Beyond the Curtain

02 | rule 49

RULE 49: DO NOT LET ANYTHING DISTRACT YOU FROM YOUR WORK.

✷  C  H  A  P  T  E  R     T  W  O  ✷

"How long have you been with the circus?" Gray asked, dangling his legs over the edge of the hill. He took a bite of his ice cream and peered through his long eyelashes. I had not been so eager to dig into my own ice cream, not wanting to break two rules in one night.

I knew there would be consequences if I did so. Miss Nymphadora did not take lightly breaking her rules, no matter how small the infraction. I still didn't understand how she did it, but she had a way of always knowing whenever anyone under the influence of her contract broke a rule.

If she happened to be in good humor, she would let some of the smaller rules off without much disruption, but the more important rules were a different story. While my stomach growled for the vanilla soft serve, I was not in the mood to break the illusion of the circus for the time being.

Shrugging my shoulders, I moved the ice cream around with the plastic spoon Gray had handed me earlier. "I don't know. I think, like, twenty-two years?"

Often, in the short time I had been acquainted with Gray, I thought he was too beautiful to work at the circus. It wasn't a slight to any of my fellow circus members.

Gray appeared remarkably untouched by the world. His skin was as soft as butter, and his chest puffed out in just the right way to say he had not been knocked on his feet by life enough times. He held his head up high, and I knew—working under Miss Nymphadora—it would only be a matter of time before his confidence began to slip. I had seen it many times before.

Nevertheless, he looked puzzled as he swallowed a bite of ice cream. He licked his lips, and I smiled at the small trace of vanilla ice cream that remained on the crease of his mouth. Even in the shadows of the setting sun, Gray's eyes—which were a shade of gray (hence his name)—shone brightly. "You don't look old enough to have been here for that long. You don't look like you're a day over twenty."

I blushed, feeling the edges of my eyes crinkle. "I am a couple days over twenty, believe it or not. I'm twenty-two."

"But that would mean—"

"I've been with the circus my entire life," I breathed, blowing a few pieces of my blonde hair upward. "Quite literally."

Setting his now finished ice cream down, he angled his body to direct his full attention toward me. "Does that mean you're related to Nymphadora? You're a part of circus nepotism, I see."

"Miss Nymphadora," I corrected him, chuckling to myself; it seemed Gray had a natural knack for breaking the rules. "You're going to regret breaking all these rules sooner or later. But no. She was the one who found me, though."

"Found you?"

I toyed some more with the ice cream and said, "Yeah, I guess, for some reason I don't understand, my parents didn't want me, so they thought the most rational thing to do was abandon me in some forest, during winter, mind you. Miss Nymphadora, or more accurately, Bones, found me in the forest nearly frozen to death."

His face softened, and he squeezed my hand. "You don't have to—"

"She assumed guardianship of me shortly after I had been found, but she's been more of an omniscient aunt than anything. I like to say I've been raised by the circus, it seems a little more cheery, you know?" I explained, squeezing his hand back.