Where Dreams Descend

by Janella Angeles

  Demarco twisted around, grabbing both of her wrists before they could tease some more—and for a moment, Kallia forgot how to yield magic, how to even blink, as he gripped her.

  As soon as their hands met, light shone between them. A burning white, like a spark to the smaller shocks she’d delivered to him, that showed the sweat at his temples, the shadows beneath his panicked eyes.

  Everything before Kallia began dissolving at the edges.

  Her vision, her thoughts, muddling against the light.

  Her knees buckled forward as a shout came over her.

  33

  No, no, no.

  Daron caught Kallia before she fell. Her head lolled to the side, breaths shuddered. Still awake, still alive.

  Still crumpled in his arms.

  His heart was racing. Just like that, he was back on that stage. Every fear, every taste of panic when he saw only himself reflected in the broken pieces of mirror.

  Do something. Do anything.

  “No.” Shaking, Daron cupped her face, pressing below her jaw for a pulse. “Wake up. Please wake up.”

  This couldn’t be happening.

  Not with her.

  Bells began ringing from afar, but it was as though they were clanging in his ears. They softened when her eyes fluttered—movement. And Daron swore his heart ruptured from relief. His grip on her tightened, unsure whether to pull her closer or to run.

  Kallia gave him no choice, grasping at him. “See … that’s why you’re here. Why you’re my mentor,” she slurred, a loose smile on her face.

  “I’m sorry.” There were no other words. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m not. I baited the beast. Didn’t know such power was hiding inside.” She deliriously clawed at his arms and shoulders, pressing at the muscle. Each touch set off a whole other mess of alarms in his head he couldn’t stop. Why wasn’t she afraid?

  Hell, he was afraid.

  “I have to get you to a doctor,” Daron muttered, straightening her.

  “No!” Her voice went hoarse, her body jolting upright. “We’re not going out there. Not like this.”

  He frowned at the frantic turn of her breaths. “Kallia, we have to … you’re not well.”

  “I’ll be fine in a bit, it’s nothing. Please,” she hissed. “Don’t bring me outside. Don’t give them another reason to laugh at me.” Her mouth screwed in an angry grimace as if to wrench back what she’d said.

  Without thinking, he brushed the hair back from her face, behind her ear before laying her back down. His hands still buzzed with energy, but no longer held any light.

  Safe. For now.

  Releasing a heavy sigh, he shifted her closer to the fire, grabbing the coat he’d tossed over a table and balling it up as a pillow for her head. The tension fell from her face when she turned to it with a deep inhale. “Smells like you.”

  His voice grew thick, insides knotted. “Are you sure you’re well?”

  “Of course. A surge of power is sometimes followed by a bout of delirium. Haven’t you seen me after my performances? Even I’m not immune,” she said, studying him. “Are you saying you feel nothing at all?”

  “With the exception of panic, no.”

  The smile continued to curve lazily over her face as her fingers brushed his on the floor, trailing to his wrist. “Figures. You go weeks, months, without using magic, and come out of this with barely a sway in your step. And look at me. I wonder what you must think.” She laughed bitterly, the haze drifting from her eyes as she clasped her hands together and stared at the ceiling. “What am I without magic?”

  More. He didn’t know where it had come from, but deep inside, a voice yelled. It had learned that even without magic, you still had worth. You weren’t only a performer on stage or a walking hat full of tricks. Only in times without did you truly learn what you were made of, and he wished she could see that, too. He wished he could take her hand again.

  You are so much more.

  “Is that a fact?”

  He didn’t even care that he’d said it aloud or how tired she looked as she smirked. She had to know she was more. With or without her power. It had taken him losing everything to figure out as much about himself.

  Perhaps she could understand him.

  “There’s something I must tell you.” The way she looked at him like he was a marvel, a Great like Zarose, turned his insides. How fast would it take for those brown eyes to turn cold, distrustful. “I—”

  With a slam, the main door flew wide open.

  “Kallia! Judge!”

