Chapter 3
First the breath.
Selene relaxed her shoulders, relaxed her jaw.
She cleared her mind of everything and let her body fall into muscle memory.
The breath was the root of all music. Selene often imagined the magic as silvery wisps she’d catch in her throat and convert into something marvelous.
She was but an instrument, a focal point to channel magic.
She could manipulate the key, vary the motif, play with tempo, but she could not perform without breath.
Not just hers, but the magic that filled her the moment she gave it air and purpose.
This was her chance. She looked up to the golden scrollwork of the chandelier and the pale light cast from its many glowing candles.
When Selene’s father, the great Giuseppe Dreshé, had stepped onto this stage twenty-eight years ago, he had been a young man—not yet Selene’s father.
Back then, each mage chose a single motif and sang its variations.
It was a display of vocal talent, imagination, and ingenuity.
The motif could only be pushed so far before it lost its shape and with it, the magic, but that was the game.
Fire would burn in various shapes and colors or water crystalized to ice and melted again or buds burst into bloom around the mage, hopeful that it would be enough to entertain and catch the eye.
Each note was embellished and inverted and melismatized until it was nearly beyond the point of recognition.
Giuseppe wanted to be more than a collection of lovely notes and sustained motifs. He wanted music to tell a story.
He chose the motif for illusion and used light as a counterpoint in the orchestrations, allowing him to channel two different motifs.
The violin picked up the melody for light and carried it like a voice, striking the notes while her father maintained the magic.
There was no real explanation for why this trick was possible, it simply worked.
The magic responded to the music and the will of the magician as long as the intent and the motif aligned.
His sung dragon flew through a series of scattered stars, landing on the chandelier and then soaring over the auditorium, leaving a shower of sparks in its wake.
No one in the world had seen magic like this.
He’d won L’Opéra du Magician and changed the course of history, reshaping what the world knew was true of magic.
But that’s not what people remembered when they said his name.
Mad Mage.
They only spoke of the sensational tragedy.
Plenty of magicians succumbed to injury or madness.
It was the cost of their art, the perilous chance they took to charm an audience.
But few lost their mind with such a horrendous display of blood.
Her father was supposed to be different, to be greater than the madness.
His fortitude had allowed him the opportunity to serve the king a second time but had left him in infamy.
People didn’t remember him as the talented magician; he was the fool who’d pushed himself beyond his craft.
The madman who’d lost his mind within a week of ceding as the King’s Mage.
They forgot about his brilliance, his kindness, his easy smile.
They only spoke about the way he’d tried to tear out his daughter’s throat with his bare hands.
She swallowed, feeling the movement of the fabric against her scars. She wore a reminder of his madness on her skin—of her sins and secrets. For too long Selene had only been seen as a cataclysm. This was her chance to change the world. To remind people what a Dreshé could do.
Be with me, she prayed. Wishing for a ghost, for his ghost.
Selene nodded to the maestro. She pulled her starting note from the violin, listening to the liquid movement of the opening bars. The violin slid its melody, countered against the haunting echo of the bassoon. She pressed her heels into the stage.
And breathed.
She sang the motif for illusion and formed a tableau of the sea, focusing on her breath and letting the magic fill her.
Illusion was the favored motif for most magicians.
It was merely a variation of light, adopted and directed to bend and project an image.
There was no inherent danger or mess to clean up after.
But it required an intensity of focus that was often challenging.
The music was easy enough to sing, but the vision of the tableau had to remain perfectly clear in the magician’s mind to maintain its projection.
One deviation and the whole thing would fall away.
Which made Selene’s aria even more impressive.
The water lapped against the edge of the stage.
She stood in the foam, the image of water moving around her.
An illusion this complex took more than singing the line; Selene needed to feel it in her soul.
But that wasn’t hard. Her father loved the ocean.
He’d built their home there, before he’d accepted the king’s request and they’d made a home in the grand suites of the palace.
Selene had only been eight. Young enough to be excited about the adventure and old enough to realize that something was being taken away.
She held the music there, like a sweet memory: a fermata.
Then she sang the water out of the air, letting it froth and foam at her feet. It splashed over the orchestra to the audience. Gentle, for now. The calm before the storm.
The tempo moved accelerando. Her indigo dress churned with the sea.
The waves rose up and crashed down. The magic caught her rage and projected it out to the auditorium.
Water fit in easily with the illusion, the two melodies piecing together like old friends.
She could stop here and let the audience get caught up in the ambience of the storm—the image of the sea and spray of water and ebb and flow of her orchestrations all knitting into something beautiful and easy.
But Selene didn’t want easy. She wanted to be great, like her father. She wanted to rewrite history.
A third motif.
It was more theoretical than practical. Her father had been the first to bring in a second element.
Since then, magicians had tried unsuccessfully to incorporate a third element.
Those who tried wrought damage on themselves and others in their attempts.
That wouldn’t be Selene. It wasn’t enough to fold the melody into the orchestration; both had to be sung.
Selene had worked out variation after variation, lining them up until they fit together.
To an untrained ear, it would sound like another embellishment.
Until the lightning struck.
Selene wouldn’t just emulate her father; she would surpass him. She would remind everyone what a Dreshé could do.
And so she would sing real lightning—let it sunder the air and sweeten it. Ozone resting against her tongue like a sun-ripe berry. She’d take the worst thing that had ever happened to her—the worst thing she had ever done—and turn it into a triumph.
There was a moment when the notes coalesced—illusion, water, lightning—and then split into three, all striking notes in the elaborate melisma, rising to a sustained high note that worked for all three motifs.
Selene only needed to hold that note and maintain the illusion and water, with the melody sustained in the violin and cello. Then she would have her storm.
She’d practiced and practiced the vocal line, but never had the proper accompaniment to prove her theory. Until now. This should work. It had to work.
Selene sang the note, loud and clear, like the toll of a bell, and readied herself for the new thread of magic.
The magic pulsed through her. Power surged, all three motifs coming together, just as she’d wanted.
This was it.
The edges of Selene’s mind stretched; the magic channeled through her. The storm—a hurricane—pulled into the air. It was a thing of terrible beauty and infinite power.
Her father was in the center of it all. She imagined him sitting at their little piano in the cottage, plucking out melodies for her to imitate.
Remembered his praise when she sang the salt out of the seawater to sprinkle over their dinner.
His eyes lit up when she sang, how he’d say again and again: Sing for me.
She felt where it went wrong, slipping from her fingers like the memories of her father’s voice, the brightness of his laughter.
There, and gone, replaced by Father’s face when he realized what he was about to lose, his features contorting with fear.
Then his pupils blown black. Musician’s fingers tearing at her throat. Making sounds no human should make.
There was too much magic.
It tore through her, its own kind of storm. Selene could not accommodate the breadth of power. It pushed against the limits of her mind, threatening to break it.
For one, wild moment, Selene considered letting it take her. The magic was intoxicating and endless. She could be endless, too, if she just gave in; she could go on forever: power and magic and bliss.
She knew better than to let the magic have her.
Selene let go of the illusion, hoping to compensate with the water to carry the elements. The magic unbalanced inside her. She tried to pool her focus, but it was too late.
Everything else fell away.
Except.
Lightning volleyed through the auditorium.
It struck one of the golden statues that clung to the walls.
The gold shuddered and dripped, turning the carved angelic face into a monstrosity.
It struck again, setting a seat in the auditorium on fire.
The orchestra halted; musicians flattened in the pit with shouts of protest and alarm.
Selene gasped for air, tasting electricity on her tongue.
What had she done?