched out his slender body on the hay. “Or whatever name your half-heart desires,” he added with a suggestive wink.
All warmth I felt for him as the Mock Walrus evaporated with that gesture.
Trickery was for fools. That’s what Marybelle had always told me. And in that barn, I was a fool.
A fool with a parcel.
Without another word, I turned my back on them and stormed out of the barn, but not before Paris’ glazed voice called out to me, “Farewell, Shoshanna.”
I kicked the barn door shut extra hard.
Down the side of the marquee, I found a bench tucked between two stone statues of jugglers. I dropped onto the hard stone, and realised just how fast my heart was beating.
I felt every thud punch from my belly to my throat.
Before that day, I had never seen someone change into an animal—or back from one.
That thief … Paris … had done it in a blink of an eye. He wasn’t just a performer in a magical game. Only a few could do what he did. Tricksters. Real tricksters with real magic coursing through their veins, descendants of the First Witch.
Knowing that there was more magic in the Hatterthon than I’d though, not just illusions and tricks, should have excited me. But I found that it riddled me with unease and made my toes curl in my boots, a ripple of uncertainty that comes before a storm.
I dug my fingers into the corners of the parcel and closed my eyes, trying to ground myself. My senses brought the excitement of the circus to me.
The sizzling flavour of chilli sprinkled sweets, the pop of tree-sap popcorn, the hurried footfalls of rushing players, and the touch of my next clue—one step closer to home.
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