Chapter 3
Shit!”
Perhaps he should have uttered a more wondrous word, something more fitting with the sensation of gliding through a mirror.
Sinuous. Silken. Silver sliding everywhere.
But no. Shit was what left Ezra’s mouth, because the rest of his body felt as if it was melting.
His feet landed on the dance floor, which would have looked exactly the same as where he’d previously stood, if not for the sparkling mist covering it.
Rose had already kicked up a fair bit of glitter, with the glee of a child discovering a mud puddle.
Many other newcomers were doing the same.
The shine had reached their hair… Strands of silver and gold glowed there like stray bits of tinsel.
Ezra ran a hand through his own shaggy mane.
Still dark, according to the mirrors that surrounded him.
The one he’d just exited, however, showed only Celia, bursting through the glass as if it were nothing but a lace curtain.
“Rose… She called you ‘Biz’s boy.’” Celia gave him another frosty up-and-down stare. “You two aren’t…?”
A suggestive silence.
“God, no.”
“Are you sure? Their engagement seems to have you flustered.”
“I would think that’s more due to the fact that I just discovered that magic is real,” Ezra couldn’t help but snap.
She was too close to a different truth—one that could get him and Vincent into a great deal of trouble.
Love could be many things, yes, but the British government was more concerned with power.
Who followed their laws to the letter. And who didn’t.
There wasn’t much room for Ezra in the margins.
Love could be many things, yes, but for him, it was mostly fear.
And loss.
And fear of loss.
His Victoria Cross wouldn’t keep him out of a jail cell. It was one of the reasons he’d ended things with Vincent, at the close of their second Michaelmas term. It was also the reason he was flushing.
Celia frowned. “You’ve only learned about magic just now? But… that’s impossible.”
“Isn’t this all impossible?” Ezra waved out over the room, where dancers were tugging the bright hairs from their heads and throwing them to the floor.
These burst like firecrackers, releasing not just light but objects.
Many were articles of clothing: dresses made of diamonds, gowns that spit sparks from the hem as their dancers spun, a fur stole where the fox was very much alive and moving.
Men started shucking off their Savile Row jackets to replace them with leopard-spotted coats.
Others were growing antlers from their heads—like some ancient god of the hunt.
Rose herself had sprouted several flowers in her hair that were attracting clouds of butterflies.
“How are they doing any of this?”
“You seriously don’t know?” Celia cocked her head. “You’ve never conjured any imaginations before?”
“What?”
“They’re pulling ideas from their heads,” she clarified.
“Anyone can do it, if you’re in the Seek and Find.
It’s how Hugo and his friends are trying to get their first real tithe so that they can rise in the Order’s ranks.
They’re really not supposed to be Enlightening the masses.
It’s all rather clandestine—that’s why they set up the Seek and Find like some sort of speakeasy.
If the Order found out, they’d shut it down.
They’re quite picky about who’s allowed to see magic. ”
“The Order?” She’d used that term several times now. To Ezra, it sounded like something out of the Crusades. “You mean, like, the Knights Templar?”
“The Order of British Magicians,” Celia corrected him. “Though, I’m sure there was overlap. What are the odds that there were two secret societies combing the world for magical relics?”
Probably similar statistics to angels sprouting up in every mythology known to humankind. Ezra’s head was starting to spin with the scope of it all.
“These men aren’t knights in shining armor,” his guide went on, watching youths leap around in their leopard skins.
“They’re dukes and viscounts and the second sons of earls.
All of them were raised to believe themselves a cut above everyone else—even their own sisters.
” Celia’s nostrils flared, an almost imperceptible motion.
“Women aren’t welcome into the Order. We’re just expected to dance at Hugo’s parties…
Dance and dream and disregard the fact that magic should belong to us too. ”
Ezra let his gaze drift back to the dance floor—all glitter and fangs. He thought of the times Lord Blackwood had led him to believe he was mad… How quickly this lifetime of belief had come undone.
