Chapter 13 #2
It wasn’t cold. It was the heat and pressure needed to turn coal into diamond.
Wanting something so badly that all the lines blurred into an arrow pointing straight to the goal.
Selene knew Gigi was just as ruthless, even if she dressed it up in glitter and bows.
There were no other ballerinas in the opera house.
Gigi had put in the work to be the best—bloody pointe shoes and aching muscles. A different sort of rancor.
“What do we do now?” Benson looked to Selene like she was their guide through tragedy.
“Go upstairs and go to sleep.” Selene pushed him in the direction of the upper dormitories. “Or you’ll be no use when your name is called.”
“How am I supposed to sleep after seeing that?”
“Chamomile and honey. It’s good for the voice.”
“Go on.” Gigi nudged him gently.
Benson kissed Gigi and sighed his way up the stairs, leaning against the stone wall for support.
“What do you think will happen to them?” Gigi popped up onto her toes, an anxious habit.
“If Camille lives, she’ll likely never sing again.
Wealth will keep Cecile out of prison, but she’ll never be allowed to do magic.
” Selene inched toward the staircase to the roof.
“She’ll likely be sent to live with some distant cousin until the papers have moved on, and then married off to someone twice her age. ”
“Bleak.” Gigi was on her toes again. “Do you think either of them had anything to do with your music?”
“No.” Selene wished it could be that simple.
“This isn’t right. The way we’re pitted against each other until we break. When did magic and music stop being fun?”
“Has it ever been fun?” Selene had loved doing magic with her father, but that was different. She wasn’t a performer, then. She was just a girl enraptured by the endless possibilities of the world. Once they’d moved to the palace, everything was different. This had always been for a purpose.
They stood in the hallway, neither of them looking at the other. Selene couldn’t scrub the bloody image from her mind. She didn’t want to. She needed to hold on to it while she searched for her piece of sky. She’d bring both to the ghost and have the magic necessary to win.
“Selene, wait.” Gigi’s footsteps pattered behind her. “I think there’s something more going on here. We’ve seen sabotage before, but it’s never been like this.”
“I need fresh air,” Selene said tentatively. “Do you want to join me on the roof ?”
“Yes?” Gigi had never liked the rooftop. Too much sky and not enough railing, and the lingering fear that somehow she’d be pulled off the edge of the roof like the girl who’d seen the ghost.
They started up the first of many staircases.
Selene kept her hand flat against the banister.
Each time her cut thumb pressed against the wood, it served as a reminder of what she wanted.
She glanced at Gigi, who took the stairs two at a time, flexing her toes on each of the landings. Always in motion.
“Do you remember that short, dark time in which Maestro Naron insisted we form a choir?”
“Ha,” Gigi said. “That poor man. To think that a group of cutthroat soloists would have the ability to blend.”
Selene remembered the bright cacophony of voices. “Ensemble work is not our strong suit.”
“Speak for yourself,” Gigi said. “If I recall, I was the perfect choral specimen. Mother—Madame—even tried to use that to get me barred from the competition.”
Selene put a hand on Gigi’s arm. Madame Giroux had never been particularly motherly, but the movement toward L’Opéra du Magician had created such a chasm between her and Gigi.
“Perhaps she’s creating distance so as not to manufacture conflict should you win.
That way it’s your merits, and not hers. ”
“Then why wouldn’t she say so? Why instead look for reasons to have me removed?”
“She’s a peculiar woman.”
“I’ve been thinking about your music.” Gigi moved up the many flights of stairs with an elegance Selene admired. “I’ve narrowed down the timeframe Priya and Revelio could have been in our room based on our rehearsal schedules and when I know one of us was in the room.”
Selene nodded for Gigi to go on.
“Three days before auditions, you finally took a break from rehearsing. I remember you locking your music in the drawer, and we went to dinner. It’s the only time in the last few weeks that you were away from your music.”
That had to be it. She’d tweaked the coda a few days before—and Revelio had performed the newest version. It wasn’t like they could have used an old copy. “The only problem with that theory is that both Priya and Revelio were at the same dinner with us.”
“I know.” Gigi looked at Selene with a sort of resolute horror. “I don’t think they stole the music. I think it was given to them.”
An unease came over Selene. There was only one person that could be. Selene didn’t want to imagine a world in which her mentor could do such a thing. Madame could be cruel, but this was beyond that. “Why would she do that?”
Gigi pushed the door open. “There isn’t anyone else.”
The sky was a bright, endless blue. The city below cut into shapes and patterns, buildings crossmarked by the bustling streets.
Everything cramped and forced together. The opera house was the heart of Songerie, towering over most of the city.
Selene’s stomach clenched as she looked over the edge of the railing, imagining the brief and overwhelming feeling of slipping from this roof.
There was no way the girl who’d seen the ghost could have survived her fall to the cobbled streets below.
Selene could imagine her body there—broken and bloody.
It was hard for her to fathom that the ghost was responsible for such a death.
There had to be something more to the story.
Just beyond the tangled city, in the place Selene yearned for but could not reach, was the sea.
She imagined herself growing old in the little cottage, everything the same as it had been when she’d lived there as a child.
Sandy footprints and seashells in glass jars.
On a clear day, she could see the line of the horizon.
But today there was a haze above the shoreline.
The farthest she could see was the palace.
It glistened in the distance, wrapped in its familiar white walls.
Rainbow light glinted from the glass conservatory.
The gardens and menageries formed a barrier between the castle proper and those shining gates.
