by Jordan Bell
Castel winced. “I don’t like her that much.”
“Those are the terms. She leaves here unharmed, or you get nothing.”
His brother tapped a finger against his chin. “I kind of thought you might say that.”
Before he could reach him, Castel grabbed the sheet beneath Sera’s body and yanked it free.
The platform wasn’t a platform at all. It was a water coffin. Used in death defying escape artist tricks.
Eli launched himself across the stage to reach her, but he never had a chance.
The lid disappeared, dropping her into the water. Her eyes snapped open and she had a half second of wild terror to realize where she was.
The lid reappeared. By magic.
He heard her scream underwater and slam her bound hands against the glass. The crack he heard was more likely bones breaking than glass.
The Magician had one hand on the coffin when his brother appeared at his side, rapier in hand, flames licking up the edge of the blade.
“Shall we see if you still eat fire, brother?”
And then Castel rammed the blade through his side.
29
__________________
Drowning wasn’t a good way to die.
I tried to breathe. That was my first mistake. It wasn’t that I thought I could breathe water, it was that all I knew how to do to stop the burning in my lungs and at the back of my head. Take a breath. That’s how people lived. By taking a breath when their body demanded it.
The water was ice cold. It went into my throat burning. The back of my nose and my eyes, everything ached from the cold and the airlessness of drowning.
I kicked and I punched and I rocketed my body against the sides as hard as I could. There was no leverage in the tiny box, no space to get momentum. I managed to get it to shake and slosh but it didn’t tip. It didn’t crack. I bloodied the water beating my fists against the glass.
My vision went sideways and little pops of color went off across the back of my eyes and I thought, that’s it.
This is how it ends.
I stilled.
But the tank did not. It rocked harder, gaining momentum, first one direction than the other, teetering on the edge of its platform.
With one more heave the glass coffin tipped. I floated in nothingness for the second it took to hit the ground, for the glass to smash and the water to go rushing away from me and out of me.
Hands grabbed me, small hands, weak hands. They caught me under my arms and dragged me across glass, slicing up my skin as I coughed and wracked and sucked painful, burning gasps of air. For a second or two I felt like I blacked out, losing awareness on my knees, coming to on my back, going out again and coming to crouched over someone’s feet as they shook me.
“Get up, get up, get up!”
I rolled over and found Katya kneeling beside me frantically trying to untie my wrists.
“Eli,” I coughed. “Where is he?”
She pointed towards the stage from the curtains where she’d drug me.
The two magicians stood off from one another, although one look told me Eli was injured, one arm gripping his middle, staggering, bleeding. He had one hand held out, fingers spread towards his brother who held a rapier and looked unfazed.
“Katya, the snow globes.” I rolled to my knees and the girl helped me onto my feet. “The ones the acrobats use. I need one. Can you get me one?”
“Yes, but…”
“Run. Run very, very fast.” I shoved her towards the back of the stage and through the velvet curtains.
Castel whipped his arm towards his brother and Eli fell, crashing into the glass and water with such force I could feel it through the floorboards of the stage. He groaned and rolled to his side, clutching at the wound in his side that weeped through his fingers. Red. Red as the stage curtains.
I slid to my knees in the water and glass, grabbed a shard between my hands and began to saw at the ropes frantically. I would be no help if I didn’t get to him.
Castel strode towards his brother until he was towering over him. Eli stared unblinking into the eyes of his twin.
Castel who killed my mother.
Eli closed his eyes. He swallowed painfully.
As soon as his eyes closed Castel thrust the sword into him.
I blinked.
Eli disappeared.
The sword struck wood.
Eli reappeared behind his brother, snaked an arm across his throat, and yanked him back off his feet.
The rapier fell from Castel’s hands as he fought to ease the pressure of Eli’s arm across his windpipe. The water on the stage made it hard for him to plant his feet and stop his brother from dragging him backwards across the stage.
“You can’t kill me,” he wheezed. Eli tightened his hold.
“I’ll do what I have to to keep mine safe.”
Castel snorted for air, scrambled and clawed at his brother’s arm. Eli closed his eyes and for a moment I didn’t think he could kill him.
And I didn’t want him to.
When it came to physical strength, Eli would beat his brother every time.
Half the hemp rope broke. One more strand. The glass cut into my fingers, drew sharp, ugly lines of blood. The glass became slippery, hard to maneuver.
The more panicked I became, the harder it was to keep hold of it.
“Sera!” Katya appeared running down the aisle full tilt, one of the acrobat’s snow globes clutched in her arms. She got halfway to the stage when Lily pounced her and the two girls went crashing to the floor.
They swore at each other, vicious clawing, biting, tearing into each other. Lily’s dress hindered her, too pretty to wrestle on the ground and Katya subdued her with a well-aimed punch.
She scrambled to her feet and shoved the snow globe across the stage towards me.
The rope snapped. I threw myself across the stage to grab the globe before anyone realized what I was about to do.
“Eli!”
The Magician looked at me. Our eyes met and for a moment the stage fell away and I felt vertigo between my lungs. Déjà vu.
He shoved his brother out of his arms. Castel stumbled in the water, and without realizing what was about to happen, he turned and threw Eli off the stage with a wild swipe of his hand.
My magician fell into the blue tufted seats where Katya dove for him.
I knelt with the snow globe between my hands and turned the key backwards.
It played its music box lullaby, the notes as loud as gunshots in the theater.
Castel twisted towards me, awareness dawning as the stage shimmered beneath us. Betrayal, I saw. Powerlessness.
Snow fell from the tent top, tiny crystalline flakes brushing my skin. Kissing my eyelids.
The curtains closed.
There was only snow.
30
__________________
Eli
She disappeared.
Like a magic trick.