  Aaros burst in, running, panting. His footsteps frantic, nearing. “Kallia, are you … oh…”

  The assistant stumbled through the archway, breathless. He took in the scene—the two of them on the ground—and his mouth only dropped farther.

  “No jokes,” Daron barked. “I mean it, this isn’t—”

  “I know, I know.” Aaros knelt to the ground, placing a hand on Kallia’s shoulder. “Is she okay?”

  “Yes, she is.” Equally agitated, Kallia pushed herself up. Still fatigued, but clear of delirium. “I’m a magician, not a one-winged butterfly.”

  “Happy to hear it, boss,” he said. “I’m not even going to pry into how you got on the floor with Demarco. My imagination can run wild with that one.”

  Daron took as much interest in the floor as Kallia did peering into the fireplace.

  “But I had to make sure.” The assistant broke off, his jaw working. “Something’s happened. Two magicians, and a circus performer…”

  Kallia’s gaze shot to him, as she asked, “Who?” right as Daron said, “What? Have more gone missing?”

  “No.” Aaros shook his head grimly. “Not exactly.”

  34

  Three bodies lay in the beds, eyes closed, breaths slow.

  Two magicians, and one Conqueror.

  Juno.

  Kallia neared her hospital bed, her head pounding even harder. The girl’s face tattoos—metallic feathers dusting across her cheek—had stilled and lost their luster over pale skin. The magicians, Kallia remembered their names briefly. Soloce and Lamarre. A bespectacled woman had been hovering by their beds, taking notes when Kallia, Demarco, and Aaros arrived. Her shrewd stare latched on Kallia, with a marveling sort of recognition that disappeared as Demarco demanded details of what happened.

  The magicians had all been with their mentors in the Alastor Place, enjoying a few drinks on stage, when the contestants just dropped to the floor. Around the same time a circus performer collapsed in her tent.

  Not dead; unresponsive.

  “Was it poison?” Daron murmured.

  “That was the first suspicion, given their recent activities,” the doctor supplied, her voice gruff and hair wild and in her face as if she’d spent the day running to and from chaos. She lifted one of the men’s hands, watching it fall limply before making a note. “But how do we explain the other victim? And how are the other fellows who’d been passing the same bottle around still on their feet?”

  “Magic gone awry?” Aaros suggested.

  “Didn’t seem like these gents were practicing any tricks.” The doctor pushed up the thick, tinted spectacles that took up half her face. “Obviously competition brings out the beasts in most people, but something strange is at work here. Each of them had this clutched in their hands.”

  She showed them a crumpled piece of paper, bearing a single line of words:

  Three of Mind

  “Can you make anything of it?”

  Kallia wrung her fingers into a tangled clump. Aaros and Demarco appeared just as perplexed. They were dots with no connection, and only she could see a possible link between them. A line marked in blood.

  Jack. The stabbing beat of her heart knew he was behind this.

  Kallia stilled her fingers, opening her palms as if in offering. “Do you mind if I try?”

  The doctor lifted her brow. “To do what, exactly?”

  “Reach inside an
d see if I can wake them. Or at least find out what’s wrong?”

  Invasive magic, bordering on manipulation. Every instinct in her recoiled at the suggestion. But what choice was there, other than to watch these three rest until they withered away?

  As the doctor pondered, probably debating the ethics of it, Kallia felt a nudge at her elbow. “You’re sure you want to?” Demarco whispered. “After today?”

  It was clear the doctor heard, from the curious cock of her head. Aaros, too. Kallia’s cheeks heated as she recalled it in flashes. A force of light, falling into his arms before being laid on the ground. A surge of magic, unlike anything she’d ever felt. Remembering it, the weariness returned. A heaviness that still hadn’t left her bones entirely.

  “What use is power if you don’t use it to help others?” Kallia pressed forward, ignoring his disapproving silence. Magic of the mind was not easy. The kind she’d performed on the second show night had been much more difficult without direct contact to the audience’s minds. With touch, however, it became all too simple to open doors.