The difference between those it kept in, and those it kept out.
How many summer days had she spent trying to scale that white wall with Victor by her side?
They’d wanted so badly to be free, and yet now Selene would do anything to be back there.
They’d only managed to escape once. Victor had bought her a scarf from a street vendor to commemorate the event.
They hadn’t even made it down another street—nowhere near the opera house—before they’d been caught.
Victor had been whipped mercilessly by his father for endangering himself. His shirts wept blood for weeks.
“It’s my fault,” Selene said, after Father had spoken to her about the danger she’d put them both in by crossing that wall. “I wish the king had whipped me instead.”
Father shook his head. “Be grateful the days of whipping boys are over, Selene. It’s terrible to carry the burden of someone else’s sins.”
She took the scarf off her neck and handed it to Father. “Take this, I don’t deserve it.”
Father kissed her on the top of her head. “Enjoy this gift, Nightingale. Let go of your guilt. Life is too short for sorrow.”
She hadn’t worn this scarf in years. In the days when she had still held out hope that he would come for her, she’d worn it every day.
Dreaming that he would come and take her past the edge of the sea and free her from her sadness.
After a while, she’d folded it up and put it at the back of her drawer. Her only hope in forgetting.
Selene leaned against the stone guard. The air was crisp and cold up here. Selene took each breath slowly, savoring the scent of smoke from the chimneys that rose from the city like seedlings.
“It’s beautiful.” She glanced back.
“Is it?” Gigi had pressed herself against the copper dome, as far away from the edge as she could manage.
“You made yourself fly today.” Selene raised an eyebrow. “And now you’re afraid to fall?”
Gigi laughed. “It’s not the same, and you know it.”
Selene moved to Gigi and rested against the dome. The sun-warmed copper felt good against her back.
“This is it.” Selene intertwined her fingers with Gigi’s. “The beginning of the end.”
“It’s already begun.” Gigi squeezed Selene’s hand. “It’s been here, for a while.”
A different sort of ache permeated her chest. Not fractured love and jealousy, but the finality of this moment.
Soon enough they’d leave the Opera Magique.
Their lives would go on separately. Selene wouldn’t settle for anything other than the King’s Mage.
Gigi could end up in a noble house, singing lovely distractions for those who could afford it.
Their art could take them all over the world.
Mondreves was the center of magic, creating trends and precedent for the other nations.
Every history book she read boasted their influence and power over the known world.
Did any of them have beautiful boys trapped in mirrors who bled power?
Selene shook the thought from her head. After all of this, Gigi would marry Benson and have beautiful, talented children.
And all of this would fade into fond memory.
Like the way things had happened with Victor.
She’d thought for so long that he’d find her here and return her to the life she’d had before.
That she’d have another chance at mischief and joy.
That things could go back. But time was fluid.
It slipped between her fingers, always changing, flowing forward with little regard to what was left behind.
Selene’s head spun, suddenly dizzy. Maybe it was the view of the palace. Maybe it was the altitude. Maybe it was the clear, cloudless sky.
Selene looked up sharply, the weight of the goblet against her palm. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen. No hope of rain or mist or anything she could capture and take with her down below. Her heart sank quicker than a girl thrown off the side of an opera house.
“Where do you think we’ll end up?” Gigi said.
They’d played this game a thousand times. Wondering about what life would be after this was all over. Selene had always been so confident. Sure that she would be the one in the palace. She wasn’t so sure about that now.
“If it’s not the palace, I don’t want it.”
“Do you think you’ll make it into L’Opéra du Magician?” Gigi said gently.
“There’s still a chance.” Selene would make a chance. A door where there was not a door. “Priya’s audition didn’t go well, either.”
“I’m just worried about you.” Gigi sucked in her lower lip. She was holding something back. Keeping secrets, like Selene.
“Say it.”
“Your audition. Your obsession. I know it wasn’t what you meant to do, but the magic got out of hand so quickly. Is it really worth it?” The words rushed out of Gigi. “Selene, you could have died. You could have killed someone.”
Selene tried to forget the way the lightning had volleyed across the auditorium and what lightning had done to her father.
There was blood on her hands and in her head and in her heart.
Would Gigi still love her, if she knew? Would anyone?
The only person who hadn’t run from her was the boy who lived in the dark.
“I had it under control.”
“After all we’ve been through.” Gigi pressed her hand into Selene’s shoulder. “Don’t you think I know the truth? I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
Selene counted her breaths and the measures of silence that stretched between them. Didn’t Gigi understand? There was nothing else for Selene.
“This can’t be the end,” Selene said.
There was a screech and the violence of wings.
Gigi gasped and stumbled toward the door.
It was a bird. A pair of birds, fighting for their space in the sky.
They fought and thrashed and tore at one another, caring little that Selene was there.
There was a familiarity to the violence, to the scraping and scratching and screeching.
They used talons instead of music and glassed berries, but it was all the same.
A want so deep that it could only end in blood.
She sang for air, spinning it around herself and pushing the birds away.
They startled and broke apart, into the bright blue.
One following the other, claws outstretched.
Selene let her song end. Her heartbeat slowed to a more reasonable tempo. The dust settled around her. The dust, and a sleek black feather.
“Are you okay?” Gigi said breathlessly.
Selene picked up the feather. Held it up, catching the golden rays of the sun on its slick dark surface.
There was something special about it. It hummed with energy, the ache of loss and being left behind.
The bird that dropped it was long gone, a speck on the horizon. He’d left part of himself behind.
A piece of sky.