Home > When Night Breaks (Kingdom of Cards #2)(4)

When Night Breaks (Kingdom of Cards #2)(4)
Author: Janella Angeles

Daron’s stomach dropped. “What?”

“You sort this out.” He spat. “I’m just the reins. If I get taken in for driving some sad fool through these horrid woods day after day, I swear to Zarose…”

There was only muffled grumbling from there as everything inside him went cold.

White gloves.

A dull roar thundered in his ears. Before he knew it, he was suddenly out of the carriage. Lottie’s faint protests faded behind as he staggered out to a blast of fresh air. The world gone quiet once his foot touched the ground.

The Dire Woods.

Never walk through it. Every warning clung hard to him as the shadows of the trees pressed harder.

Among them, a surreal line of glossy white coaches blocked their path ahead, pristine as game pieces dropped across the board.

Your magic, and mine …

Echoes of Kallia’s voice swirled on the wind slicing through the trees. For a moment, he swore he saw her lounging atop the branches overhead, observing him hungrily like a bird watching a worm in the ground.

For a moment, he swore he was imagining those white carriages. And the person walking out.

Daron blinked hard, unsure which was the dream. Which was reality. Those were the games these woods liked to play. The kind no one could win.

When he opened his eyes, Kallia had vanished.

The white carriages remained, as did the white-gloved woman walking out from them. Palms out, ready for a fight.

Daron’s fists remained at his sides as he took in every detail from afar. Even with swirls of silver, her hair was as dark as his, wrapped in an unforgivable bun. Angular spectacles framed around sharp, challenging stare. “Daron?”

Blood thundered in his ears at her voice.

She was no dream. No matter how many times he blinked, she remained standing there before him. And there was no other choice but to answer. “Aunt Cata.”

 

 

2

 


The spotlight found Kallia the moment she rose to her feet.

Applause followed. So startlingly loud, she froze. Her heart pounded, every desperate beat a question. Where, how, who? Every time she looked out for the answer, her vision watered against the piercing light.

So bright, dizzying.

The crowd cheered on, even when she shielded her eyes.

Never in her life had she ever wanted silence more.

Pulling in a breath, she forced her gaze downward, for something still. An anchor. That was the trick to balance whenever she spun over dance floors: focusing on the dirtied tops of her shoes and the smooth polished ground.

Kallia stilled, taking in the same shade of wood. Same lines and indents.

Even the smell—that old oaken scent that chilled her every time she breathed it in before a performance.

She was back. In the theater of the Alastor Place.

The applause raged even harder. Whistling, cheering.

Kallia

Kallia

Kallia

The song of her name was intoxicating as this spotlight she’d longed for like a fire in the cold.

It took everything in her not to close her eyes and enjoy.

“Kallia.”

She turned at the voice, lost in the roar of the applause.

Before it was all shattering glass—over her skin, numbing her ears against the shower of mirror shards in that endless dark. One moment in the Court of Mirrors, and the next, receiving a standing ovation on stage.

As though she’d just come off the greatest show of her life.

Kallia

Kallia

“Kallia.”

Her eyes flew open to light harsh as the sun. She searched for that voice. Those footsteps.

The smallest swirl of smoke entered in one thin tendril, pluming into a dark cloud, like night vanishing the moon. In its place, a figure slowly stepped into view, taking all light with him entirely.

Kallia edged back from the darkness he brought, familiar as the silhouette—the hint of a lean muscled frame in the sharp suit she’d know anywhere. “Jack.”

Not a question; a certainty.

He walked on, unfaltering. “Keep talking to me, Kallia.”

While his steps grew louder, the applause fell softer. The shadow rows of velvet seats behind him parted in strange whirls of smoke at his movement. A dream coming apart the deeper he cut into it.

“What the hell is happening?” Her voice broke as the walls bled, creeping to the stage. “What are you doing to me?”

Jack paused, his dark eyes narrowing. The regal tilt of them, sharpening. “You think I’m doing this?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” As if she didn’t know exactly what this was.

He’d gone back into her mind, as he did in Hellfire House. Soon she’d wake up recalling nothing, only to find his hand outstretched to her in concern. A hand she knew all too well. Kind and gentle at first, until it twisted.

She’d been here far too many times.

“Kallia, the longer you believe in all this, the longer it’ll keep you.” He dragged out a long breath, gesturing all around him. “You have to pull yourself from it now.”

There was no choice when Jack was by her side already. Far too close, too fast, that it forced her back a half-step—

And the rest of the theater disappeared.

Quick as a candle snuffed out.

Darkness stole over the world, and cold air ruled it. Pure as ice, whipping across her skin until she shivered. There was just barely enough light in this night to look down at herself, all tatters of her red dress. Scratches and cuts scored down the split hem, with the graceful swoop of her neckline left dirtied and frayed. Absolutely destroyed.

Yet when Jack presented himself, he looked infuriatingly perfect in his sharply fitted suit. Unaffected, save for the relief relaxing his stance. “Good. You’re out.” The tension in his shoulders dropped a fraction. “I was worried you might—”

Her fist connected with his nose.

Bone cracked.

Jack staggered back with a shocked grunt. If it left something broken and bleeding, it still wouldn’t be enough.

“Stay away from me.” Seething, Kallia shook out her fingers and turned. There was nothing more to say, and she wanted nothing at all to do with him.

“Kallia, wait.”

She kept walking. In which direction, she couldn’t tell. Anywhere far from him seemed the safest option.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” he called out. “You can’t go off alone.”

“Of course you would say that,” Kallia snarled under her breath. Just like all those times he’d told her to never go to Glorian because anything else just wasn’t for people like them.

Lies.

“Why would I ever listen to—”

At the hand on her arm, her blood seared. Her vision twisted red as she shoved him back hard in the chest. “Stay away from me.”

When he drew back this time, his face appeared no different than before. No blood or swelling, just the bone popped back in place without any hint of redness. Zarose, what would it take to make him bleed?

The burn in her chest raced all the way to her fingers in spears of flames.

She released them like daggers.

Jack flinched back. “Kallia, stop.”

His face glimmered from the fires coming for him—before he ducked away again. She didn’t mind when her name broke on his lips. The sweet fear in the sound. “You, telling me to stop?”

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