I glanced away from Sher-sah’s side and saw Gideon mounted atop a rearing Wallah. “Get out of here, Evie!” He leveled his crossbow and let off a bolt. Beside him, standing with his legs braced wide apart, Falak shot into the crowd with his ancient pistol.

The lion hunched, lowering his shoulder so I could mount. I raised a foot, preparing to throw my leg across the lion’s back, but an explosion of fire, heat, and pain tore through my chest with enough force and violence to toss me aside like an old used rag.

I hit the dirt rolling head over heels and gasped for a breath that refused to come. My chest burned as if an oil lantern had exploded inside me and the fire consumed my air.

“Evie!” Gideon screamed my name, but I was too breathless, too overwhelmed by a blaze of agony, to respond.

The gunfire diminished. So did the murky sunlight.

My pulse thumped in my ears, but it also faded.

And then...

Then...

Nothing.

Chapter 22

Evelyn, dear... wake up!

I drew in a huge, gasping breath and struggled to escape a hazy fog of semi-consciousness. Around me, spectral forms hovered close, and their voices swirled in confusing echoes. A fire still blazed in my chest, but the flame had diminished to that of a small candle rather than the raging conflagration from before.

Before what...? When I tried thinking of what had happened and how I’d lost consciousness and awoken in this groggy, confused state, my memories refused to surface. I rubbed my eyes and blinked until the room and people sharpened into focus. Gideon’s face appeared first. His concerned expression and the way he gripped my hand reminded me of the time I’d awoken aboard the Tippany’s airship, after he’d freed me from imprisonment in Ruelle Thibodaux’s house. But instead of Puri’s handmade quilts, I was covered in velveteen blankets.

Falak, Svieta, and Genevieve were gathered around my bed, anxiously peering at me as though they expected me to sprout wings and fly away.

“What did I miss?” I croaked. Gideon passed me a mug of water, and I sipped it until my throat no longer felt so much like a rutted gravel road. “The children?”

He squeezed my hand. “They’re fine. Back with their parents, safe and sound.”

“The Kerch and her men?”

He glanced away. His throat worked, but he said nothing.

“Dead.” Genevieve sat on the bed beside my knee. “Crossbow bolt through her heart.”

I glanced at Gideon, but he refused to look at me.

“After that, her men fled,” Falak said. He also took a seat, retreating to a chair positioned at a small desk across from me. He removed his little white cap and ran his fingers through his hair.

I knew that desk. I’d seen it the last time I visited the ringmaster in his personal quarters. Glancing around the room, I recognized other familiar details. “Your wagon, ringmaster? I’m honored.”

He grimaced and set his cap in place. “Where else could we put you? It seemed inappropriate to have Svieta perform surgery in the costumes wagon or the animal menagerie. I’m not sure Sher-sah would have let her near you, anyway.”

“Surgery?” At the word, the little candle flame in my chest roared to life. I reached to smother the burn, but Gideon caught my hand.

He shook his head. “Wait.”

I curled my fingers over his. “What’s wrong?”

Evelyn.... A voice whispered as though it came from somewhere deep inside me. Don’t be afraid.

A suspicion, vague and uncertain, formed in my mind. “I was....” I stopped and shook my head. “I was shot, wasn’t I? That’s the burning sensation I felt. Gods, I thought a bomb had gone off in my chest.”

Gideon winced. “Close enough. The Kerch’s gun, it was like a cannon.”

“The Kerch shot me?”

“I’m not sure she meant to. I think she was firing blindly.”

I snorted. “Considering how thick her spectacles were, that might be very likely.”

“It was chaos,” Genevieve said. “Once I grabbed the children, and Gideon and Falak started shooting, the Brigands lost all semblance of order.”

“Some fought,” Falak said. “Most of them ran, especially after the Kerch went down and Sher-sah joined the fight.”

“I thought she’d be tougher than that,” I said. “Harder to kill.”

“She thought we were a bunch of useless performers,” Genevieve said, “and that you were a powerless goddess.”

“I am a powerless goddess.” I gave into a moment of self-pity. Fisting my hands together in my lap, I stared at my knuckles and resisted the tears burning in my eyes. “And I hate it.”

At that, Svieta cleared her throat. I looked up and caught her gaze. She said something in a dire tone, and I glanced at Falak, awaiting his translation. The ringmaster exhaled, and his shoulders sagged. “There’s a lot we have to tell you. So much I’m not sure where to begin.”

Svieta said something else and jerked her chin in my direction. Falak snorted and muttered before speaking clearly. “Promise me you won’t get upset.”

I frowned. “I can’t promise that.”

Gideon squeezed my shoulder. “Falak already explained it to the rest of us. It was the only way—” He stopped, cleared his voice, and started again. “It’s the only way I’d let Svieta do what she did to you.”

A burble of acid swirled in my stomach and climbed up my throat. “What she...what she did to me?”

He grimaced. “Just listen. And try to keep an open mind.”

Chapter 23

A Brief History of Falak Savin, Ringmaster

Falak Savin never knew a day in his life that hadn’t, in some manner, involved Le Cirque de Merveilles Mécanique. His mother, Priya, gave birth to him while the troupe was on the road, and although she told her husband she wished to return home, to the village where her parents lived in the country of Ahabar, the circus had scheduled numerous shows throughout the kingdoms and empires encompassing the far, Far East.

Falak’s father explained that the cost of cancelling their tour and backing out of promised performances would strain the circus’s financial health, possibly to the point of breaking. He vowed to take her home to see her parents as soon as possible. However, Falak was no longer a baby by the time the circus left the East and made the slow trek toward Ahabar through the southernmost nations of the eastern Continent.

Le Cirque de Merveilles Mécanique arrived on the outskirts of Priya’s home village on the eve of Falak’s fourth birthday, in the first humid and hot days of monsoon season. Together with his mother and father, Falak left the field where the circus had set up camp and walked the long dirt road to his grandparents’ home, a small tile-roofed house sitting on the edge of the village near a rushing creek and a thorny scrub forest.

With tears in their eyes, Falak’s grandparents greeted their daughter, her husband, and their beloved little grandson whom they smothered with hugs and kisses. They smothered him with food, as well. Falak’s grandmother had prepared a huge feast, and the family sat down to eat, passing plates of bread, bowls of rice, curried peas, fried vegetables, and hunks of homemade cheese swimming in spiced spinach. When he’d eaten until his stomach strained its limits, the boy excused himself and escaped the dull adult conversation in favor of investigating his grandfather’s garden outside.

The summer sun had started to set, and the shadows in the scrub forest had thickened and darkened like cane syrup cooking over a flame. Falak ignored those ominous shadows as he chased swarms of fireflies. Despite his mother’s warning not to stray from the house, the allure of capturing the flickering specks of light overwhelmed the boy’s better judgment. Besides, the fireflies glowed fiercer and in greater numbers within the forest’s shadows. He waded the fast-running creek and plodded up the bank, following fireflies as though they were will-o’-the-wisps, leading him into fairyland.