Chapter Ten
CHAPTER TEN
Mira
I frowned at the shovel in my hand. If anyone saw me right now, they’d think that I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had.
But I started digging all the same.
It wasn’t long before the shovel hit something hard in the dirt. Kneeling, I reached into the small hole, my fingers brushing cool metal.
Recognition, when it came, was fast and sudden.
I had found this box once, wrapped in cloth and stashed at the bottom of my mother’s trunk. Celeste had caught my hand before I could touch it. No, Mira, she’d warned. It’s magic.
But I want to see magic, I’d said, my excitement impossible to contain. Magic is good, isn’t it?
It’s not that kind of magic, my mother had answered.
Perhaps that memory should have given me pause. Magic was carefully policed in the empire, and most people felt safer knowing those with special abilities were sworn into the emperor’s service. But free magic had never been an evil thing to me. I’d grown up listening to my mother’s tales – tales of incredible, impossible feats. Women like the Sorceress, who could enchant with a single word. Fierce Warriors of the Western dunes, who could shoot arrows from their hands. I had grown up imagining shamans and seers, glittering power and endless possibilities. None of it had seemed dangerous. Just fantastical.
With reverent fingers, I lifted the lid, revealing a mask, exquisitely detailed. Intricate spiderwebs were crafted in lace over delicate flowers with sharp, blood-coated thorns. The instant I touched the mask, the images changed. I saw beasts prowling, barbed vines snaking around the outline of dark eyes.
Then I blinked. Though I’d been sure there was nothing else inside, a gleam of red caught my eye. A ruby.
A blood ruby.
How on earth had my mother acquired something like this ? More importantly, why go to the trouble of concealing it? It was small, but surely it would fetch a considerable price. It made no sense to bury it. None of this made any sense.
I reached towards the gemstone, but before I could touch it, the ruby re-formed into something else.
Eyes wide with wonder, I stared at the necklace in the box. The locket.
It was gold, the chain thin and delicate, the locket itself round and solid. There was an engraving on the gold: a crown. A wreathed crown.
I clutched the locket in my hand, almost afraid to open it. But when I tried, it remained firmly shut.
After a long hesitation, I reburied the silver box and the mask. But I fastened the locket around my neck, hiding it beneath the bodice of my dress. It felt warm and familiar against my skin, almost like a living thing.
And for a moment, I could have sworn I felt it thump rhythmically in time with my pulse—
Like a second heartbeat.
That night, my dreams were filled with horrors.
I saw Lillian’s terrified face, her skin leached of warmth and colour. I reached for her, but her hands were wet and slippery, difficult to grasp. And when I pulled away, I realised that my palms were stained red with her blood.
Then I was looking at my mother, who was dancing in a beautiful ballroom. She resembled a queen, with a diadem in her hair and a shimmering gown that transitioned from white to blue, like rippling ice. But when she smiled, my eyes went to the necklace around her throat. The one with the wreathed crown.
Other images assaulted my senses. I dreamt of masks, of blood rubies, of ancient beasts and serpentine sea monsters. I saw so many things, but the moment I glimpsed them, they slipped from my memory like water slipping through my fingers.
Even now, hours later, the dreams bothered me. They felt ominous, like a warning. But a warning of what?
Striding through the cavernous red and white expanse of the main circus tent, I searched for my mother. She was usually entertaining on the raised platform, but tonight Verex had captured the crowd’s attention. His vivacious assistant Yasmine was tied to a spinning target, a succession of knives already outlining her body – with one noticeable exception. People gasped as Verex lined up his final throw, the blade missing her left ear by an inch.
Though impressive, it was an act I’d seen dozens of times before. But as I started to turn, I saw my mother.
She glided onto centre stage, impossible to miss in her bejewelled dancer’s costume. The audience clapped as musicians struck up a lively tune, Verex and Yasmine taking their final bows before disappearing down the side steps.
My mother twirled around the platform, so quickly and fluidly that for a few delirious seconds, she transformed into colour and shadow. She spun, effortlessly in time with the wild beat, throwing the audience a smile that they ate up. It was a smile I recognised: beautiful, entrancing, with nothing real behind it. It was the smile she wore when she was pretending.
My hand dropped to the locket I wore. I’d always assumed the criminals we were running from were the enemy, that my mother was the innocent one in all of this. Now, I was forced to reconsider. What else was Celeste hiding? And what had she done that was terrible enough to result in a lifetime of running, for the both of us?
Turning resolutely away from the stage, I strode through the ring of circus tents without looking back. The Choosing Ceremony was tomorrow, and if I’d had any lingering doubts, they were gone now.
Dangerous or not, the Trials were my ticket to freedom – to a life that no one, not even my mother, could control.