“It’s the only kind I know,” Marco responds. He tugs a string by the doorway and the movement reverberates throughout the room, the entire model circus sparkling as bits of metal catch the firelight. “Though I doubt it was ever meant for this purpose.”

Celia pauses at a tent containing a tree branch covered in candle wax. Orienting herself from there, she locates another, gently pushing open the paper door to find a ring of tiny chairs representing her own performance space.

The pages that comprise it are printed with Shakespearean sonnets.

Celia lets the paper door swing closed.

She finishes her tentative tour around the room and rejoins Marco in the doorway, pulling the door closed softly behind her.

The sensation of being within the circus fades as soon as she has crossed the threshold, and she is suddenly acutely aware of everything in the adjoining room. The warmth of the fire fighting against the draft from the windows. The scent of Marco’s skin beneath the ink and his cologne.

“Thank you for showing me that,” she says.

“I take it your father would not approve?” Marco asks.

“I don’t particularly care what my father approves of any longer.”

Celia wanders past the desk and stops in front of the fireplace, watching the miniature pages turning through time on the clock upon the mantel.

Next to the clock there sits a solitary playing card. The two of hearts. It bears no sign that it was once pierced with an Ottoman dagger. No evidence that Celia’s blood has ever marred its surface, but she knows that it is the same card.

“I could speak with Alexander,” Marco suggests. “Perhaps he saw enough to provide a verdict, or this will result in some sort of disqualification. I’m certain he thinks me a disappointment at this point, he could declare you the win—”

“Stop,” Celia says without turning. “Please, stop talking. I don’t want to talk about this damned game.”

Marco attempts to protest but his voice catches in his throat. He struggles against it but finds he is unable to speak.

His shoulders fall in a silent sigh.

“I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held,” Celia says when he approaches her. “Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.”

She leans against his chest and he wraps his arms around her, gently stroking the back of her neck with an ink-stained hand. They stay like this for some time, alongside the crackling of the fire and the ticking of the clock.

When she lifts her head, he keeps his eyes locked on hers as he slides her coat from her shoulders, resting his hands on her bare arms.

The familiar passion that always accompanies the touch of his skin against hers washes over Celia and she can no longer resist it, no longer wants to.

“Marco,” she says, her fingers fumbling with the buttons on his vest. “Marco, I—”

His lips are on hers, hot and demanding, before she can finish.

While she undoes button after button, he pulls blindly at fastenings and ribbons, refusing to take his lips from hers.

The meticulously constructed gown collapses into a puddle around her feet.

Wrapping the unbound laces of her corset around his wrists, Marco pulls her down to the floor with him.

They continue to remove layer after layer until nothing separates them.

Trapped in silence, Marco traces apologies and adorations across Celia’s body with his tongue. Mutely expressing all the things he cannot speak aloud.

He finds other ways to tell her, his fingers leaving faint trails of ink in their wake. He savors every sound he elicits from her.

The entire room trembles as they come together.

And though there are a great many fragile objects contained within it, nothing breaks.

Above them, the clock continues to turn its pages, pushing stories too minuscule to read ever onward.

*

MARCO DOES NOT REMEMBER FALLING ASLEEP. One moment Celia is curled in his arms, her head resting against his chest as she listens to his heart beating, and the next he is alone.

The fire has died down to smoldering embers. The grey dawn creeps in through the windows, casting soft shadows.

Upon the two of hearts on the mantel, there sits a silver band engraved in Latin. Marco smiles, slipping Celia’s ring onto his pinkie, alongside the scar on his ring finger.

He does not notice until later that the leather-bound safeguard that had been on his desk is gone.

Part IV

INCENDIARY

There are tents, I am certain, that I have not discovered in my many visits to the circus. Though I have seen a great deal of the sights, traveled a number of the available paths, there are always corners that remain unexplored, doors that remain unopened.

—FRIEDRICK THIESSEN, 1896

Technicalities

LONDON, NOVEMBER 1, 1901

Celia wishes she could freeze time as she listens to the steady beat of Marco’s heart against the ticking of the clock. To stay forever within this moment, curled in his arms, his hands softly stroking her back. To not have to leave.

She only succeeds in slowing Marco’s heartbeat enough that he falls deeply asleep.

She could wake him, but already the sky outside is brightening, and she dreads the thought of saying goodbye.

Instead, she kisses him gently on the lips and quietly dresses as he sleeps. She takes her ring from her finger and leaves it on the mantel, resting between the two hearts emblazoned on the playing card.

She pauses as she puts on her coat, looking at the books scattered across the desk.

Perhaps if she better understood his systems, she could use them to make the circus more independent. To take some of the weight off of herself. Allowing them to be together for more than a few stolen hours, without challenging the rules of the game.

It is the best gift she can think to give him, if they are unable to force a verdict from either of their instructors.

She picks up the volume filled with names. It seems a good place to start as she understands the basis of what it is meant to accomplish.

She takes it with her as she leaves.

Celia closes the door to Marco’s flat as quietly as she can after she slips out into the darkened hall, the leather-bound book tucked under her arm. The locks slide into place behind her with a series of soft, muffled clicks.

She does not notice the figure concealed in the nearby shadows until he speaks.

“You deceitful little slut,” her father says.

Celia shuts her eyes, attempting to concentrate, but it has always been difficult to push him away once he has grabbed ahold of her, and she cannot manage it.

“I’m surprised you waited in the hall to call me that, Papa,” she says.

“This place is so well protected it’s downright absurd,” Hector says, waving at the door. “Nothing could get in without that boy explicitly wanting it there.”

