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 to her alone. The sight of every vibrant, living flower proved she wasn’t powerless. That even dreams lied.
Sometimes it was enough.
The sun was still climbing the sky’s dusky walls when Kallia finished watering. She scaled the vine-wrapped side of the greenhouse, muscles shaking even harder when she perched on the black rusted edge. The wind washed the rest of the dream off her. It whispered through her hair and her nightgown, around her bare legs that dangled more than twenty feet in the air.
It felt good to be as far from the ground as possible. It gave her a perfect view of the thick spread of treetops, dark spires under the sun’s slow rise and the morning mist between. The Dire Woods went on for mile after mile in every direction, wrapping around a wall enclosure just beyond. Even from this distance, the imposing black gates of rectangular shapes jutted up clearly from the rimmed enclosure. A few vast silhouettes peeked from behind. Buildings like mountains that could’ve been manors. Proud, jutting towers like the tops of palaces. Every hint, merely puzzle pieces in the distance.
The city, Kallia knew, as Glorian.
She could’ve spent hours staring. The Dire Woods extended like a vast ocean between them, yet it was the closest city on Soltair to Hellfire House. The only one, it sometimes seemed, in their lonely half of the island. Jack had spoken of other cities in the far east, and a sea surrounding them. Kallia wished one day to see it for herself. But every time she’d mentioned Glorian, Jack’s easy smile faded. “Glorian is not the sort of place for people like you and me,” he’d said.
“And why not?” Kallia bristled at his lie. He thought he carried a good poker face, but the playful glint in his eyes had iced over.
“They’re not exactly welcoming to show magicians.”
“What about labor magicians? I could pass as one, then work my way up. I mean honestly, all the customers—”
“Trust me, firecrown, that place isn’t worth it.” Jack leaned in close, tucking a fallen strand of hair behind her ear. “Besides, what more could you want that isn’t already here?”
More.
More than a stage she owned only for a night. More than a mask without a name.
Jack knew all of this, of course. And unsurprisingly, his refusals and warnings only heightened her curiosity. She’d asked so many times about the faraway city, even went to one of her private tutors after Jack demanded she never bring it up again. But even Sanja—who’d memorized encyclopedias and contained an endless well of knowledge at the ready—had sputtered out nonanswers.
When Sanja left her tutoring position soon after—for no one lasted long at the House—Kallia’s questions simply sat inside with her desires. Unspoken, unheard, but alive.
The breeze picked up, tickling the hem of her nightgown until it rippled against her legs. She nearly shivered from the sudden cold, but the sight of Glorian stilled her. Forbidden fruit to her eyes. She imagined dropping from the roof and walking through the Dire Woods barefoot just to reach it. She craved to know more. Something. Anything. For whatever waited in the unknown, it called to her.
As though it wouldn’t stop until she called back.
Kallia finally tore her gaze away, stretching her arms in a languid arch above her head. The morning chill dissolving into warmth over her skin from the rising sun.
She didn’t have much time left before Jack sent someone to fetch her.
Gripping one of the large roof shingles fitted slightly askew in the layout, Kallia loosened the stiff plaque from its place. There wasn’t much space underneath, only enough for a few pretty leaves, a lone tattered ribbon that had come to her in the wind, and her most guarded treasure: the thin, soiled cloth of a stitched burgundy rose in full bloom. From far away, it was an insignificant thing, hardly big enough to fill her palm. But up close, it was no ordinary stitching. The threaded petals moved and curled to a subtle breeze.
She’d stolen it back from Jack after his father died. The former master of the House. It was her only proof of a life before this, a small scrap tacked onto the lining of her bassinet when she’d been left in the Woods. From where and by whom, she had no answers. She’d been too young to question, until eventually, whenever questions rose, they were met with Jack’s silence.
Kallia pressed at the rose’s outline—a garden’s heart, forever in full bloom. As always, she held it close before placing it back in its safely hidden grave in favor of another.
The last of her collection: a crumpled piece of paper she’d folded thin enough to slide in. For its own good, and hers.
She unfolded the tattered flyer: a black top hat was inked at the center of the page, with words printed below in lettering bold and curved like a petal. Most of the message was mangled. A dream broken up into pieces, longing to be chased.
The Conquering Circus presents …