Chapter 5
The architect for the opera house must have loved secrets.
There was a set of stairs at the end of the dormitory hall, tucked behind a tapestry as old as the opera house.
It wasn’t the only secret passage, but it was Selene’s favorite.
She stood before the tapestry, hands trembling.
It was too dusty and thick for even the moths to chew through.
King Renard sat on a throne, a sword in one hand and three gold pieces in the other.
His mouth formed a tight-lipped smile. Renard had been in some sort of an accident and all the teeth had shattered out of his mouth.
They’d replaced them with pearls: only the best for the king.
He had founded L’Opéra du Magician. The opera house even bore his name—Palais Renard—but it hadn’t stuck and was quickly nicknamed the Opera Magique.
He looked a little like Victor. The same nose and strong jaw.
But there was something hollow and empty in his eyes.
Clever of the weaver to capture that in the stitches.
She’d seen that same look in Victor’s older brother, Henri.
He’d tormented them as children, until Selene had had enough and sang the vines up from the ground and wrapped him in thorns.
She still remembered the look of pure hatred he’d given them.
Pretty face, with nothing inside. Soul black as black.
If only she knew how to carry her heart in a steel case and just take and take. Maybe, if she had burned brighter, she would be hollowed out and strong enough to do what was necessary.
Selene glanced behind her. Gigi hadn’t followed. She lifted the corner of the tapestry and slipped through the wooden door behind it. They’d discovered many of the secret passages together when they were children, including this one, which led down five flights of steps below the opera house.
Selene sang softly, repeating the melody for light over and over.
She’d never felt the imminent danger of most motifs.
Though they were sometimes temperamental, they were predictable.
Fire burned and wind blew and light shone.
She should have known better than to try lightning today, but it was too late now.
A ball formed in her hands, low and pulsing, like the heartbeat of a dying star.
Without an instrument to maintain the melody, the light flickered, casting her into darkness each time she paused to take a breath.
Students were not permitted to access the subterranean floors.
It was treacherous, a web of set pieces and dusty costume boxes that did not belong to the conservatory.
In the years leading up to L’Opéra du Magician, magical operas ran season to season on this stage.
Selene and her fellow students had picked up the extra roles here and there, and had learned the art of the voice and performance from some of the greatest magicians.
Many of them had even grown up here, too, and competed in L’Opéra du Magician.
The company was on tour now in Erramasque, leaving the space available for the competition.
As much as Selene loved that stage, she could not abide the thought of returning as a failure.
Selene wove through the debris of set pieces and trunks and forgotten treasures, appreciating the movement of her dress.
Gigi was such a talented designer. Gigi was good at everything.
She could be anything when she left the opera house, if she ever left.
Each gold stitch caught the light and dimmed with a puff of grime.
This was where memories were wrapped in old drop cloths and left to gather dust. Selene would be one of these things, too.
Selene ran through the movements of the tempest aria, looking for all the places it had gone wrong.
The piece was theoretically perfect. She should have pushed herself further, opening her mind up to the magic.
She should have performed her original aria, been grander than ever before.
She should have screamed the song out of Revelio’s lungs and watched the blood pour from his mouth.
Not that.
But why not? She’d followed the rules. She’d played fair. She was the better singer. The better mage. She hadn’t engaged in any sort of subversion. Selene had focused and focused and shaped her dream with little worry of anyone else. And for what?
Selene let the light go out.
She knew better than to scream. Her voice was all she had left.
She picked a note, ran it up to the top of her range.
No magic, just music. All her fury distilled into the G6, bright and clear as a bell.
Her vision swam. She closed her eyes, focusing on only this.
She took a breath and kept singing until the sound lost all meaning.
She wished her father were here to help her navigate these next steps.
Selene let herself slide into one of the precious memories she kept of him.
Not those final days. Before, when his cheeks had been wide with smiles and there was no darkness beneath his eyes.
When he could win her with a wink and whistle.
They’d lean over the piano together, chipping away melodies and dreaming up songs.
She imagined the timbre of his voice, warm and rich. Imagined what he would say, if he were alive.
Take your broken heart, turn it into art.
All she’d wanted was to prove that she was worthy of his name.
To make him the hero again. She wanted people to remember him the way she remembered him.
A good man, a brilliant man, a man who deserved more of a legacy than that last, terrible day.
She could still feel the blood on her hands, smell the copper and the sugar and hear the awful sound his body made as it struck the floor.
No.
Not that memory. Anything but that horrible day.
She sang higher, high enough that she could feel the earth tremble.
Too much, too far. The music floated out of her, carried by a power other than magic.
She could push a little bit higher, a little bit farther.
That’s what her father would do. That’s what he’d done. And she’d watched him break.
Shatter.
It was the music of breaking glass, deep and vast and bright. At first, she thought it was her imagination, until she heard the echo.
“Hello?”
No one responded. She focused, listening for the sounds of breath, for the patter of another heart. A chill of terror rose up her spine, the quiet all too much.
There was nothing.
She thought at once of the opera ghost. Had Priya brought the phantom in with her contraband? Had Madame released it with her song?
“No,” she said out loud, to no one.
Because no one was here.
Selene sang the melody for light, illuminating the shapes in the dark.
They loomed a little too close in the moment before her light struck them.
Her heart raced. She was being childish.
There was nothing down here but the detritus of the stage.
Each shape was something forgotten and locked away, another friend long lost to the dark.
There, tucked against the back wall, leaned a stained-glass window, either a set piece or some early architectural marvel of the opera house. Jagged teeth of broken glass still clung to the frame. She shifted boxes and crates out of the way.
The stained glass fractured the light in her palm.
When it had been whole, this window must have been breathtaking.
She should have been devastated to destroy such a beautiful thing; sundered by what she had done with the power of her voice.
There was some small satisfaction in that.
She’d made her mark on the opera house. If she was cast out, she could remember the lovely, broken thing she’d left behind.
She put her hand through one of the jagged panes, letting it rest on the stone wall. A shard caught the fleshy part between her thumb and forefinger, bleeding in a way only hands bleed. She watched the drops fall, heavy and dark against the floor.
The stone was damp beneath her fingers. Except it wasn’t stone at all. It was wood, painted to look like stone. The paint crumbled beneath her fingers.
This was a door.