“Good,” Celia says. “You can stay away from him, and you can stay away from me.”

“What are you doing with that?” he asks, gesturing at the book under her arm.

“Nothing to concern yourself with,” Celia says.

“You cannot interfere with his work,” Hector says.

“I know, interference is one of the very few things that is apparently against the rules. I do not intend to interfere, I intend to learn his systems so I can stop having to constantly manage so much of the circus.”

“His systems. Alexander’s systems are nothing you should be bothering with. You have no idea what you’re doing. I overestimated your ability to handle this challenge.”

“This is the game, isn’t it?” Celia asks. “It’s about how we deal with the repercussions of magic when placed in a public venue, in a world that does not believe in such things. It’s a test of stamina and control, not skill.”

“It is a test of strength,” Hector says. “And you are weak. Weaker than I’d thought.”

“Then let me lose,” she says. “I’m exhausted, Papa. I cannot do this any longer. It’s not as though you can gloat over a bottle of whiskey once a winner is declared.”

“A winner is not declared,” her father says. “The game is played out, not stopped. You should have figured that much out by now. You used to be somewhat clever.”

Celia glares at him, but at the same time she begins turning over his words in her mind, collecting the obscure non-answers about the rules he has given her over the years. Suddenly the shape of the elements he has always avoided becomes more distinct, the key unknown factor clear.

“The victor is the one left standing after the other can no longer endure,” Celia says, the scope of it finally making devastating sense.

“That is a gross generalization but I suppose it will suffice.”

Celia turns back to Marco’s flat, pressing her hand against the door.

“Stop behaving as though you love that boy,” Hector says. “You are above such mundane things.”

“You are willing to sacrifice me for this,” she says quietly. “To let me destroy myself just so you can attempt to prove a point. You tied me into this game knowing the stakes, and you let me think it was nothing but a simple challenge of skill.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says, “as if you think me inhuman.”

“I can see through you,” Celia snaps. “It is not particularly trying on my imagination.”

“It would not be any different if I were still as I was when this started.”

“And what happens to the circus after the game?” Celia asks.

“The circus is merely a venue,” he says. “A stadium. A very festive coliseum. You could continue on with it after you win, though without the game it serves no purpose.”

“I suppose the other people involved serve no purpose as well, then?” Celia asks. “Their fates are only a matter of consequence?”

“All actions have repercussions,” Hector says. “That’s part of the challenge.”

“Why are you telling me all this now when you have never mentioned it before?”

“Before, I had not thought you were in the position to be the one to lose.”

“You mean the one to die,” Celia says.

“A technicality,” her father says. “A game is completed only when there is a single player left. There is no other way to end it. You can abandon any misguided dreams of continuing to play whore to that nobody Alexander plucked out of a London gutter after this is over.”

“Who is left, then?” Celia asks, ignoring his comment. “You said Alexander’s student won the last challenge, what happened to him?”

A derisive laugh shudders through the shadows before Hector replies.

“She is bending herself into knots in your precious circus.”

The only illumination in this tent comes from the fire. The flames are a radiant, flickering white, like the bonfire in the courtyard.

You pass a fire-eater elevated on a striped platform. He keeps small bits of flame dancing atop long sticks while he prepares to swallow them whole.

On another platform, a woman holds two long chains, with a ball of flame at the end of each. She swings them in loops and circles, leaving glowing trails of white light in their paths, moving so quickly that they look like strings of fire rather than single flames on lengths of chain.

Performers on multiple platforms juggle torches, spinning them high into the air. Occasionally, they toss these flaming torches to each other in a shower of sparks.

Elsewhere, there are flaming hoops perched at different levels that performers slip in and out of with ease, as though the hoops were only metal and not encased in flickering flames.

The artist on this platform holds pieces of flame in her bare hands, and she forms them into snakes and flowers and all manner of shapes. Sparks fly from shooting stars, birds flame and disappear like miniature phoenixes in her hands.

She smiles at you as you watch the white flames in her hand become, with the deft movement of her fingers, a boat. A book. A heart of fire.

EN ROUTE FROM LONDON TO MUNICH, NOVEMBER 1, 1901

The train is unremarkable as it chugs across the countryside, puffing clouds of grey smoke into the air. The engine is almost entirely black. The cars it pulls are equally as monochromatic. Those with windows have glass that is tinted and shadowed; those without are dark as coal.

It is silent as it travels, no whistles or horns. The wheels on the track are not screeching but gliding smoothly and quietly. It passes almost unnoticed along its route, making no stops.

From the exterior, it appears to be a coal train, or something similar. It is utterly unremarkable.

The interior is a different story.

Inside, the train is opulent, gilded, and warm. Most of the passenger cars are lined with thick patterned carpets, upholstered in velvets in burgundies and violets and creams, as though they have been dipped in a sunset, hovering at twilight and holding on to the colors before they fade to midnight and stars.

There are lights in sconces lining the corridors, cascades of crystals falling from them and swaying with the motion of the train. Soothing and serene.

Shortly after its departure, Celia places the leather-bound book safely away, camouflaged in plain sight amongst her own volumes.

She changes from her bloodstained gown to a flowing one in moonlight grey, bound with ribbons in black, white, and charcoal, which had been one of Friedrick’s particular favorites.

The ribbons drift behind her as she makes her way down the train.

She stops at the only door that has two calligraphed characters as well as a handwritten name on the tag next to it.

Her polite knock is answered immediately, inviting her inside.

While most of the train compartments are saturated with color, Tsukiko’s private car is almost completely neutral. A bare space surrounded by paper screens and curtains of raw silk, perfumed with the scent of ginger and cream.