Chapter 8
All the rumors were true. The myths, the legends, the lies.
There was a mirror in the opera house. There was a ghost in that mirror, who was not a ghost at all but a man who might be a monster.
And the churning, roiling dark. The impossible, living shadows that enraptured her and made Selene feel watched.
But that wasn’t the half of it. What he’d done in the mirror went against everything she’d ever learned.
He’d bled shadow into wings and fury and taken flight. In Selene’s wildest dreaming, she could not invent a magic so beautiful and terrible.
Selene looked over her shoulder, to the door she’d concealed behind a discarded set piece.
She thought of the girl who had leapt from the rooftop because she’d been so afraid of the mirrors.
She was the reason they had been banned—the final straw after years of whispers.
Had the girl seen the ghost’s ethereal beauty and been unmoored?
Had she seen him first as a monster? Did she know what his blood could do?
Selene shivered. She had to tell Madame Giroux. And maybe, just maybe, that would be enough to give her a second chance.
A whisper of guilt wove through her. What would happen to the man trapped inside if Madame found out? It was hard to imagine something worse than the mirror, but at least he had magic there. She could be taking him from a prison and placing him into a nightmare.
You can’t help him if you’re not here.
Selene walked to the true entrance to the upper floors of the opera house, not some secret place.
It was a risk, but one Selene was willing to take.
She had little left to lose. The stairs were wider and there was a lift to allow for the rise and descent of sets and costume boxes.
Stepping onto the landing in the hallway off the grand foyer was like stepping out of a dream.
From out of the shadowy depths and into the glittering expanse of gold.
Madame Giroux’s office was down one more hallway.
A dozen steps, and Selene could guarantee a place in the competition.
Gigi was slumped on the floor by Madame’s door, head in her hands. There was music scattered around her. Selene cleared her throat. Gigi looked up. Her eyes were red from crying.
“What happened?”
“Not here.” Gigi’s voice was thick with sorrow.
Selene helped pick up the sheets of music and gave Gigi a hand. Gigi led her down the hallway, to the little nook they’d used as a meeting spot for years. She tipped against the wall.
“Why are we doing this, Selene?”
Because we want this. Because we need this.
“Because we don’t know how to do anything else?” Selene took her place next to Gigi, handing her the remaining sheet music.
“I tried to talk to her about the sabotage. Someone slipped oil under the door of my practice room. I brought up your music, too.” Gigi flexed the toes of her left foot and dragged them up the wall before she dropped down, defeated. “It did not go well.”
“I appreciate the effort.” Selene took Gigi’s hand. “I’ll fight my way back in.”
“She asked to see my music.” Gigi held up the rumpled pages. They were marked with so much red. “And her official opinion is that my piece isn’t good enough to steal.”
Selene took a deep breath, releasing the tension in her jaw. Madame Giroux had always been cold to Gigi, but this was cruel.
“May I see?”
Gigi’s smile was thin. “It won’t make a difference now. I won’t have time to rewrite it. Besides, we’re supposed to be independent.”
“We’re also supposed to perform our own songs, and Madame turned a blind eye to that.
” Selene took the music. A cold feeling rippled over her skin.
Madame had told her the rules mattered. But when they were broken, she didn’t care.
She wouldn’t even listen. What good would telling her about the mirror do? What use was the mirror to her at all?
Unless she had the magic within it.
What he’d done—cut himself and bled the magic—it was far beyond what she knew was possible. Selene always looked for doors. If magic existed beyond song, then it was more than a door. It was the whole building knocked down.
Resolve settled over Selene. “Can you dance? How’s your hip?”
Gigi extended her leg up to the ceiling. “Just needed some ice.”
Selene examined the swell of Gigi’s hip. She’d hit the stage hard enough that Selene was sure she wouldn’t be able to dance today, tomorrow, or even the day after. But Gigi knew her body better than anyone else. Who was Selene to say what hurt and what did not?
“Your dress.” Gigi appraised Selene, no doubt looking for wounds.
Selene kicked the stained hem forward. The gold threads were frayed and smudged.
Blood splattered the silk, darkened to something that could be mistaken for rust. She didn’t know if she had the words to describe what had happened.
She’d stumbled into the darkness and found what should have been impossible.
A ghost. The ghost. The fear was warranted. The ghost was real.
His voice still resonated in her bones with a music like night.
She could feel its magic without magic, drawing her back to the mirror like a fire-starved moth.
His beauty unraveled her, his very presence enraptured her beyond her endless pursuit of power, her drive to win.
There was something about him that made her want more.
“Are you okay?” Gigi’s voice was tentative.
Selene had gone too long without an answer. She thought of the way Madame had looked at her. Some stars burn bright. Some stars burn out.
She could tell Gigi everything: spill out her new secret the way shadow had spilled from the ghost’s skin.
She should tell her about her life before the opera house.
Her life at the palace remained locked away—Victor and what she had done to her father.
But she didn’t know where to begin or how it would end or if it was even worth the words.
“Let’s go.”
“Do you want to change?” Gigi’s face was a mask of calm, no doubt disturbed to see the dress she’d designed destroyed.
But Selene liked the feel of it on her skin. She liked the beautiful ruin. She’d earned this wreck. “It’s fine.”
They crossed through the public spaces of the opera house.
Here everything was polished marble and shining gold: lush and lavish beauty fit for a king and his mage.
It was arches and balconies and the grand staircase splitting like a serpent’s tongue.
Selene had grown desensitized to its beauty.
It struck her now. It was another thing she could lose.
This could be the last time she walked through these halls, beneath this ceiling, across the veins of marble. Those who failed to make it through the audition process were packed up and sent away. But where would Selene go? She had no home, no family to return to. There was this or nothing.
The farther they moved from the front of the opera house, the uglier things became.
The statues gathered dust, the marble lost its luster, the floors turned to wood.
The walls here were just walls. The hallway was lined with private practice rooms. This part of the building faced an inconsequential side street.
Most people did not even know this section of the opera house existed.
Gigi bent at the waist and sang a complex melody into her lock. It released. She pushed open the door.
Unlike their bedroom, Gigi kept this space mostly clean. There was a pile of broken shoes in one corner, but the rest were carefully hung up. She had a ballet barre against one of the walls. The floors were different in here than the other practice rooms. This was a dancer’s space.
Selene placed the marked-up sheet music on the piano. She sat at the bench, tucked in the corner. It was a wildly different setup than Selene’s practice room. She’d made a shrine to her piano, centering it in the room. Everything else was secondary to the music.
Gigi stood in first position. The opening chord took shape beneath Selene’s fingers.
The music reverberated through the upright piano in a way that made Selene crave the muted dark.
Gigi’s voice was soft and gentle, striking each note with perfect intonation.
The practice of singing words had long since fallen out of fashion.
It had no effect on the magic and sometimes muddied the line and pitch.
The mages were trained to keep their vowels round and their tones pure—the voice was just an instrument, after all.
The better the imitation, the more likely the magic would carry through the orchestrations.
The magic did not care about the size of the voice, but the openness of the singer and the precision of the technique.
Gigi’s heart was open and her technique was flawless.
She kept her voice light enough that she could maintain the magic while her body moved through the dance.
It was not an entirely new concept: pairing movement with magic.
Her voice would float softly above the orchestration, with barely more impact than the second violin.
Any more would distract from the dance. It was the exact opposite of Selene’s approach.
Her voice was part of the magic, part of the performance.
For Gigi, it was just a means to an end.