Gant
Silence fills the room before she clears her throat. “Our parents were controlling in all aspects of our lives. I…I don’t think they did it maliciously. They genuinely thought it was necessary for us to excel. People hate stage parents, but have you ever met an athlete, musician, artist, or dancer who didn’t have a parent like that? I’ve danced ballet for decades in the top competitive circles, and I haven’t. Understanding parents always had mediocre performers. Sometimes good ones, but never great. It’s not right, but it’s the harsh reality of being the best. I’ve tried to find a balance for Sylo. Pressure without pain.”
“I’d say you’ve done well,” Sylo says. “I’m top of the class.”
“For your year,” I say before addressing Delphine again. “But your parents used so much force that it was painful?”
She nods as Sylo seethes beside her. “Ballet, twenty-four, seven. From sun up to sun down. We didn’t go to school, we had tutors. We didn’t have friends, we had competitors. All we had was each other until we didn’t.”
“When did it all change?” I ask, my spine stiffening as I lean off the cushions. Elle’s fingers gently stroke my back where Delphine nor Sylo can see. It feels so private, so intimate in a moment that can’t be, and I sink into her touch.
“Everything is simple as children.” She peers out the window as if travelling to another time. “Then you grow up and hormones come in. Naturally, boys and then men follow. We weren’t allowed to date. It’d been drilled into our heads since we were eleven and nine, but your mother still fell in love a few times. I kept her love affairs a secret when she still trusted me. They were always fleeting, but one year, one stuck. She ran off with him.”
“To Europe?”
Elle turns toward me, silently questioning how I’d guessed that.
Delphine freezes, her eyes tearing from the window to look at me before she slowly shakes her head. “No. She went to Budapest after.”
To have the baby.
“Why Budapest specifically?” I ask, my eyes burrowing through her skull to capture any giveaways.
She shakes her head again, her eyes falling into her teacup. “To study some new ballet techniques? She was flawless when she returned, so I assumed that was the reason. She never told me because she didn’t trust me at this point.”
“And why was that?” I ask, barely containing the bite in my tone. She always had a reason. Always . Maybe that’s why I’m trying to understand why she hid her first prince from me and not just Bart.
“It was entirely my fault,” Delphine says with a swallow, but she meets my gaze head-on. “I started growing resentful. Marisol was my only friend, not just at auditions, but in the entire world, because our world was different. Limited. Only she understood me, and only I understood her. The men were forms of entertainment, outlets, and escapes from our reality that we always returned to come sunup. I mean, I’d entertained myself with them too. I understood them in that aspect.”
Sylo cringes into his cup.
“But I’d never felt threatened until he came along. She wanted to run away with him, she was rethinking her future with ballet.” Her eyes darken, as does the sunlight streaming over my shoulder. “How could she ever reconsider the future we’d meticulously planned together for a man? I didn’t understand it. He was just a man, right?”
Elle’s fingers pause their ministrations on my back.
“One time she snuck out, and I’d had enough. I didn’t want to hear about the delusions she was creating and planning with him. So when my parents asked where she was, I didn’t cover for her. I let them figure it out on their own…through her journal. I knew they’d find it snooping through her room, and I didn’t care.”
So it was a betrayal.
“It wasn’t horrible. It was… ghastly. I’d never seen my father react that way. I’d never seen him angrier, not even when Mari and I snuck out to a gypsy festival where we danced barefoot for two days before returning home. We’d thought, hey, we’re fucked anyway. What’s one more night?” A phantom of a smile stretches her lips at the memory before it vanishes. “I’d thought that reaction was ghastly, but I was wrong. So wrong…”
A long pause fills the room again.
“It didn’t matter that I hadn’t handed them her journal directly; I may as well have. She didn’t trust me any more, and she never trusted me again. They dragged us from our beds, still dressed in robes, and demanded Mari take us to his house to speak with his parents. She wouldn’t say where he lived. They made us walk around our small village for hours until the sun rose. It was freezing . Eventually, I caved. I showed them where, but it’s not what you think.”
Elle leans forward with me, her fingers gripping the back of my blazer.
“See, I knew he didn’t live in a house. Not a traditional one, anyway. He was an orphan, set to be kicked out at eighteen. He was twenty at this point, two years deep into their love affair. So I knew he wouldn’t be there, but I knew once we asked for him, they’d confirm that he had lived there at some point. I figured this would cool my parents off for a few hours. I thought maybe Mari would catch on and lie that he was a traveller, and now that he’d left the orphanage, he didn’t have a real address. I thought she’d say he left the country. I’d thought…”
I can’t take another long pause, not when I’m finally learning the truth. Or Delphine’s version of it. “You thought what?”
