That never stopped him.
“I’m not going to fight you,” he said, watching her carefully. As though he wouldn’t hurt her, not even if she came at him with an axe dipped in poison.
“Good. Then this will be quick.” She’d waited so long for this, and one punch wasn’t enough. Her breath hitched as she pulled again, against the tug of pain in her chest, driving everything back into her palms.
All her rage, her fury. All the times in Hellfire House she couldn’t remember, and those fleeting moments when she did.
They would not go forgotten. She held them all and screamed as the tide roared out of her in a blistering wave.
Jack backed away, deflecting with the quicksilver glow of his palms.
More.
Kallia wanted him to burn. She gritted her teeth through that next pull, that sharp, terrible knife twisting—
Before it stopped.
The pain, the fire.
Panting, she blinked down at her dark hands. Nothing flickered in her veins. Just warmth growing cold and a hollow ache.
Come on.
It was there, she felt it.
She shoved everything she had into the next spear of a flame, her panting shortened when the spark died before hitting the ground.
Nothing.
She heard nothing, felt nothing.
Nothing.
“Kallia, stop.” Jack advanced, jaw set. “You’re going to draw—”
“What’s wrong with my magic?” She snarled, half-tempted to kick him down if he took another step. Her power was never an unsure element, never the flicker of uncertain light that pulsed within her now. It all felt different, wrong.
Nothing.
Without magic, she was nothing.
Kallia’s stomach gave a violent lurch. She was going to be sick. “What the hell did you do to me?”
Silence followed, a beat too long as Jack’s eyes slitted. “You’re accusing me as if I wanted this?” he asked, his voice low. Deliberate. “As if I wanted to come here?”
Each word brought him a prowling step closer. Kallia didn’t flinch back, not even when they were almost chest to chest. Like a dance about to begin, a lead waiting to be taken.
“If I remember correctly,” he said, head tilting down at her, “you pushed me through the mirror.”
Kallia blinked slowly, the Court of Mirrors wrapping around her again. Only this time, there were monsters in the reflections, the world breaking in the mirrors that caged them.
This only ends by giving them what they want.
And then Kallia had pushed back. Pushed them both through.
“You remember now?” Jack bit out a laugh. “I see it on your face.”
He thought he knew her so well, thought he could read her so plainly.
“You were at the start of this, and clearly knew what it would take to end it.” She gave him nothing more than a cold, indifferent shrug. “I figured the only way to stop a monster is to give it another.”
After a long moment of silence, a low chuckle rose. “But even I’m not so monstrous as to touch your magic, if that’s what you’re implying. I would never dream of stealing that from you.”
Stealing.
The word thundered in her ears. Magic was in her blood. Immoveable. It didn’t even sound possible, before she remembered the way Demarco’s power abandoned him—
Kallia stilled as a faint light flickered in the back of her mind like a blur.
I would never steal magic from you. Not like him.
Jack’s words dug into her heart like a knife, and she shoved them out. “That’s not possible.”
“And when has that ever stopped magic?”
Lies. Treading over them was like walking a tightrope. She knew firsthand where it would lead should she fall: back in Jack’s hand, waiting to catch her.
But before going through the mirror, everything else had already fallen like a house of cards at the slightest shake. Once one fell down, the rest followed.
Not like him.
Soon it all cleared like that distant light, remembered. A memory returned.
Demarco. There had been light in his hands, when he’d been standing across from her in the Court of Mirrors. Light had always passed between them, so pure.
Like magic.
Kallia’s chest seized in horror as she drew back and turned toward the dark. Her breath cut into sharp pants. She didn’t even realize she’d broken out into a run until Jack’s shouts became muddled noise behind her.
She had to get out of here.
She had to go back.
A sob in relief gripped her when light flickered ahead. A flicker of something.
The closer she moved toward it, the more light rose up on all sides like veins of molten gold. The packed dirt of the ground thinned to bare polished tile, the glimmer of chandeliers sparkling overhead. Mirrors took shape over the rising walls.
The Court of Mirrors.
Kallia blinked, slowly turning in place before a phantom melody swirled in her ears. Chatter and clinking glasses drifted lightly over it. So familiar, rising louder as couples in long gowns and pressed suits pinned with bright scarlet rosebuds emerged around her, already dancing in unison.
The last night of Spectaculore.
Everything left, just as it was. Everyone in attendance. Kallia’s pulse quickened as she searched the room everywhere for any sign of Aaros. Canary.
Demarco.
She had to find him.
The desire consumed her as the ballroom glittered like a garden bursting from memory, welcoming her across the floor as it did before. A second chance.
“Kallia!”
The voice stabbed with ice. It didn’t belong. She wanted to sink into this dream, wake up right here as if—
At the high-pitched peal of laughter, Kallia’s eyes snapped wide open.
The Court of Mirrors had vanished.
An unsettling cold dripped down her back at the echoes of that chilling laughter growing nearer. More human. And it sure didn’t sound like Jack.
There was someone else out there.
“Hello?” Relief broke inside Kallia as she cupped her hands around her mouth. Her voice, dry and broken. “Can you hear me?”
A flicker of shadowy movement skipped into the corner of her sight. Instinctively, Kallia’s fingers poised to summon any illumination, until she realized nothing would come of it. Not even something so damn simple.
Her nostrils flared as she squinted, adjusting well enough to the darkness to make out a form. A girl, from the clearer sound of the laughter, then softly spoken words.
“What was that?” Kallia called back, following the voice. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“… such a lovely day in the garden,” spoke the stranger passing by, the sheer wisps of her frayed skirt moving raggedly behind. “The birds are singing so many songs.”
At her dreamy sigh, Kallia blinked at how she moved lithely through the dark with a melody’s grace.
“Oh, look at all of these red carnations.” The stranger spun into her next step, reaching down. “My favorites.”
Kallia’s gut twisted as the girl proceeded to claw at the barren earth, grabbing chunks of dry, crumbling soil that she inhaled deeply with delight. “Heavenly.”
Wary, Kallia stepped closer. “What’s your name?”
An unnerving smile took over the girl’s hollowed, dirt-stained face, eyelids partly closed. Lost between a dream and wakefulness.