Chapter 10 #2
There was a knot in her stomach. She’d thought it was excitement at the time.
Father had worked late into the night. She hadn’t been able to sleep, so she’d watched him, wondered what melody drove the frantic movement of his pen.
He’d hit a few notes on the piano and then gone back to scribbling. The candles had all burned down.
“I’ve done it,” Father had said at last, putting down his pen. Ink splattered his fingers and the corner of the page.
Father was laughing, laughing, laughing.
He’d taken his music and cast it into the fire before Selene knew to stop him.
She ran to the fireplace, ready to snatch the pages out of the blaze.
But it was too late. The center blackened and spread.
Selene read the melody just before it turned to ash.
It was strange and unfamiliar, lifting and lilting in a way that seemed impossible for the voice.
Dissonant, with octave leaps and modulations.
Like the writings of a madman.
Or a genius.
“Father?”
He picked her up and spun her around, once, twice, thrice. “This is it, Selene. This is the end.”
And she’d foolishly thought that it meant they would go home, back to the cottage by the sea. She’d thought it was all over.
She’d been right, in a way.
Father stood before them, his dark hair smoothed back. He wore his favorite suit. Silver and blue. There was a determined peace in his countenance. The king tapped his foot on the ground expectantly.
Father placed his fingers on the neck of the mahogany violin and ran his bow over the strings.
It was a little sharp. He adjusted the tuning and played another note.
Selene loved when her father played the violin.
It paired so well with his voice, almost like a duet.
It brought her back to moonlit nights in the cottage, where every lullaby was accompanied by faeries and falling stars.
Selene reached out and grabbed Victor’s hand. He wove his fingers between hers.
“When this is finished,” he whispered, “let’s have an adventure.”
“This time,” Selene said, “I get to be the pirate.”
She prepared herself for the usual banter on who got to be the pirate and who got to be the general, an argument that usually ended with the flip of a coin.
“I’d follow you across the sea.” Victor looked at her then like he was seeing her for the first time. Selene took a controlled breath, trying not to lose herself in the light of his eyes. He brushed his thumb against the hollow of her throat. “I don’t want you to go.”
Selene thought of the things she could say.
She didn’t want to go, either. She didn’t want to burst the bubble of this idyllic life of wayward adventures and endless summers.
Victor wasn’t just her best friend. He was so much more.
And maybe she was bridging that gap between a child and a young lady.
Maybe she was okay with things changing.
Maybe the butterflies that fluttered inside her meant something.
Selene didn’t have a chance to say any of those things.
The violin shrieked.
That first chord straightened Selene’s spine and made her skin crawl. It was ugly and dissonant and almost painful to hear. The slide of the violin was anything but beautiful.
And then Father started to sing.
It was the strangest thing, how all the minor seconds and unresolved fifths and sevenths and sharp ninths could sound right under her father’s voice. That warm, endless baritone filled the whole room. Like this whole place had been built simply to contain the divinity of his voice.
Selene marveled at how beauty could remove her from her own body.
She felt herself lifted, the warmth of Victor’s hand fading to nothing.
She hadn’t even realized how much her shoes pinched until the feeling was gone.
The rose in Selene’s hand shimmered, as if with heat.
Selene’s very skin seemed like it was made of glass, like something was happening inside her that she couldn’t understand.
There was only light and dissonance and Father.
Until.
From one heartbeat to the next, Father went from singing to screaming. The music continued on the violin. Desperate and jarring, like silver against glass. Cutting, breaking, screeching. He wasn’t even playing anymore. The violin floated in the air, moving of its own accord.
Father’s back was arched like a bow pulled too tight. His movements were disjointed. Joints popped in and out of their sockets, moving at impossible angles. He pressed his lips together, still singing, still screaming. Blood ran from his mouth. Broken teeth, bitten tongue, throat in ruins.
Selene flew to her feet. He’d warned her that music could open up channels, how the music could find each bruise of the soul and press and press until it yielded anguish. But it had never been like this. She had never seen him like this.
Victor grabbed her arm, but she wrenched herself free.
“Tell me what to do. Tell me how to help.” She was beside her father, wiping at his bloody face with her pinafore.
His neck popped. His head turned at an odd angle, eyes fixing on her. She did not recognize those eyes. The pupils were blown. Blood vessels burst. Dark against dark. Black against blood. All the laughter ironed out. All the light gone.
His hands shot out like a viper. His fingers—long and strong from years of playing—burrowed into the skin around her throat. She didn’t even know how to scream. How to make a sound when the man who had once been her father tore at her flesh.
Scratching deeper, trying to gain purchase, trying to get in.
He was going to rip out her throat.
Selene was never sure how it happened. Music had always been a part of her life, and the magic, the magic was there, waiting for her.
She didn’t remember singing at all. She didn’t know how it started or how to stop it, just that it was there.
Sudden and perfect and exactly what she needed, even though she didn’t want it.
Lightning cut the air, the smell of it sweet at first, and then burning.
The violin clattered to the floor; the bow splashed in the spreading pool of her blood.
Father crumpled on the ground, smoke rising all around him, a black burn mark at the center of his chest, below the onyx and gold of the King’s Mage necklace. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing.
Selene’s vision blurred. She brought her hand to her throat.
It felt like a sun-ripened pomegranate, cracked open on a rock.
The fragile seeds burst sweet around her fingers.
The king’s eyes were wide, his mouth working around words she couldn’t hear.
Victor stood at the edge of the shadows, the ruined rose at his feet. Thunder cracked like great applause.
She looked into the pale blue eyes of the ghost and grounded herself in them.
The blood on Selene’s thumb deepened, darkened into black. It ascended like smoke from her thumb, spectral and new. She wished it, willed it, coaxed and called it. The heat of it swirled beneath her skin, like her blood was hungry to do more. To be more. All she needed to do was want.
She would start with a rose.
The flower took shape in her hand. She didn’t want just any rose. She wanted something that hadn’t been seen before, something indomitable. The petals formed, bright white as newly fallen snow. The thorns pressed sharp against her palm.
And then it bloomed. The inner petal was such a dark, rich red that even this place could not steal the color away.
The fragrance was sweet, intoxicating. She brought it up to her face, brushed her lips against the soft petals to know that it was real.
She tried not to think of Victor. Selene offered it to the ghost.
He took the rose from her, careful never to touch her. He turned it in his palm, dragged his fingernail over the waxy stem. The rose bled, as all living things do, dark and red as its petals. She’d done it. She’d made something real.
“Pain is meant to be felt.” His lips curved up into a sickle moon. The light in his eyes was brighter than the cascade of false stars. “Take your broken heart, make it into art.”
A chill ran up Selene’s spine. “My father used to say that.”
“Show me what you can do,” the ghost said.