Chapter 2 The Lutesse City Opera
THE LUTESSE CITY OPERA
Twelve Hours Earlier
Iwas always late for rehearsal. Regardless of how organized I tried to be, or how much extra time I gave myself to get my shit together, I still wound up late.
I would miss the electric street tram by three seconds or lose my keys as I was on my way out the door.
Today I had forgotten my pointe shoes and had to run back inside to find them.
Unfortunately, since they weren’t in my bag, this meant I had no idea where they were.
Madame Giselle was going to flay me alive.
I couldn’t find those damned shoes anywhere. As I tossed tights, demi pointe shoes and leotards over my shoulder, my frantic rummaging alerted my roommate to my plight. I had thirty seconds before the street tram rumbled by without me. I was going to miss it.
“Your shoes are on the kitchen island, Seraphina! God, you would forget your own head if it wasn’t attached to your neck!”
Carlotta, my best friend and roommate, was still in bed at 10:30, and she was angry enough that she was using my full name.
Sleeping at this time seemed luxurious to me, but the dance chorus always had an earlier call time.
Carlotta was the prima donna, the first lady of the Lutesse City Opera, and did not typically roll into rehearsals until after noon.
If I moved through life as a hurricane, Carlotta was a light spring breeze.
Without any effort, she was never late, never broke a sweat and was always perfect.
She was the type of person who never even got dirt under her perfectly manicured fingernails.
I might have envied her for it if I didn’t benefit so much from her perfection.
And I did benefit from it. When she was by my side, Carlotta and I ran our city.
Lutesse, the cultural capital of the continent of Ereba, was enigmatic: a city of artists, writers, music and fashion.
And even after Scion’s War, while theocracy and authoritarianism spread throughout the rest of the continent like wildfire, it felt like we were living in a bubble.
Lutesse was the creative centre of the world and living here was exhilarating.
Much of my life had been spent in fear and mourning, beginning when my mother died and continuing when I lost my father in the war.
But it had been almost six years since he died, and three years since the war ended.
So here I was, moving on, attempting to embrace life—to embrace joy.
Any time we weren’t in rehearsals for the opera, Carlotta and I spent exploring the streets of beautiful Lutesse.
We frequented the cafes, bistros and nightclubs.
We embraced the latest fashions, testing out new hairstyles and spending any extra money we managed to save on sparkling dresses and high-heeled shoes.
We partied like there was no tomorrow: dancing, drinking champagne and absinthe, and having flings with young men we’d never see again.
We lived as young women had never dared to before.
We were a new generation, ready to taste everything life had to offer.
Today, life had to offer a strict rehearsal schedule, and I was dangerously close to missing it. I grabbed my pointe shoes, shouted my thanks to Carlotta and sprinted out the door, into a torrential spring downpour. Shit.
“Seraphina, you are late.” Madame Giselle would indeed flay me alive as I tried, and failed, to slide into rehearsal without her notice.
She may have been a tiny middle-aged woman with greying hair and a severe face, but the head choreographer of the Lutesse City Opera was not to be crossed.
She scared everyone, whether they were in the dance chorus or not.
“Push-ups.” With that command, spoken in her throaty Lutessian accent, I was punished—relegated to push-ups until I collapsed while everyone else continued their warm-up. I would also be expected to atone for my lateness by completing that warm-up. There were no exceptions from Madame Giselle.
“What the hell happened to you, Seraphina? You look like a drowned rat.” My friend Maren approached me side-stage after I’d caught up on the warm-up exercises.
Indeed, my dark curls, soaked from the rainy commute, were attempting to spring free from my bun.
The sharp liner I drew in the corners of my amber eyes was running down my cheeks, and my pale pink bodysuit was dampened with sweat under my arms and between my breasts.
I was a mess. Maren, however, did not have to point that out.
“I was almost on time… until it started pissing cats and dogs.” I pouted, knowing Maren wasn’t surprised by my lateness or my disheveled appearance.
Maren laughed. She was a ballerina too, though she would go on to be a much better one than I could ever be. She had a typical dancer’s body, with long limbs, small waist, no breasts to speak of and a perfect swan neck.
I must have looked almost vulgar dancing beside her.
I was several inches shorter than Maren’s impressive 5 foot 8 frame.
My legs were not long or perfect, nor was my neck.
I had good feet, but I was curvier than most dancers, with hips, breasts and muscular thighs that could not be hidden by any traditional ballet costume.
What I lacked in my natural physique, I made up for in pure grit.
No one in the chorus worked harder than me, and tardiness aside, Madame Giselle rewarded hard work.
Today was going to be hard work indeed. It was just two days before the opening night of the opera season, where we would be showcasing the best of the Lutesse City Opera at the opening gala.
There was also a well-substantiated rumour going around the cast that a new owner had purchased the Opera Company.
Everyone from Madame Giselle to the art director, to the stage manager, to the conductor, was on edge.
The new owner would be coming to see the gala, to judge the financial and cultural merits of their new purchase.
This explained Madame Giselle’s particularly foul mood. “Girls! You turn your heads on AND-four, not four! Do it again. We stop and start from the beginning every time one of you makes a mistake. You can thank each other when your feet are bleeding.”
I relished the movement, even when it hurt. It was freeing to be there, dancing with the other girls in the chorus line.
When I danced, I was able to take my mind off anything that bothered me.
I could just be. I had never belonged anywhere until I found a place in the Lutesse City Opera.