“That she’d see what I was doing and forgive me. Well, she did catch on, and she played like he was gone and that her night with him was her last. She pretended so well that even I believed her because she wasn’t sneaking around. Then, out of the blue, she ran off to Hungary four months later and didn’t speak to us for months. To be honest, I was surprised when she came home. I think her money was gone. My parents hated what she’d done, but they didn’t hate her, they missed her. We all did. So when she called, our father agreed to help her under certain conditions and proposals.”
“Through my father,” I say.
She nods. “Before her disappearance, Mari was shooting to the top of the ballet world. Once she returned, it was incredible, like she hadn’t been missing for almost six months. She was so determined. Driven. She became a prima that year, and on that same night, our father introduced her to Bart Auclair, the man who’d been clawing to get her attention for weeks. Bart proposed two months later. They were wed a month later, and Mari was pregnant with you before the month ended.”
If she was already three or more months pregnant before she left, then the timelines add up, given that my brother is a year and some change older.
“But wait,” Elle interrupts, seemingly surprising herself as her cheeks tinge red. “I thought your parents didn’t want you to have romantic relationships? Or did they allow it if it were on their terms?”
“They wanted us to marry, to have children, but only with worthy men, and who could be worthier than Bart Auclair?”
On paper.
“But she never reconciled with you,” I ask.
“She did, for a few months and then when it was my turn to get married, she cut all ties again.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because she’d carried out our parent’s wishes of marrying for her bloodline and wealth. Our parents sacrificed so much to get us to where we are. She couldn’t marry a commoner. I couldn’t either. My husband, Silas — I’m sorry he isn’t here, by the way. He’s running late from work. Anyway, Silas was wealthy by then, but he’d come from very little. That was okay because Marisol had already secured our status. So long as my husband was wealthy, his surname wasn’t so important. It’s like I was the…”
“Spare?” I ask. “The second prince?”
She nods with a sad smile. “Precisely. The crown prince gets the most pressure. I was just the spare, and since the elder did her duty, I was given far more grace. More favour to do as I pleased. I don’t think your mother ever forgave me for the allowance. She thought it grossly unfair.”
“So she wanted you to have an arranged marriage like her?” I ask. “To be miserable like she was?”
“She thought it was my penance for the betrayal. When I didn’t get it, she was never satisfied. She loathed me for the life she always wanted. I fell in love and wealth. She fell into status.”
“After her first taste of love, it was cruel,” Elle says almost to herself.
“Very cruel. She resented me. In a way, I resented myself, but…I was in love. I’d had my first taste, too, and I was happy. Even though I could tell Mari was bitter, I couldn’t let go of my future for her sake.” She squeezes Sylo’s knee, and he stares at Elle.
Again .
“Like you said, Elle. This slice of land I have with my family is like a fairytale. One she didn’t think I’d deserved.” She looks at me. “That she didn’t think either of us deserved.”
“Did you custom build it?” Elle asks, and for a second, everyone just stares at her, but I know what my baby’s trying to do.
“Um, a restoration, actually,” Delphine smiles, grateful for the mood lightener. “It was an abandoned estate of an Earl.”
“Twentieth-century, gothic-inspired, right?”
Delphine's eyes light up. “You’re interested in architecture?”
“Since we take so many art history classes at Beaulieu, architecture comes up a lot. Lately, I’m considering it as a career if ballet doesn’t pan out.”
“Since when?” I blurt.
She hadn’t shared that with me.
Secrets, so many secrets she promised not to keep.
“Since life showed me that my dancing path isn’t linear.” She shuffles her boots for emphasis. “Besides, don’t you remember all those renovations I’ve been working on downtown? I’m really interested in design.”
Libellule.
Hale.
“How could I forget,” I say tightly.
She smiles back, but then her eyes fly to the end table beside me. “Is…is that a baby photo of ?” she asks, scooping it up.
Delphine’s smile broadens. “Mari never sent me any, but once in a blue moon, they’d pop up in the press.” Her eyes flicker to mine. “I know it’s a bit creepy to have it framed.”
I take the frame from Elle. My head barely passes my mother’s knee in the photo.
She cared enough to frame this little scrap of newspaper? Do they still print newspapers?
“You thought about me since I was two?”
“Since you were born. How could I not? You’re my nephew, my blood. I didn’t consider you any less just because your mother wanted nothing to do with me.” She shrugs. “When our parents died…family became even more important to me. I hoped it’d do the same for Mari. When I had Sylo two years after she had you, I’d hoped she’d let us reunite. I was feeling nostalgic and delusional because of the two-year gap since that’s how far apart we were. But…”
“We reconnected at school,” Sylo says. “And here we are now. Cousins.”
“Here we are,” I say quietly.
But Sylo’s eyes are flickering to my baby’s.
And so’s Delphine’s.