“But you.” Celia’s stare landed back on Ezra. The bitterness he’d caught in her voice was not there… Instead, curiosity twinkled through the blue. “You could see the magic before Hugo issued his invitation.”
“So could you,” Ezra reasoned.
Her hand flew up to her neckline then, tracing the silver chain that slipped down beneath her dress. Odd, he thought. Most women liked to show off their jewels in a place like this. Rose was already dripping with amethysts and moonstones.
“Do you want to know the real secret?” Celia’s voice went low, matching the croon of the room’s jazz.
“Everyone is magical. You. Me. The milkman. The king. Every single person alive has power woven into the fabric of their soul. Their life force. Their anima. Most people never get the chance to understand their full potential—” She cast a glance back at the dance floor, which was now a riot of flowers, jewels, and animals dashing through the clouds of confetti.
“This… this is child’s play. And most children do see magic, by the way.
They catch glimmers: winking statues or doors that open to elsewhere.
That sort of thing. Adults like to call it a ‘wild imagination,’ when really it’s just a closely guarded secret.
You see, as we grow older, we stop believing.
We lose our natural ability to see enchanted things.
It remains that way for most people, unless you’re one of a chosen few who gets Enlightened.
And even if that happens, it’s usually only for an evening…
All of this will disappear by dawn. Including the dancers’ memories. ”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?” She shrugged. “People with power get greedy. If you remain Enlightened long enough, you can learn more than a few party tricks. The Order of British Magicians won’t suffer outsiders coming in and upsetting the system they’ve upheld for countless years.
They have a strict hierarchy. All of their members are from the peerage—it’s a rather chicken-and-egg situation, that.
High-ranking families got those positions by trading magic behind closed doors.
And those doors stay closed to all but their sons.
” Her lips went thin at this. “No one else in Britain is allowed to be Enlightened. If they catch an outsider practicing large-scale magic in their territory, they put a stop to it. Quickly. I figured I’d spare you that unpleasantness. ”
“I appreciate it.”
“To that point, we’d better do our best to blend in,” Celia pointed out. “Hugo will get cross if we linger in the corner.”
This set them walking. The space was much larger than Ezra first suspected.
The mist-covered dance floor gave way to a turquoise pool, where partiers floated on giant lily pads while massive rainbow-scaled koi wound through the waters below.
Beyond this shoreline sat a bar, its glassware sparkling with frost. The drinks served were curious concoctions—poetry in a glass.
Cocktails that twinkled like starlight and smelled like summer gardens were being handed out by the gentleman with the flaming knuckles.
Hugo. Somehow his fire did not melt the frost. Instead, the glow brought out a hard edge to his face.
The sort of sharpness that came out of being told, over and over again, that you were meant to rule.
There’s a reason they call it entitlement, George had once joked. The pun had been terrible enough to make both Biz and Ezra groan, but the oldest Ellington child had always made light of his future: the lord he would be.
Or would have been…
Despite all the dreams that were springing to life around them, Ezra had a difficult time imagining George here, in league with the other magicians. “Do all of the lords participate in the Order?” he asked Celia.
“More or less. Now, what would you like to wear?” She seemed eager to change the subject, along with their outfits. “A pair of horns?”
“Wings,” Ezra answered without hesitation. “I want wings.”
Hers weren’t nearly as flat as they’d been on the previous dance floor. The shape of the boa had given way to the same large wings he’d seen in the British Museum. Flared just past the shadows of those stolen pharaohs.
Now it was Celia’s hair that was flaring.
One strand was seared a pale silverish blue.
She plucked it from her skull and snapped the piece in half.
Out poured more feathers. They were gold—the same color as the illumination of the halo from that medieval manuscript—but the shape was less angelic than Ezra expected. It was more of a cape.
“You won’t be able to keep them,” she explained as she handed him the pile. “Hugo takes all the ideas that are manifested here.”
Of course he does.
“For a tithe, you said?”