But without the trick.
She was just gone.
31
__________________
“Aren’t you a clever girl.” Castel stalked across the snow landscape, kicking at the drifts and screaming every few steps into the nothingness in every direction. We had only a few feet of visibility in any direction and then there was just white. The edge of the universe. The edge of magic.
I lay in the drift letting the cold sink into my wet clothes and skin. I was so exhausted and the cold strangely comforting. The snow passed between my fingers line sand, perfect crystalline grains.
“But you’re not clever. You’re stupid. You’re so stupid that you got yourself trapped here with me. Do you know where here is? Neither do I. It’s nowhere. A little pocket of time frozen in place and we’re there.” He flicked his hands in the air, tried to pull from it, tried to make things happen, but nothing happened, and the more he flailed, the more he looked like he was on the verge of a seizure, the more panicked he became. Carnival magic, I rea
lized. Micah had said the snow globes were carnival magic, not the same as what the magician’s had. His magic didn’t work here.
“No no, it’s good that you’re stuck here. My idiot brother won’t let you stay here. He’ll turn the key and then we’ll start all over again. I just have to wait. That’s all. I just have to wait for him to get in his feelings about you and this nightmare will be over.”
“You killed my mother.” I sat up slowly and wrapped an arm around my bent knees. “Do you really think I’d allow that to happen?”
He started to protest, but then stared at me, his eyes narrowing.
“What do you have up your sleeve, girl?”
I held out my fist, palm up. “One last trick.”
I opened my fingers one at a time to reveal a shiny gold coin, worn smooth with age. A boon. A wish.
Understanding stole the hope from his eyes.
Take me home.
Carnival magic.
I smiled. “Abracadabra.”
The Last Show
______________________
Sunlight the color of butterscotch glowed through the wooden blinds, reminding us that we’d missed the night again, that sleep wouldn’t come if we didn’t close our eyes.
The Magician kissed his way from my shoulder blade to the back of my neck, peppering my skin with fluttering, soft touches. He was determined to count every freckle and I’d indulged him throughout the night, even though he’d lost count twice before making love to me beneath the crescent moon, forgetting his own name let alone what comes between one number and the next.
He nudged my hair aside, his fingers catching in the curls. He kissed my hairline and rested his face in the crook of my neck.
The weight of his body pressed me into the mattress, soft as feathers, his masculine scent lulling me in and out of that twilight place between real and not real.
Outside, far from the privacy of our wagon, the sounds of hammering and metal catching metal, calling between trees and rope snapping canvas rumbled through the trees. Progress. Rebirth. Alistair Rook’s voice reminding the crew what Imaginaire is, what it once was, what it would be again.
Across the room, beyond the bed, sat a small wooden box, taller than it was wide, carved with the crescent moon and raven symbol of the carnival on all four sides. Upon its face was an elaborate, decorative, impossible iron lock.
Inside hid the past and a snow globe where a tiny man stood between two giant trees. Frozen in time.
Tomorrow it would go into Alistair’s private safe where it would stay for as long as time required. Perhaps forever. At least until the stories of the twin magicians passed into legend.
“Do you think they’ll come looking for us?” he murmured.
“They wouldn’t dare.” I smiled into my pillow and smoothed my fingers across his strong arm.
“Micah would dare.”
I hmmed. “I doubt she’d bother hobbling this far. Bed rest has made her lazy.”
“Should we get up?”
“Absolutely not.”
He rolled lazily and pulled me so that we faced each other. The last of his bruising was fading and he looked so handsome in the muted light. Like a dream I’d had once upon a time. A figment of someone else’s imagination.
“So demanding.” He pulled me into his body where I fit like a puzzle piece and lowered a kiss to my waiting mouth. The press of his mouth, the little licks and quiet, pleasant growls sent thrills through me. Pleasure. Happiness. Love.
I sighed against his mouth and snuggled into the crook of his arm. “What wonders will you create for me today?”
His fingers floated down my spine to settle in the small of my back. “I’ll give you whatever you dream up, my little lion.” He lowered his mouth to the hollow of my throat and kissed, working his way slowly up to my chin, forcing my neck to lengthen and straighten to accommodate his little nips and licks.
I pushed him over and climbed onto his hips, straddling him so that I had to look down into his handsome face and his grey eyes, almost blue in the morning light.
“Will you stop the sun from rising? Just for a little while?”
The Magician cupped his hand across my face, his fingers twining in my curls. His serious eyes never left mine. “I’ll stop the sun, the moon, and the stars if you asked me to.”
“How about we start with a kiss and see where that takes us?”
* * *
My mother could have been a Romani princess, beautiful enough to enchant Gods. Fairy tale beautiful. That’s what I remembered so well. She could have been Scheherazade of legend. When I was young, I believed she was.
When I grew up, I learned the truth.
She had created her own legend.
So that I could create mine.
___________________________
Thank you for reading The Fortune Teller’s Daughter. If you enjoyed Serafine’s tale, you will love The Curvy Sister. I wanted to create a world of beautiful girls with real curves and the hot men who love them. Curves & Corsets are steamy reads with heart and heartache, chance and adventure. The heroines are all plus-size beauties, curvaceous, voluptuous, and voracious. They don't want to take up as little space as possible. They're loud, clever, and mouthy as hell. These girls don't just have curves, they've got attitudes and are hell bent to be kissed every day and often.
* * *
About the Author
My name is Jordan Bell and I am a bestselling author of adult romance short stories and novellas. I love writing about strong, curvy women, dashing heroes, and terrible villains!
I'm a midwest girl, grew up in the country before moving to the city. I'm still in love with small town living but I could never give up my white chocolate mocha lattes and easy access to wi-fi hotspots. A girl's gotta have priorities!
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