Chapter 1
Four years later.
“Is that really my name? The star of a new ballet? Somebody pinch me,” Celeste said, gazing at the plaque pinned to the green room wall.
Louise pinched her. And because this was Louise—blunt-fingered, iron-willed, and always underestimating her own strength—Celeste would no doubt sport a bruise come morning. But Celeste was still awake, so it had to be true.
She blinked at her best friend. They had the same elongated silhouettes, sculpted by years of barre and bruises—but that’s where the similarities ended.
While Celeste had never dared cut a single strand of her long red hair, Louise had shorn her black curls to her jaw with all the ceremony of a guillotine.
While Celeste couldn’t hold eye contact for five heartbeats, Louise could win a staring match with Napoleon himself.
Her best friend studied her now with those magnetic gray eyes. “Indeed, it is you, Celeste. What will you do?”
Celeste sighed. Ever since they were children, she and her friends had borrowed Shakespeare’s plots like other girls shared ribbons, assigning roles and rewinding life as if it were just another play to be rehearsed and rewritten.
It was childish, perhaps. But wasn’t everyone in need of a prettier lens now and then? And what better light than the glow of footlights, where misunderstandings led to marriage and disguises always came off in the end?
Celeste grinned. “I will use Oberon’s flower juice and make them all fall in love with me, of course. I wish Helene were here to see this.”
They had once been four—the Swans of Paris. Four girls who had fled the Revolution and somehow landed in Covent Garden... They had not been swans then, only half-starved cygnets in borrowed shoes.
But they had each other.
Now, the flock was thinning. Sophie had been the first to stray, trading their Shakespeare attic nights for champagne and the lead’s room.
And Helene, the most dedicated to the art, had gone and fallen for a duke.
Celeste couldn’t blame her for not returning to the stage.
Sometimes, even a swan couldn’t lift her wings.
“If Helene would only let me pay him a visit,” Louise said, her eyes glittering.
Celeste intertwined her arm with Louise. “There now, we promised not to interfere.” Or kill the man Helene loved…
Just as Louise was about to start one of her tirades about the English, Katherina, their ballet mistress, glided into the room as if she were in the presence of Queen Marie Antoinette. The Revolution had torn her from Paris, but could not take her heart out of Versailles.
“Celeste, you still prance instead of walking. Come, girls, Verón is waiting at the stage. And you know how the theater director is particular about us wasting his precious time.”
Katherina snapped her fan like a grand empress and led the way.
Celeste followed, brushing her damp palms against the tulle of her skirts.
For most dancers, the stage was a place of work—chalk dust and calluses, sweat beneath powder, boards worn soft by a thousand pliés.
But to her, it had always been more. Always.
It was a place where girls like her, foundlings with no fathers, with no real names, could glimpse love…
A place where passion flared in Act Two, staggered through betrayal, and triumphed in the last scene.
Celeste had spent her life watching from the wings, always the friend, the fairy, the comic distraction.
Her gaze swept up over Covent Garden’s empty audience. Beyond the footlights, reality prowled—messy, toothy, and hungry, and men reached without permission. But in here, she could feel love and love, for just a moment, and tell herself it was better this way.
A pointed throat-clearing shattered the air like a cymbal crash.
Verón.
The theater director emerged from the wings with the flourish of a man who believed himself both impresario and masterpiece.
His plum coat, far too tight at the chest—gleamed beneath the stage lights like an overripe fruit.
Brocade spilled from his cuffs in lacy defiance of fashion, and his mustachios curled at the ends as if each strand had been trained to leer.
His eyes, watery and always too curious, slid over her with calculated indulgence. “Dear Celeste Dubois. Are you ready to be the star of my new ballet?” Verón asked.
Celeste’s throat had gone dry, but her smile, ever reliable, flickered into place.
Verón’s grin was all teeth and artifice.
“My ballet will be called Ondine. It will be grand, sweeping, everything our audience craves in these troubled times. Picture this—a nymph with the color of coral in her hair. She lives in the ocean, as carefree and boundless as the water itself. She is unspoiled by mortal desires until one dawn she is discovered by a powerful king.”
A powerful king? That didn’t seem right. In fairy tales, a prince was always gracious, charming, and kind. Kings were reserved for epic battle stories, or tragedies.
Celeste nodded at Verón, but her gaze darted to Louise and Katherina, her lips pressing into a thin line.