  When the doctor didn’t stop her—merely scribbling notes behind the shield of the clipboard as if for plausible deniability—Kallia neared Juno’s bed. She flexed out her hands, crowning them against the girl’s temples. Skin still warm, but not entirely alive. An unnatural texture hovering between life and death.

  Seeking connection was the trick. It was how Jack reached inside her mind, her memories, while she could never get a clear read on him. She had been too trusting, not guarded in the way she needed to be with him.

  Juno’s guards were down, as well.

  As soon as Kallia’s fingertips pressed, the room around her vanished. Blackened.

  Iced.

  A dark expanse surrounded her, running jagged with light and rapid like a flickering flame across the walls. The images blurry, the sensations cold as her first step into Glorian. Unforgivable. Like how a curse would feel, if one could touch it.

  Every part of her shivered as the light settled ahead in the darkness, to a line of silhouettes in the distance.

  A group of shadows, walking toward her. Their pace was languid, slow.

  Almost.

  Almost.

  Almost.

  The voice slithered. It pierced her with a familiarity she suddenly couldn’t recall. In vain, she tried to run from it, to sever the connection. But there was nowhere to run in the dark, nowhere to hide. A sickness filled her as they loomed ever closer, terrors faceless and formless as the expanse surrounding them. The darkness, spilling.

  It was like drowning and screaming underwater, where no one could see or hear you. Where no one could—

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Kallia gasped, the breath thrown back into her. The light of the room nearly blinded her as she edged back from the hospital bed, bumping into another, Aaros behind her, grasping at her elbows.

  When her vision cleared enough to peer over his shoulders, she saw the mayor with a few other judges in tow, looking every bit as disgruntled about her presence. Only this time, they weren’t the least bit surprised.

  “Move away,” Mayor Eilin ordered. “Not even you can hide her sabotage.”

  “What are you talking about? She’s done nothing except try to help,” Demarco gritted out. “Which is a lot more than you pointing fingers.”

  As they squabbled, Kallia’s heart raced in every direction, as if fighting for a way out of the very confines of her chest. Her skin flushed, but icy sweat dripped down the back of her neck. There was no unseeing what she’d found in Juno’s head. For a moment, she had felt, tasted, lived something truly terrible.

  “What happened?” Aaros whispered, but she couldn’t answer. She inhaled and closed her eyes, letting her mind stitch its ripped edges back together.

  You are not allowed to break. Kallia clenched and unclenched her fists, repeating it like a prayer. The only one she knew. Not for them.

  Her insides still tremored when she raised her head, her expression one of cooled grace. “You gentlemen are determined to make me stand trial, even in a hospital wing.” She stepped out of Aaros’s hold, grasped at Demarco’s shoulder to bring herself forward. These were her wolves to fight. “Have some respect.”

  “Don’t pretend you’re innocent,” the mayor fumed. “We go off to inspect what’s going on with that ruddy bell tower, and this is what we come back to? What were you even doing, standing over them like that?”

  “I was trying to help them. But sure, blame me,” she said through her teeth. “This has nothing whatsoever to do with your incompetence.”

  Mayor Eilin’s face reddened. “And where exactly were you when these contestants fell?”

  Her blood boiled as her chin tilted toward the third bed. “It wasn’t only contestants.”

  “Irrelevant.”

  Before Kallia launched herself at him, someone stayed a hand against her back. Demarco, just as irritated, said, “She was with me.”

  A snort erupted from the judges. “Doing what, I imagine?”

  At that, Kallia’s fingers curled into talons at her side, while Demarco’s hand fell from her back. Without a word, he neared Judge Bouquet, calmly and sure-footed, as though he were walking up to shake his hand. The judge barely had enough time to wipe his sneer off before Demarco’s fist cracked against the old man’s jaw, sending him to the floor.

  “This town, I swear.” Demarco sounded like cold murder itself. He regarded the others, who instinctively backed away. “There’s clearly something wrong happening here. How about you worry about that, before someone else gets hurt.”

  “Someone else? There are more?” The doctor watched with keen interest, blatantly ignoring Judge Bouquet’s wails as he cupped his face.

