The flyer flashed in her head. “I know what I heard.”
“Oh really?” His posture eased a fraction. “You heard, or you saw the message on the rooftop of your hideaway?”
An uncomfortable flush crept over Kallia’s skin, little bumps bursting across her arms. Jack stared, as if admiring his handiwork. “The secrets you hold are louder than you think, firecrown. There’s little anyone can hide from me in my own house.”
Kallia had thought the same about her greenhouse—Jack had made her believe it.
But he knew her tucked-away secrets, and the betrayal for something so seemingly small stung harsher than she dared admit. “Then I guess you know what I want,” she said. “To go to Glorian and have a look at the competition. Show magicians have a place there now, and you know I’m good enough.” There was no chance he could doubt skills forged under his tutelage.
Yet quiet anger poured from his tight expression. “How many times must I tell you—”
“That Glorian is not the sort of place for you or me?” Kallia sneered. “That excuse is getting old, Jack.”
“You can’t lay out your powers on the show floor and just expect they’ll take you.” His eyes simmered. “Your audience here will not be the same as the one you’ll find there. Out there, it’ll be harder to protect yourself, and your powers will be vulnerable.”
“Against what?” she seethed and pushed at him, breaking their hold. “I am not powerless.”
“There are other ways to be powerless.” Jack frowned, as if the possibility disgusted him. “You still have much to learn. You’re not ready.”
All of it came at her like a blow to her chest. “You think I’m any better off staying here, performing for drunks and learning tricks I’ll never use?” One by one, dagger by dagger, she’d felt doubt before, but none like this. She wasn’t going to just accept them. “If you won’t throw me to the wolves, I’ll find them eventually.”
“You want danger?”
“I want more than this.” It was like a breath releasing. A scream. “And I can’t get that if I stay here.” It was all he’d ever done, keeping her in place like a dance set to a song with no end.
“Don’t forget. You chose this, firecrown.” His voice curled over with a snarl. “You honestly believe you could walk into that barred city and come out with them bowing before you? You’re too ambitious for your own good, Kallia.”
“And what’s so terrible about that? What do I have to be ambitious about here?”
“Here, I give you everything—knowledge every magician on this cursed land would kill to know.” His eyes flashed. “Is that not enough?”
No.
It stilled on Kallia’s tongue. The moment it was released, it could not be unsaid. But like her beating heart, Jack heard it in the silence, and it pulled a cruel laugh from him as he backed away. “Stay away from Glorian. Trust me. Only fools find their way there.”
At the sight of his back, her throat tightened into a metal coil, cutting her inside.
“Better a fool than nothing,” she bit out.
The instruments halted their song and crashed to the ground. Jack paused at the door. The muscles of his back shifted and tensed, but something stopped him from turning.
“You’re not nothing … you’re just not ready. And neither are they,” he whispered, looking down at his brass knuckles. “Don’t mention this again. I beg you.”
3
I beg you.
Others begged, but not Jack.
The sound of it haunted Kallia into the next afternoon, a couple of hours away from Hellfire House’s opening. Jack had not called on her again, not even to go over tonight’s performance or warm up with exercises. He hadn’t left his workroom all day, and even the House was beginning to notice.
“He’s always got too much on his mind,” said one of the kitchen ladies. Kallia crept by the archway, hidden in the shadows. Wherever she strutted, silence followed. The only way she could ever hear anything of truth was to hide.
“I’ll say,” a man interjected. From the slur of his voice, it was the groundskeeper. Always drinking well into the day. “You’ve heard what’s happening in Glorian, haven’t you?”
“Difficult not to,” another tsked. “Some of the gents who visit won’t shut up about it.”
“You all better shut up as well, if you like your memories where they are.” An older woman grunted, and they spoke no more. Kallia paused like the rest of them. Careful, even with Jack flights and