I am searching for my equal. My perfect match.
So now is the time for your clever plans to be hatched.
I need someone brilliant and talented and willing to sparkle against all the odds.
I will only choose the showstopper who is worthy of the gods.
*The final three performers will have five minutes to present their acts in the center ring. Make this a night my special guests will never forget, and you will be my next lead act.
“To hell with that,” she said.
She never wanted to experience what she went through in that Big Top again. And she surely wasn’t going to be used as some pawn for the rich to toy with. She’d had enough of that in her life, and it had gotten her nothing but heartache.
But she also knew Ignacio wouldn’t leave until he found something significant to send to the Defiant.
The parade began to move. The swing inside the cage bumped against her back, beckoning her to sit. She chewed on her cheek and searched for the boy she loved through the cage’s bars. He should be here. She tried to push down the unease stirring inside her stomach.
Hopefully, he was out there getting the answers they needed so they could flee before the show began tonight.
Chapter 36
Ignacio
The ground rumbled under his feet as Camila’s screams tore through the Fun House tent.
“No!” she bellowed. “Help!”
Ignacio tried to find his way to her through the maze of mirrors. With each step closer, he noticed something strange happening to Camila. Her appearance was shifting. Her black hair was graying. Her muscles shrinking. Her skin sagging.
“Somebody help them!” she wailed. Her body went limp in the ratas’ arms, but she continued to scream for someone to helpthemas the guards holding her up brought her nearer to the mirror.
Ignacio ran hard into an invisible wall. He cursed. Tried to go right. It was blocked. He went left. Red lanterns throbbed overhead like a beating heart. Shadowy fog billowed around hisfeet.
He found a straight passageway and caught what Camila was seeing in the mirror. It was a living scene, like the one he’dwitnessed of him boarding the train. Pilar was in this dreamscape. So were Esmeralda and Gabriel and—surprisingly—Ignacio too. They were running down a small hill. Bolting toward a quaint home in the middle of a meadow that was completely engulfed in flames.
Pilar stopped running and then turned toward the mirror, looking directly at Camila. “Don’t just stand there, Camila! Our family is stuck inside!” She thrust out her hand. “Help me! Take my hand—we can save them!”
But this version of Pilar was off. Wrong. Her eyes weren’t her own. They were black and gold and spun in hypnotizing circles like the eyes of the monster in the mirror.
“Take my hand, sister! Hurry. We can save them!”
The ratas dragged the aging Camila forward. Sobbing, she reached for her sister inside the mirror. Pilar’s face morphed into that of the monster he had seen before.
“No!” Ignacio yelled. “Don’t!”
He cut right again and this time he found the opening to where Camila stood. He rushed forward and slammed his fist into the face of one of the ratas holding her. The man stumbled back. The second rata released her and barreled right into Ignacio. Camila fell to her knees, but didn’t move to escape. Tears streamed down her face, and she grew older in appearance as she inched nearer to the mirror, her hands extended toward the glass.
“Camila!” Ignacio yelled.
She paid him no mind. Her fingertips hovered an inch away from the glass.
Air rushed out of Ignacio’s lungs when the second rata pounded his shoulder into Ignacio’s sternum. He shoved his heels into the ground and twisted his body with a fierce cut to the right. The guard’s hold broke, and he crashed into one of the mirrors. Glass shattered and clattered to the floor as he crumpled.
“Stop him!” that gravelly voice from within the reflection roared. “Do not let another mirror break!”
The first rata Ignacio had punched picked up a shard of glass. Grinning, he flipped it around until the sharpest point was facing Ignacio. The shard looked different now. It was no longer reflective but shiny black with waves of iridescent colors coursing through.
Blackbird obsidian—the same gemstone used within the soldiers’ daggers and to garnish their badges. The same stones set in his mother’s ring. Something clicked inside his mind. He’d heard of a type of obsidian that could be smoothed into a reflective surface before. His mother had shown it to him in an old fable she used to read to him. The very book he’d seen in his father’s private office.
