It was too much to unpack. All the disappearances and accidents, her disastrous performance, the city closing in on her—they hung from his finger, ornaments swaying before her eyes. Delicate, and at his mercy.
“Don’t forget, I did tell you things would go awry the moment you stepped into this city. I warned you.” He set down the glass on the small table before them. “You chose not to listen.”
“Is this your way of punishing me, then?” she demanded. “Destroying my prospects and everything I worked for? Trapping me here so I couldn’t escape it?”
Every scornful glare and taunt, she stomached. Every trick and act, she executed until her muscles burned past feeling.
All for the applause. For a moment.
All ruined, after tonight.
“What do you mean, trapping you here?”
The crease in Jack’s brow only fired up her temper. “Like you don’t know. The gates are gone, which means I can’t leave. I saw two other magicians try to flee and they too—”
“You were trying to leave?”
Kallia didn’t know what infuriated her more: the curiosity or hope in his voice. No matter how he tried to mask it, it tugged at her. “Not for you.” It was unbelievable he could even entertain such an idea. “To get rid of you.”
His jaw clenched. “And how might you go about doing that, I wonder?”
“Lucky for you, I guess we’ll never find out.”
“Oh, firecrown. You honestly think I had anything to do with it?” He threw his head back with a low laugh. “This city is the one you should be pointing fingers at. I didn’t want you to come here in the first place.”
“Why? You did,” she demanded, breath ragged. “Don’t deny it, you’ve been here and have returned perfectly fine. Why can’t I? What exactly is your business here, Jack?”
His smile faded, as close to a flinch as she’d ever seen from him. And still, he wouldn’t answer, unwilling as ever to show her even the slightest truth.
“I saw you in the mirror,” she said, suddenly remembering the conversation she witnessed in her dressing room. Real or not, the way it forced him back an inch told her more than he ever would.
“During your performance?”
“That was just your shadow.” She glared at him. “No, I saw you clear as day somewhere else, saying—”
The world of humans and mortal magicians can rot for all I care.
The reminder stilled her, reaffirming what she’d always thought but feared deep down. That Jack was powerful in a way other magicians weren’t. Not like her, or anybody else she knew. Power like that could easily turn a house into a cage. A city into a trap, with all the strings pulled from above.
“Don’t listen to the mirrors,” Jack muttered, his manner terse. “You failed to heed one warning, don’t make the same mistake again with another.”
“What are you so afraid of me seeing? The truth?”
“No. Lies that you’ll all too freely believe and follow, no matter where they take you.”
“After living with you for years, I think I know the difference,” she said, looking down. Dark smoke misted over the floor where his feet should’ve been. A man made of shadow. Not real, but for whatever reason, still here.
“It wasn’t all lies, Kallia.”
The searing intimacy in his tone made her shiver. A reaction he saw immediately, like the first sign of a light in the dark. “I’ve got an illusion running your act back at the club,” he said softly.
She’d been replaced by an illusion. An odd feeling swept over her—imagining another girl descending from that chandelier—shifting from anger to confusion, leaving her hollow. “You got exactly what you wanted. A perfect puppet.” She shrugged. “If you had the option all along, I don’t know why you even gave me the role.”
“Because it made you happy.”
Her heart clenched. Lie, she insisted. It was all a lie. He didn’t care, he never did. Though everything about him stilled, too, as if he didn’t quite understand it, either. “I did a lot of things, to make you happy.”
Lie. She bit the inside of her cheek, the pain stinging. “It wasn’t enough.”
“And any of this is?” His face blanked as he gestured his hands widely. “Seems you’ve gotten more than you bargained for here. And unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do for you anymore.”
“Good,” Kallia seethed, wanting him to hurt. To make him as raw and angry as she was inside. “Leave, then. You’re not really here anyway. If