Chapter 16
Thunder Over Wonderhouse
The storm does not approach. It arrives.
One heartbeat the night is still—the next it tears open with a roar so violent it rattles every bone in my body. Lightning forks across the sky like a furious hand clawing through the clouds. Thunder shakes the ground so hard my cot skids an inch across the floor.
The circus reacts instantly. Canvas snaps.
Poles groan. Lanterns sway wildly, witch-fire flickering inside glass that suddenly looks too thin to hold anything.
Wind slams into the tents with the force of a giant’s breath, flattening entire rows for a split second before they snap back upright, gasping.
Wonderhouse is screaming.
Milo grabs my shoulders. “Joy, what’s happening?”
I can barely breathe. “The circus—” I gasp. “It’s breaking.”
“But why? Because the spark died?” he asks.
“No,” I whisper, voice shaking. “Because the spark tried to return to me. And something inside Wonderhouse fought it.”
Lightning splits the sky again, bathing us in stark white light. For the first time, Milo sees it: the shadows inside the circus don’t fall naturally. They reach. Curling like fingers around the tents, the poles, the ropes—around us.
He stumbles back. “What is that?”
I swallow hard. My pulse thrashes. “The circus wants my Joys,” I whisper. “All of them. Always. It can’t allow any to come back to me. Not even the ones I created.”
“Created?” Milo echoes.
“The moment you felt warmth,” I say shakily. “That spark was half yours, half mine. It was the first time a Joy belonged to me. And Wonderhouse—”
A violent crack snaps overhead. A support beam splits. “—the circus can’t allow that,” I finish.
Milo’s breath comes fast and shallow. “Then we leave. We get out—now.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because Wonderhouse doesn’t let people leave when it’s hungry,” I whisper. “It holds them.”
As if on cue, the wind slams so hard against the tent that the canvas wraps around us for a choking instant—like the circus is trying to swallow us whole. Milo curses under his breath and grabs my arm, pulling me toward the flap. “Run. We’ll figure it out later. Right now we just run.”
But when he throws open the tent flap, we see it.
The sky is a jagged, electric violet, pulsing with the same sharp, cold color of the heavy sparks I should never have tried to hold. Not dark—not storm-black—but slick, like oil sliding across glass. Purple veins of lightning pulse inside it, running like cracks in a shattered mirror.
And the storm isn’t above Wonderhouse. It’s inside it. Spiraling down the central tent pole like a funnel of shadow and static.
Milo swallows. “Joy… please tell me this is normal.”
“It’s not,” I whisper.
The circus crackles around us—lights flickering, ropes snapping, wagon wheels rolling on their own. Performers scream in the distance.
Milo whirls back to me. “We need to find the Ringmaster. Now.”
I nod weakly—but the moment I stand, my legs buckle. Milo catches me before I hit the ground. “You’re ice-cold,” he mutters, pressing his forehead to mine for a moment to check. “You’re shaking. Joy—you’re fading.”
“No,” I whisper.
But I am. I feel it. The hollowness expanding through my chest like frost on glass. My veins too empty. My breath too thin.
Giving Milo that spark weakened me—but trying to receive it shattered something deeper. Something the circus has been protecting from me my whole life.
Milo lifts me in his arms without hesitation—like it’s instinct, like it’s the only thing his body knows how to do now.
I gasp. “Milo—”
“I’m not letting you stand,” he says fiercely. “You’re barely conscious.”
Lightning slashes the sky again, illuminating him in white-blue light.
The hollow around him pulses—distorted by panic, guilt, determination.
And there, above his head—a spark. Not gold.
Not grey. Not warm. But a trembling white spark born of fear for someone else.
The first true selfless emotion he’s created.
“Milo…” I whisper. “You’re—”
“Not now,” he snaps gently. “You are not collapsing in my arms again.”
He turns toward the center of the circus. Toward the storm. Toward the massive main tent that sways like a dying beast.
“Milo,” I breathe, “the Ringmaster’s inside.”
“I know,” he says, tightening his grip. “And he’s going to tell me what they did to you.”
My heart stutters. “You can’t confront him like this. The circus—”
“It’s already falling apart,” he growls. “What else can it take from me?”
Another crack of thunder splits the air. This time the ground shakes hard enough that a nearby wagon tips onto its side, spilling props into the mud. Flames burst from a lantern. A rope snaps and whips across the sky. The carousel’s lullaby distorts into a warped, haunting wail.
Wonderhouse is unraveling. And the boy who once carried nothing now carries me and every spark I ever wanted.
“Milo…” I whisper, gripping his shirt. “I’m scared.”
He looks down at me, eyes fierce and soft all at once. “Then hold on to me,” he says. “I’m not letting you go.”
Note by note, the circus’s magic collapses around us. The storm funnels closer. And Milo strides straight into the center of it—with me in his arms, my jar clutched against my chest, and a spark above him that refuses to die.
The moment we step beneath the main tent’s arch, thunder cracks so loudly it sounds like the circus itself is screaming.
And this time, it is.