  At the interruption, the mayor’s furious scowl deepened. “And just who are you, miss?”

  “Zarose, you’re all useless. She’s the doctor.” Aaros scoffed, just as Demarco, shaking out his knuckles, suddenly stilled.

  “No,” he whispered, realization creeping into his voice. Horror dawning. “She isn’t.”

  Unease prickled the air as Kallia turned to the woman. Everything about her seemed to have transformed in a second. The professional air and the stress lines across her brow vanished, easy as a mask thrown off. Her posture straightened, adding a few inches to her frame. With a short hum, she pulled back her hair and pocketed the glasses that hid pert cheekbones and eyes lined to the ends like wings.

  “For the record, I never said I was the doctor. Though I’m flattered you assumed,” she said, her voice a much lighter drawl. The way she held out her hand was more of a mockery than a courtesy. “Lottie de la Rosa, from the Soltair Source.”

  Demarco’s face lost even more blood, if it were possible. The warm hue of his skin, somewhat sickly now.

  “Excuse me?” The mayor’s mouth dropped at the woman’s declaration. Desperately, he began snapping for the pair of guards by the door, and the woman laughed as they approached her.

  “You don’t want to tangle with me, boys. I’ve got immunity, thanks to your ringleader.” After scribbling down an errant thought, she blew the ink dry on the page with a satisfied sigh. “And I’m an old friend of the young judge.”

  “You know this woman?” Mayor Eilin shrieked, but Demarco remained speechless. Kallia could see the razor blade of tension working in his jaw, the sharp bob of his throat. As if he’d seen a ghost, or something far worse.

  “Oh, we go years back.” With a smug, fox-like smile, the woman flipped through the papers on her clipboard to land on a fresh page before settling her gaze on the magician across from her. “Hello, Daron. Long time no see.”

  35

  This was a disaster.

  Daron never thought he’d live to see the day when he agreed with the mayor of Glorian, joining the furious mob of magicians trailing behind him to the Alastor Place. They’d prodded him relentlessly for more information on the way, and his mind had all but blanked.
<
br />   Lottie de la Rosa.

  They’d asked who she was to him, but there were no words to properly describe her or how upside down the world felt now.

  “RAYNE!” Mayor Eilin roared, frothing at the mouth as he stormed through the show hall doors. “What exactly have you brought upon us?”

  His bulging gaze latched onto the proprietor’s figure casually sitting in the empty second row, feet propped up against the first. “Calm down, Eilin. You make it sound as if I’ve summoned some sort of demon.”

  “Close enough. Demarco was practically catatonic at the sight of her,” Mayor Eilin muttered sharply. “Spending her time masquerading as a doctor, and Zarose knows what else!”

  “All part of the job, mayor. She didn’t become known as the Poison of the Press from primly sitting at a desk, you know.”

  Mayor Eilin grimaced even more. “We all agreed: no press under any circumstances.”

  “No, we agreed on no press until the right time.”

  “We just lost a couple more players. That is not something to tout around for the rest of Soltair to see.”

  “We may not be the picture of success, but we are riding on the wave of a juicy story. Can’t you see it?” That troublesome gleam returned to the proprietor’s eyes as he gestured grandly at some imaginary horizon. “Magicians go missing on performance night, accidents strike between acts, and three mysteriously fall cold?”

  The relish with which he said it sickened Daron. “You certainly sound excited about it.”

  “We can use this to our advantage—imagine the headlines!” Rayne exclaimed. “Think of it this way, which events are remembered most in history? The well-to-do ships that make it home safely, or the ones that sail into dangerous waters and live to tell the tale?”

  “We’re sinking hard, Rayne.” Mayor Eilin’s nostrils flared. “The last thing we need is a damn spotlight.”

  “Trust me, mayor, I’ve seen worse ships go down. It may not be too thrilling for those on board, but the ones witnessing it from afar will never look away. And since we’re all stuck here, I invited dear Lottie to help us reach the outside world.”