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“Kenan!” I scream, lunging toward him, but I don’t make it more than a step before my body betrays me. My mark burns, branding iron hot, and I collapse to my knees as if the very ground has decided to swallow me. All around, the masked workers close in, forming a ring inside the ring, their empty faces turned toward the drama at the center.

The Ringmaster click-clacks his tongue, approaching with an exaggerated sigh.

“Ah, your first guardian arrives,” The Ringmaster says with cruel amusement. “Right on cue."

“Let him go!” I scream, lunging toward Kenan.

The Ringmaster flicks his wrist, and I’m thrown backward, landing hard on the dirt. “Not yet. We’re still missing one for our little drama."

As if summoned by his words, Tobias appears at the edge of the ring, his blue eyes blazing with cold fury. Unlike Kenan’s brash entrance, he moves with calculated steps, his face showing nothing but the calm collectiveness he always wears.

“Joshua,” Tobias says, his voice cutting through the drumbeat. “Don’t do this."

The Ringmaster — Joshua — tilts his head, something like genuine sadness crossing his fractured features. “Tobias. My old friend. Still playing the hero after all these years?"

Tobias steps forward, his hands weaving complex patterns in the air. Suddenly the lights flicker, mirrors appearing and multiplying around the ring, reflecting and distorting our images. Dozens of them line up around us, creating a barrier, leaving just the three of us in the center.

“Not playing anything,” Tobias responds, his voice tight. “Just trying to break a cycle that’s gone on far too long."

Chapter 37

I step forward, channeling centuries of practice into the intricate motions of my hands. The air crackles as I weave complex patterns, feeling the magic respond to my will. The Big Top’s lights flicker and dim as my mirrors start humming from it all.

Joshua’s face twists with contempt. I can see the darkness seeping through the cracks in his human mask, tendrils of shadows escaping from behind his eyes. My heart pounds against my ribs as I face the man who was once my closest friend.

Joshua sighs, the sound carries memories of a thousand arguments over centuries. “You know it can’t be broken. The pact requires payment. A soul for The Carnival’s hunger.” His gaze slides to Emerson, and I have to keep from looking at her, already straining from maintaining so many illusions at once. “Her soul.”

I push more power into my mirrors and they start to spin ... faster ... and faster. Creating a dizzying barrier around us. “Not this time,” I growl.

A flick of my wrist and three of my reflections charge towards him, perfect duplicates pulled from the mirrors themselves, each moving with my exact mannerisms, made of light and shadow. Joshua’s eyes widen just a fraction of a second — enough to tell me I surprised him. Something I haven’t done in a very long time.

His laugh echoes through the Big Top, bouncing off the canvas walls and reverberating in my chest. “Clever trick, Tobias. But you’ve always been second best.”

With a casual gesture, a simple twist of his fingers, he tears through my defenses. The pressure hits me like a train, shredding my illusions and sending me flying across the ring. My back slams into one of my own mirrors with such force that glass explodes outwards. The impact knocks the breath from my lungs, leaving me gasping as pain lances through my shoulders and spine.

Glass shards rain down around me, catching the spotlight like diamond tears. Each fragment reflects a tiny version of my face. I taste copper in my mouth.

“There was a time you could match me,” Joshua says, his voice deceptively gentle. “Probably even better than me, if I were honest.”

Before I can push myself up, his power wraps around me again — invisible bands that constrict me. I fight against it, weaving with frantic fingers, but his magic is like a tide pulling me under. He drags me across the dirt floor, my body leaving a furrow in the dust.

“I taught you everything you know,” he says, stepping closer, “but never everything I know.”

With another gesture, he pins me beside Kenan, both of us now pressed to the ground by invisible forces that feel like iron bars across our chests. I strain against the pressure, managing to turn my head enough to lock eyes with Kenan. Blood trickles from a cut on his forehead, but his gaze is fierce, unbroken.

I reach for my remaining power, feeling it pulse beneath my skin like lightning seeking ground. One mirror remains intact, spinning slowly behind Joshua’s back where he can’t see it. If I can just focus enough to —

A dark liquid flows from it, slinking across the floor towards his feet. If I can just get him into it —

“Don’t even think about it,” Joshua says, tightening his magical grip until my ribs creak in protest. “You always have a tell for your moves, Tobias. Always have.” Then he looks down — the liquid moving back to the mirror before his foot comes down on it. Crushing it.

“You’ve grown soft ... that one,” he looks at Kenan, and Kenan fights back a scream as hands push down on him, “has always been weak, but I expected more from you, Tobias. Regardless.”

He turns to Emerson, “Maybe you’ll be worth all the trouble. So I’ll give you a choice.”

The air thickens around us with malevolent energy, the ancient magic we’d foolishly unleashed together so long ago. The symbols begin to glow through the dirt floor, forming the circle I’d hoped to never see again. This isn’t like the normal sacrifice, no, this one growls and grumbles with change. Just like it did the night I found Joshua.

“You can go free,” Joshua continues, “walk out of The Carnival and never return. Soul intact, and alive. But —”