Chapter 17
Selene did not cry. Not when they cut the thorns off Benson’s wrists and replaced them with cold iron. Not when they dragged him off the stage, down the expansive grand foyer, and out the front doors. The carriage had bars on the window. She was sure the Asylum would have more of the same.
She held Gigi, anchoring her in the storm of her grief. There was nothing she could say to make it better, no magic she could sing to stop time and bring him back. The devastation of his loss was too deep a cut to be offered something as useless as words. But she could be here. That was enough.
Selene had been dragged away in a carriage once and taken to the opera house. At the time, she had felt smothered by the beautiful marble floors and immaculately carved columns that stretched up and up. She had wanted the room to be ugly. She’d wanted it to be as terrible as she felt inside.
Even now, the beauty of this room seemed at odds with the monstrosity of grief.
Each of the entryways in the grand foyer opened into balconies that looked out, little stages of their own.
There were gold figures throughout with glossy eyes and hands so real they could have reached out and touched her.
Selene pressed her hands over her eyes. The marble stairs were cold beneath her. She couldn’t worry about the ghosts of her childhood. Not when everything had gone so wrong.
“This feels like a dream.” Gigi shuddered involuntarily with the aftershock of her sobs.
“A nightmare.”
Just outside the grand doors, carriages rolled by.
Women walked with their cloaks drawn tight.
Men gripped their cravats. Concerned about the wind and upcoming winter, with no thought to the tragedy that had occurred mere meters away.
It would hit the papers by morning. Just a line, so that those making and taking bets could strike Benson’s name from their rosters.
She thought of Benson’s blown pupils. The curve of his hands. The way he’d looked at her when he’d lunged.
Someone had brought them mugs of hot chocolate.
Gigi’s eyes were red and swollen. They’d been through the best together, and now the worst. Selene wrapped her arm tighter around Gigi.
It was only the two of them now, huddled on the magnificent stairs of the grand foyer.
Everyone else had gone back to their practice rooms or dorms.
“Did you know?” Gigi asked.
“Know what?” Selene took a drink and set the cup beside her. She willed her hands not to shake.
“What Benson was going to do.”
Selene waited a beat too long, and that was enough for Gigi. Instead of fury, she was met with sorrow.
“Promise me you won’t push yourself that far. I can’t lose you, too.”
Promises, promises, strung up like pearls.
Meant to be broken. When they were younger, they’d promised not to keep secrets.
Not just Selene and Gigi, but all the King’s Mage hopefuls.
There’d been so many of them then. Rows and rows of narrow beds in the cramped lower dormitories.
Slowly, and then ever so quick, the beds disappeared.
Students who didn’t make the cut. Students who got hurt.
Students who couldn’t take the rigor of living and breathing and dreaming music and magic.
“What do you think it’s like at the Asylum?” Gigi spun her cup between her fingers.
Selene suppressed a shiver. She’d heard terrible things.
It housed mad mages from all over Mondreves, on the outskirts of the city.
It was white and cold and empty. A place to store the refuse of magic.
And instead of going home to see his family, instead of finding a position worthy of his talent, Benson was going there to rot.
She should have killed him and called it mercy.
“They’ll take good care of him.” Selene rubbed circles on Gigi’s back. “He’ll have a safe place with people who know what to do and how to help him.”
Gigi took a deep breath. Tears caught in her lashes. “Do you think he’ll ever come back to himself ?”
Selene wiped away one of the tears with her thumb. “I wish I could say.”
“I know magic has its limits. But what if we could sing him whole?”
It was a flight of fancy, a dream without mooring.
Selene had imagined it more than she’d ever admit.
She’d conjured up a world in which she’d struck her father with a cure instead of lightning.
Enough to bring him back. But it was all fantasy.
Better magicians had tried over the last hundred years. The madness was absolute.
Or so they’d been told.
Selene wondered how much blood it would take to restore Benson. What kind of pain she’d have to relinquish to dispel the madness. Selene took a deep breath, elated and terrified by the possibilities.
“Maybe.”
Selene looked up, catching the dregs of sunlight as they passed through the windows. They glistened on the edge of a gilt frame. She’d passed it a thousand times. She’d never looked at it, not really. It was part of the background. Another beautiful thing in this beautiful place.
It was a painting of Prince Renard, standing in the space that would become the Opera Magique.
He had a jewel-encrusted shovel thrust into the earth.
His teeth had been painted without a sheen, so it must have been when he was young, before they’d been replaced with pearls.
The king had his hand on Renard’s shoulder.
Adrik, the famed mage and theorist, stood to his right.
The rest were inconsequential. Faces forgotten to time.
Except for one.
A boy with dark hair and a sharp jawline and eyes so blue that the artist had taken the time to thin out the paint he’d used for the sky.
She knew that face. That stance. The way his lips tilted up into half a smile. Daring her.
Selene stood up.
“What is it?”
“That painting.” Selene pointed. “I never noticed it before.”
“That’s when they broke ground on the opera house.”
“Do you know who that boy is, the one with the bluest eyes?”
Gigi shook her head. “All I know is that the Opera Magique was a gift to the prince. Can you imagine? No trinkets or books or colored paper, but a whole opera house.”
Victor would have been grateful for trinkets or colored paper, she thought.
But how could she say that? It wasn’t her sorrow to share.
It wasn’t her pain. She wondered what magic Victor could conjure from his gilded neglect, all that abuse wrapped in pretty packaging.
She’d seen the bruises, tended the wounds.
More secrets, more parts of her she didn’t know how to share.
She looked down at Gigi, huddled on the stairs, the cooling cup of hot chocolate in her hands. Selene could do with one less secret.
“When my father went mad, it felt like the end of the world.” Selene sat down beside Gigi. “It feels like this. And I’m sorry we’re both here. I wish none of this had happened.”
“You don’t talk about him. Or any of your life before.”
“What happened with my father—it’s all tangled up. Victor, the palace, the king. It’s hard to unravel part without unraveling the whole.”
Victor had pressed his fingers against her skin.
He had looked into her eyes. Spoken to her.
And he had not known her. She was a stranger to him, and she supposed he was a stranger to her, too.
He was no longer the boy who’d known how to make her laugh and fill the hours with mischief.
No longer the boy who’d been her escape from her worries about her father, a refuge in the complicated world of palace life. He’d been everything to Selene, once.
And now, he was nothing.
The rhythm of Madame’s cane sent Selene’s heart racing. Gigi pulled away from her, smoothing her hair. Posture perfect. Eyes bright with hope.
“Girls,” Madame Giroux said. There was a weariness to her that Selene had seldom seen. This was her loss, too. “It’s time to prepare for the Unmasking Ball.”
“Oh.”
Anguish washed through Selene. She hadn’t taken the stage by storm, as she’d planned. If anything, her capture of Benson hurt her chances. That was magic used beyond the scope of art. What little hope remained came at the cost of her friend.
“I can’t.” Gigi pressed her hands to her face. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“You must.” Madame’s voice was fierce, almost violent. “You all know the risks. I taught each of you.”
There was a moment of deep despair in Madame Giroux’s face, before the curtains closed and she seemed like stone.
“Come on.” Gigi fought a losing battle against her tears.
“First.” Madame put her hand on Selene’s shoulder. “A lesson.”