Lightning tears a hole through the tent roof. A support beam cracks and crashes into the ring. Wonderhouse is unmaking itself because the dam inside me is finally cracking.
“Joy, we have to go,” Milo says, his breath shaking against my hair. “Before this place kills you.”
“No,” the Ringmaster snaps. “If she leaves now, the imbalance will destroy everything. The circus will collapse into the ground and take half the camp with it.”
“And if she stays?” Milo shouts. “She’ll die.”
The Ringmaster’s silence is the only answer. Milo’s whole body goes rigid, a white-gold spark rising above him, enormous and trembling. “Then I won’t let her stay,” he says.
The ground cracks beneath us. The central poles buckle like broken ribs. The circus is collapsing. The last thing I see before everything plunges into chaos is the sparks inside my jar rising wildly, crashing into each other like panicked birds.
Chapter 18
Little Mirth’s Final Performance
The world collapses wrong.
Not like buildings falling, or tents tearing, or storms breaking the sky. It collapses inward—like someone is folding the circus back into its own heart, crumpling Wonderhouse into a tight, trembling knot.
Milo clutches me to his chest as he stumbles across the tilting ring. Canvas snaps overhead like a cracking whip, and a support beam crashes inches from his heel. Performers scream as the ground tears open beneath the calliope wagon.
The Ringmaster shouts orders no one can hear over the storm. And all the while, my jar glows brighter and brighter, as if the Joys inside are waking up for the first time in years.
“Joy!” Milo shouts over the roar. “Tell me what to do!”
He expects direction, but all I feel is the dam inside my chest—the dam built by the curse—splintering like brittle glass. Shards of light and pain fall through me.
“Milo…” I whisper, my voice thin. “I’m… slipping.”
“No,” he growls, clutching me tighter. “No, no, stay with me?—”
But the world tilts again. The tent buckles. A rope snaps above us, spiraling down like a striking snake. Milo twists his body to shield me.
“Stop protecting me,” I gasp. “You’ll be crushed?—”
“I don’t care!”
I believe him, and that terrifies me more than the storm. A deafening crack splits the air as one of the central poles gives way. The canvas sinks, heavy with rain, static, and magic unraveling.
Performers flee the ring. The Barker drags a trembling tightrope walker toward an exit. Fireflies drop from their ropes like dying embers. Everyone runs. Except me.
Something pulls me forward—not physically, but from inside my ribs. A pressure. A calling. The shards of the dam inside me align into something sharp and inevitable.
“Milo,” I breathe, “put me down.”
His eyes widen with panic. “Absolutely not.”
“Milo…”
“No.”
Lightning strikes the pole beside us, exploding wood into shrapnel. The ground bucks beneath us like a living beast. Canvas tears, and a lantern crashes into the sawdust, flames licking hungrily across the floor.
The circus is dying. Not slowly. Not metaphorically. Dying. And the call inside me grows louder.
“Milo,” I whisper again, quieter this time. “Please.”
His breath catches. He stares at me, and something in him recognizes the look on my face. This is not a request; this is resignation. He lowers me to my feet, trembling and terrified.