It was the closest thing I had to a family.
So, I danced until my feet bled, and then I danced some more.
Everything would be perfect for the Gala. I would make sure of it.
Carlotta breezed into the increasingly sweaty theatre when we were about an hour into rehearsals.
She wore a thick, knitted white scarf around her neck and was carrying a large, steaming mug of what I assumed to be hot water.
Her chin-length inky black hair swung as she seemed to glide effortlessly into the gilded light downstage.
She ignored everyone else, but her eyes narrowed as she spied me stretching on the floor between dances.
“Fifi!” she hissed at me, passing close enough that I could hear her voice without her having to strain it. “Fifi! You will never guess who is waiting in the atrium!”
Carlotta and Maren were the only ones on the planet who could get away with calling me Fifi. Her singsong voice made it very easy to guess who was in the atrium. I pursed my lips, trying not to seem too eager to hear the answer.
“It’s Seff, Fifi! He’s waiting for you in the atrium!” She made the word atrium sound like it had about five extra syllables.
Seff was a complicating factor in my life.
We had been courting for a few months now, but nothing was official.
We’d known each other when we were children but lost touch over the years.
Six months ago he had moved into the heart of Lutesse.
His wealthy father was a patron of the Lutesse City Opera, and when Seff saw me on stage for the first time, he sought me out.
It had been a whirlwind romance in the months since that day—flowers and chocolate after every performance, chaste kisses and grand declarations of my beauty and grace.
I had a suspicion he was going to make things official soon.
I would have said yes that first day, the moment I saw him after the opera.
Marrying Seff would complicate my laissez-faire lifestyle, and I wasn’t quite ready to give that up.
But I was a hopeless romantic, especially when it came to him and the history we shared.
“Thanks, Lottie.” Two could play at the nickname game. I waved her off to her dressing room. Carlotta gave me a pointed stare before flitting backstage.
“Seff? He’s here?” Maren came up beside me, eavesdropping on Carlotta’s singsong revelation. “Why? Oooh, did you two finally…?” Maren began. I shushed her. I didn’t need the entire Lutesse City Opera gossiping about my sex life.
“No,” I hissed. “Well… no… not yet. It’s complicated. I will talk to you later.” I glared at Maren. Her mouth was half open, ready to demand details, when Madame Giselle stomped her foot.
“Back to the beginning, girls! Enough tittering and gossiping—we have work to do.” She looked me in the eye, and my face turned the colour of a ripe strawberry. Maren ducked her head and slunk back into formation before she could incur the wrath of our choreographer.
Yes, I needed to discuss the situation with Seff. But our relationship was among the least interesting of the things that I wanted to talk about. Because it was getting harder and harder not to confide in Carlotta and Maren about my forbidden ambitions—my illicit dreams of singing centre stage.
Sometimes, I thought my relationship with Carlotta was the most toxic.
She was my best friend—the only real family I had.
And I admired her so much—the things she was able to do, the way she lived, her talents, her audacity.
But then, every once in a while, a sliver of envy, so sharp it had dug into every part of my soul, would work its way into the forefront of my consciousness.
I loved her. But I wanted to be her so badly it hurt.
Her skills were unparalleled. Her magnanimous personality was larger than life.
Everything about her, from her shiny black hair to her golden skin, to her impossibly large eyes, was wonderful and perfect; she was effervescent and bubbly, but also sharp as a tack and tough as nails.
I was paralyzed by the sheer weight of being near her.
I didn’t want to feel this way. Shame would crash over me on nights when sleep eluded me, leaving me feeling sick to my stomach.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want her to be all those things as well.
It was just… why not me? What did she do to deserve it all?
The talent, the looks, the personality, the way men would fall at her feet to have the chance to worship her.
Envy was like a worm. It had made me into a liar.
I was lying to everyone around me, including myself.
Listening to Carlotta sing was otherworldly.
When my friend sang, the heavens shook—she could move mountains with her voice.
There was a good reason that she was the prima donna.
I loved to watch her sing, but there was also that part of me, a deep, shameful, almost buried part of me, that was jealous.
Because I loved to dance. There was no denying that fact.
But what I wanted, more than anything in the world, was to sing.
And I could sing. I was a classically trained soprano.
But I also couldn’t. Because as my mother lay dying she made me swear that oath, that I would never sing in front of anyone, for the rest of my life.
And so I was here, dancing in the background, every day, longing to sing in the spotlight.
For as long as I could remember, I had practised singing with my father.
He had been a renowned musician himself, calling me his Angel of Music.
While he played various instruments, I sang beautiful songs he had written just for me.
He was the only one allowed to hear my voice.
I never asked why, and they never told me.
My mother had been so insistent in her last moments.
Lucidity was fleeting as she drifted in and out of consciousness toward the end, but in that moment she had locked eyes with me and I knew that she was serious.
You must promise me, Seraphina. So I did.
I didn’t sing in front of a single soul, save for my father, from that day on.
Even though singing made my soul soar, even though it was the only thing I truly wanted, I contented myself with singing in secret, any time I could sneak away into a back alley, or when I knew Carlotta wasn’t home.
Dance had been my mother’s gift. She had been a prima ballerina, and after she made me swear that oath, I had chosen to follow in her footsteps.
Choosing ballet, ignoring the voice in my head that told me I was meant for more than the chorus line.
For now, dance was enough. The ballet chorus was enough.
And if I told myself that enough times, maybe one day it would be true.