girl’s marks seemed to be moving. Or how Erasmus could possibly be inside the tent when she could’ve sworn she’d heard a female voice call out. One question among them all won out: “What do you mean I’m like you?”
“I can spot a fellow performer a mile away.” Juno winked. “Runaways, too.”
With that, the tattooed girl strutted back into the tent, swinging her large hips all the way. The tent flap swung closed, leaving Kallia slightly stunned. When she rounded the corner, Aaros doubled back with a worried expression. “Oh no, did they threaten to sic their stage animals on you, too?”
“What? Who?”
“The Conquerors, of the Conquering Circus.” Aaros lifted his hands around him as they resumed walking. “Don’t know much about them, but this is their territory now. One of the lads I used to run with tried taking a peek inside for fun. No one’s ever seen a circus before, much less an all-lady gang. Next thing I knew, he’s running for the hills with his coattails singed, muttering about birds and lions eating his brains.”
“Sounds like he got off easy.” Kallia laughed, with a quick glance back at the tents. As soon as they drifted onto the sidewalk toward the city center, the Alastor Place, and the circus, disappeared from view. Everything except the knowing gleam in the tattooed girl’s stare.
Runaways, too.
She’d whispered it like a gleeful secret only they were in on, thus Kallia felt no urge to worry. She had no energy for it. The surge of adrenaline from the audition, on top of the fatigue from it, had numbed her to exhaustion.
Enough that she was about ready to happily collapse on the spot.
She could’ve cried when they finally reached the Prima Hotel at the corner of the main intersection, built tall and round with deep wine-red bricks and rows of black circular windows closed against iron-laced shutter gates. For a traveling hotel right out of Erasmus’s pocket, it looked as if it had stood for years—a sparkling, established fixture in the city. A jewel in the rough.
Kallia forced Aaros through the grand entrance, for his wonderment would’ve kept him cemented in place. Not even she, used to the extravagance of Hellfire House, was immune. Here, every flower vase draped with crystals as if dusted with frost. Scents of bread and cinnamon and freshly poured coffee wafted warmly from the little café with open seating.
They reached the marble front desk, where the old concierge turned instantly in Aaros’s direction for instructions—before Kallia slapped her key on the desk.
“My room is already taken care of.” She slid it forward with a slow snakelike smile. “Would you kindly point my assistant and me in the right direction?”
The man’s eyes bulged out of their sockets. He nodded and scurried out from behind the desk to guide them past the hotel’s quaint café and up the majestic spiraling staircase.
Kallia immediately adored the brightness of the hotel, how it contrasted with the shadowed Hellfire House in all ways but one. Both buildings had been built with beauty in mind, but the Prima’s appealed to the senses a touch more. A fresh new flavor she’d never tasted before. Airy and fragrant, like rose champagne. As they ascended, she could’ve looked out the windows along the walls forever. Their gleaming frames bore sunlight, glimmers of the quiet streets down below. Not rows upon rows of imposing trees or leaves rustling against the glass. Nothing of the Dire Woods anywhere near her.
The lump in her throat tightened. She wasn’t alone in her awe. Beside her, Aaros gaped at just about everything. The luxury of the sweeping, painted ceilings, the lush carpeting, swirling candelabras tall as coatracks standing at each corner. Each new piece of the hotel was a discovery. A marvel.
“I’ve … never been in a hotel before.” Aaros’s face softened, vulnerable in a way Kallia hadn’t expected from someone like him. “Are they all like this?”
“Some.” She never had, either, but the lie rolled off her tongue more like a wish. She found comfort in pretending she’d frequented palaces and castles and hotels such as this. Better that than to show even a sliver of the emotion that stripped away the hardness of the wily thief she’d met hours earlier.
The concierge was smart enough not to question their living arrangement as he stopped in front of their door at the end of the second-floor hall; though if people made such assumptions of her and Aaros, so be it. Let people think what