“It’s the truth. I’ve been taught that victories only count if they’re well-deserved. The only way to win is to truly win.”
“Whoever taught you that must’ve been quite an honorable game master.”
Honorable. Kallia felt everything inside her grip tight as a corset, squeezing the air from her. The last thing she ever wanted to do was bring up Jack. Like if she could forget him, and all the things he’d done, he would disappear. Clearly he’d forgotten her, or he would’ve come after her already. But since that dinner party? Nothing. No word, no warning, no nightmares. It wasn’t like him to threaten and retreat. Especially when she knew the truth, that he could waltz into Glorian at any moment.
So why hadn’t he come?
Her paranoia dug its roots into the calm quiet. She’d vowed not to think of it tonight of all nights. But snapping on her dress and toeing on her shoes carried the weight of a costume. Once more, she was back in Hellfire House, about to be called from her dressing room any moment now to don her mask and mount the chandelier. The music would start, and she would descend.
A smattering of applause traveled through the walls and shook her awake. Every clap muffled yet still sharp as percussion.
The sound twisted something new inside her. Something painful and thrilling. Different.
Everything about tonight was different.
This was not the House. Not his club nor his stage, nor his show.
Tonight was all hers.
Kallia allowed herself to turn to the mirror—one moment to see what the rest of Glorian would—and vain as it was, her chest swelled. Juno had done well, complimenting and heightening her features in the most effective places. Bold scarlet lips. Kohl-lined eyelids dusted with a pearlescent sheen that made her brown eyes appear almost black. Her face, without a mask to conceal it. Ever again.
Tonight was only the first step.
Into the dream she now lived, no longer a dream.
A shiver ran down her spine as her reflection shook from the force of boots stomping down the hallway outside her door. Stage hands and crew members barked out instructions in hushed voices, rushing into place. The world behind the curtain, finding its beginning.
Applause rang once more like the muffled start of a song, clearing and calling to her.
The show, at last, had begun.
* * *
“Once upon a time, a magician vanished into a world below, and found something quite … Spectaculore!” Erasmus uttered the haunting, opening words of the night to a shower of applause. It was a play on the closing of Zarose Gate, always a crowd pleaser. Some said before he closed the gate, Erik Zarose had fallen through first and found himself lost in a dream. In another world. Others spoke of the devils he met below, to spook children from misbehaving or else the monsters would see.
It was a fitting story for a competition, for just as one magician entered the world below, only one would make it back to the other side. But whichever interpretation Erasmus threaded throughout the entire competition was bound to be the most theatrical.
Daron clapped halfheartedly as the proprietor basked, an entirely different man from just a few hours earlier. After the no-show magician, Erasmus had spent the afternoon cursing up a storm of threats about Josev. But after hours of searching and showtime nearing, he’d had to accept they were down one performer.
One loss would not stop the show. If anything, the air was more charged than before, with Erasmus overcompensating in dramatics. The audience ate it up.
The prompt set the scene, broad enough for the magicians to build their act, to start the story with an amazing feat.
As the night wore on, Daron watched contestant after contestant take the stage, pulling off their tricks with as much showmanship as they could muster.
“Watch as I lift the water within this glass!” The magician now performing—Daron forgot his name, the men already blurring together in his mind—delivered a dazzling grin. Daron cringed at the man’s efforts to fill the silence. Good stage acts called for light conversation and engagement, but Daron never could stomach speaking to the public at length. Then again, he was never the one in his acts doing the talking.
He’d never thought the sight of every assistant who graced the stage would hollow him so deeply. Each time, it slammed him into his seat, the familiarity. The feeling of revisiting one of his past shows as an audience