Veron narrowed his eyes. “The mortal ruler, captivated by Ondine’s beauty, becomes obsessed and only rests when he forces her to be his queen.”
The word “forces” echoed louder than the rest, and her pulse pounded in her temples. This was the stage. Just a ballet. Celeste was among friends. She was safe. Safe.
“When the king consummates the marriage, Ondine transforms into water foam, her ethereal form dissolving into the very ocean that once gave her life. The king is left cursed, unable to ever fall in love again, condemned to live with the memory of what he destroyed.”
“Oh, what a divine tale, monsieur. Such drama, such poetry.”
She was smiling, but the Papillon stirred—a flutter at the base of her spine, like a shadow of a wing in candlelight.
Verón clapped his hands. “Ah, Saint-Léon! There you are. My King. Come. Let’s rehearse the meeting scene.”
Saint-Léon would be her partner? Celeste watched the company’s virtuoso prowl near, all muscles and explosive talent.
The most famous dancer in Europe. She should rejoice, but her palms grew moist and moister still.
Oh, dear Verona. What if he took her hand, and she slipped from his grasp?
What if he touched her? Why, she was a ballerina, was she not?
What if their old choreographer never required her to dance a pas de deux? Eventually, this would happen.
“I want you to lift her, perform a fish dive, and lift again and pirouette. But remember. You are a warrior, and she is as delicate as water,” Verón said.
Saint-Léon came closer. Well, it would be like in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when Oberon lifted Titania. She tilted her chin, let her lashes flutter, and pretended the world was still a stage and not a trapdoor waiting to swallow her whole.
The Papillon’s wings brushed against her ribs, frantic and rising.
Celeste’s smile faltered for half a breath before she stitched it back in place.
She told herself she was a dancer. This was a role.
A pas de deux was inevitable. But the Papillon didn’t listen.
A tremor ran through her thigh, and her knees softened.
Saint-Léon stopped before her. He was going to touch her.
I can’t. I can’t do this.
“If Ondine is a nymph... surely her partner mustn’t touch her. That would break the spell,” Celeste blurted, stepping back.
The silence that followed was thick with disbelief.
Then Verón laughed. It was not kind, cracking across the stage like a whip. “Why, Mademoiselle Dubois? I was under the impression that this was my ballet.”
His smile vanished. “Saint-Léon, lift her.”
Saint-Léon reached for her again. His hand landed at her waist, and suddenly, it wasn’t Saint-Léon before her, but a shadow from the past.
The Papillon burst, its wings battering against her throat, cutting off her air. Celeste’s gaze flew to her friends.
Louise. Katherina. Help me.
“Stop.” Louise’s voice rang out.
Saint-Léon’s hand vanished. Celeste stumbled back—one step, then another, until her spine met the cool edge of the set behind her.
“I can do the pas de deux,” Louise said. “If I wear a red wig, no one will notice. And it gives Celeste a chance to rest before the solo. She jumps so high. It’s impossible to do both.”
Verón didn’t answer. He looked from Celeste to Louise, tapping his fingers against his lips in obvious irritation.
Please, Celeste thought. Please, please, please. Don’t make me do this.
“Louise is right. It’ll thrill the audience more.” Katherina said, spearing the director with her matter-of-fact gaze. “And Celeste’s never learned the full pas de deux technique. If you want to open in two weeks—”
“Fine,” Verón snapped, slicing the air with his hand. “Saint-Léon, do the lift with Miss Bonechoix, then.”
Saint-Léon turned to Louise and swept her up effortlessly, her feet lifting clean off the stage as if she were made of nothing at all.
Celeste watched Louise spin in his arms, radiant beneath the footlights. Every turn scattered fragments of light across the boards—red, gold, white. Colors of love. Colors she could never quite hold.
Love was like fireworks—brilliant, reckless, gone too soon.
Celeste only wished she were brave enough to touch the spark before it faded.
***
Celeste lay sprawled across the divan in Katherina’s office, cheek pressed into the silk of her skirts, her sobs rising and falling like waves against a shore.
The fabric was damp beneath her face, drenched from tears she couldn’t seem to stop.
She’d ruined it. Again. The role she’d prayed for, the dream she’d clutched since childhood.
Katherina’s hand rested on her shoulder, waiting for the storm to pass.