showgirl stood in their path, every stare in the room still locked on the spotlit floor where she’d been. As though she’d never left.
Impressive.
Her red corset glinted as she cocked her hip and pointed at the man on the floor. “I choose him.”
She could never let things be easy.
“Kallia,” he growled, warning.
She smiled. “Jack.”
“Pick another. He’s a cheater.”
Her lips pursed into a dubious line. “Then let me teach him a lesson. He’ll no doubt prefer it more.” She swung a leg over the man’s prone form so she stood directly above him. Invitation dripped from the crook of her fingers. “The music calls, darling. Let’s have ourselves a grand time.”
The man’s terror turned swiftly into awe, and he looked at her as if ready to kiss the ground she walked on. As soon as he took her beckoning hand, the room resumed its lively rhythm—a song snapped back in full swing. The cheers and hollers returned to their normal speed, exploding in delight as patrons found their lovely entertainer in their midst, her chosen dance partner in tow.
She bypassed the master, pressing a casual hand on his chest to move him. It lingered, he noticed. Unafraid, unlike most. Their gazes locked for a moment, their masked faces inches apart.
No one ever dared to get this close. To him, to her.
Only each other.
At the next round of cheers and whistles, she pushed him away, smug as a cat. Tugging the man close behind her, she sent fires onto the ground that illuminated her path and warned others from trying to follow them to the stage. Never once looking back at the master, even as he watched on after her.
His fist tightened, full of the cards from his earlier trick. They disappeared into mist, having served their purpose. Along with the flyer he managed to grab.
He didn’t even bother giving it a read. It died in the fire caged by his palm. Tendrils of smoke rose between his brass knuckles, and when he opened his fingers, nothing but ash fell to the ground.
ACT I
ENTER THE MAGICIAN:
A PRINCESS WITH CLAWS WHO WISHES FOR WINGS
1
The nightmare had returned, in flashes thick as flesh.
It began with gray-white skies above. Fell to fingers digging into rocky damp soil. Kallia’s fingers. Her shallow breaths cut like glass as she crawled desperately back on her hands, away from something rising above her.
A monster.
Its looming shadow cast over her, coming for her.
No.
It rushed from her lips without sound, useless. Powerless. She reached within herself to summon fire and lightning and whatever unholy element she could to ward off the beast. But like always, she couldn’t. Her powers abandoned her.
The shadow easily pursued, until the dark consumed her.
Kallia jolted awake, clawing at her blankets. The fabric singed beneath her fingertips, still smoking. Blackened by the drag of nails.
Her maids never said anything when they discovered the scorched bed. She had long stopped trying to hide it, simply left for her greenhouse as they did away with the evidence. No questions asked. The one good thing about being left alone in the House.
Her nerves relaxed as she pushed past the creaky glass door into a room bursting with color. Sweet, humid air clung to her. The morning light gleamed overhead, through the murky teal glass carved into translucent scales casing the walls and ceiling. She winced at the brightness, wishing she could crawl back to sleep. On mornings after a club night, the ache in her bones and muscles was fierce, an exhaustion she welcomed like a badge of honor. Some days were worse than others, demanding rest and recovery, but she couldn’t go back to bed. Not when the creature in the dark waited.
In the brightness of the greenhouse, nightmares could not touch her.
Water trickled from her palm as she passed the plump orange roses with purple edges, speckled orchids standing tall as trees, deep blue moonflowers that glowed at night. Every time Kallia mastered a trick, Jack would present her with a small pouch of seeds. Potential, he’d called them. No hint of what each would grow to be, but they all earned a place in her proud collection once they bloomed.
The bushes of red roses big as heads for the first time she summoned fire.
A spread of peach tulip buds small as fingertips for pulling melodies from instruments.
Golden sirenias with jade hearts for manipulating metal and wood like clay.
It calmed Kallia to walk down the crowded path of her greenhouse, the one place in the House that belonged