Chapter 23 #2
And for that, she needed a song that sang itself.
She reached for it in her pocket, silently cursing herself.
The shell was upstairs in her room, sitting on the dresser next to her father’s pocket watch.
She rolled her shoulders back and started the journey back upstairs, feeling the stab of every lost second.
A pair of young girls—no older than sixteen—whispered at the bottom of the steps. Selene recognized the awe and naivety in their faces. These were the next generation of King’s Mage hopefuls, eager to take the space in the upper dormitories and continue their training.
Selene rushed past them. There was nothing left in her to be shared, even though it would be a kindness. She had to focus.
Gigi slammed her pointe shoes on the floor. She got them custom from a shop that worked with the Opera Magique during the regular season. They’d been dyed to match the umber of her skin. Now they’d be broken and cracked and made perfect for Gigi’s nimble feet.
“Can you believe it?” Gigi hit her shoe against the floor again and again. Her eyes were rimmed red. “How can the worst thing and the best thing happen in the same space of a day?”
Selene thought of the bright, brilliant blue sky and her father, dead on the floor. “Sometimes that is how it goes.”
Each pound of the shoe brought a shock of pain behind Selene’s eye.
“I thought you just broke in new shoes.”
Gigi held up the pointe shoes she’d carefully broken and sewn. She turned one of them over, showing the wooden block her toes rested on. Someone had driven a razor blade into the wood. “I knew something was off before I put them on.”
“This has to stop,” Selene said furiously. “These stupid, petty attempts to ruin one another.”
“It won’t,” Gigi said. “It’s only begun.”
Selene knew it by the new lock on the door. She knew it by the last few days of misery while she held on to the hope that she still had a chance in the competition. “I confronted Madame last night.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I don’t think she sees what she’s doing is wrong.”
“The people who think power is best won by a knife in the back are never truly punished. They just wait for you to turn around.” Gigi slammed her shoe down again.
“Do you think that’s what happened to the girl who jumped? One sabotage too many?” Selene leaned forward, hoping against all hope that Gigi would know something, anything.
“If that’s it, then why did Madame remove the mirrors and enable the sabotage?” Gigi hit her pointe shoe one more time, then held it to the light, satisfied.
Selene thought of the ghost. Of what he might have done to deserve being trapped in the mirror.
The possibilities were endless. If she could find out who the girl was, it might lead her closer to finding out the reason for his imprisonment.
If she could find something terrible enough to warrant that punishment, she could find out who he was.
There was a part of her that didn’t want to know, her imagination run wild with what he could have done.
She knew what Henri did and now that merited a crown.
What sin was so great that it warranted a hundred years trapped in a mirror?
Or was there some other trick to it, some explanation she couldn’t quite reach?
She didn’t want to mar her vision of the ghost.
“She doesn’t want us to win. She might not want anyone to win.”
“We’re still missing something.” Gigi shifted the contents of her sewing basket. “Have you seen any of my needles?”
Selene had one in her pocket. A tiny sword waiting to spill her blood. She wouldn’t give it up.
“Have you checked behind the dresser?”
Gigi sighed and dropped onto her stomach, shifting the dust that lived beneath.
“Benson would have made it,” Gigi said. “Don’t you think?”
Selene closed her eyes. She didn’t want to talk about Benson. Didn’t want to think about what they had lost. She needed to save that pain and make use of it. It did no good to bleed here without purpose.
“Yes.”
“Aha!” Gigi came up with a handful of ribbons, a knot of thread, and a slightly bent needle. “It’ll have to do.”
Yes, it would.
Gigi made a few attempts to sew on her ribbons and then tossed the bent needle aside. She looked like she was going to cry again. She pulled her knees up to her chest and took a few steadying breaths, exhaling the frustration.
“Are we designing dresses?” Gigi retrieved her sketchbook, clearly in need of distraction.
It still seemed surreal to Selene that they had a whole team of seamstresses at their beck and call, ready to sew whole dresses based on their sketches and dreams. This was part of the privilege of the competition.
They could have what they wanted because it was what the king wanted.
All Selene wanted was to close her eyes to the world and wake up to the setting sun and the hope of tomorrow.
But Gigi needed this. She sat up and patted the bed beside her.
“Absolutely.”
Gigi flipped through a half dozen designs. She talked about fabrics and their movement and how they took the light. Selene tried to listen, but her head was full of bees.
A royal carriage rolled by on the street below. Selene followed its movement until she lost sight of it. They could not see the palace from this vantage. She’d always been grateful for that.
Until now.
Victor was not supposed to be here. He was supposed to be off doing whatever third princes did. Starting wars or sending ships or losing the crown jewels in an illicit poker match. This was her space, her life. He wasn’t a part of her anymore.
Her heart fluttered against the lie. She wished it were true. She wished she could look at him and feel nothing. She wished that she could take the painful hope of those memories and bleed them out. Make a magic out of them and use it to forget.
He remembered her.
Maybe she should let the darkness have her. Let it take and take until there was nothing left.
“What colors go best with your piece?” Gigi said. The look on her face told Selene that it wasn’t the first time she had asked.
“I haven’t written it.”
“I thought that’s what you’ve been working on. All these late nights.”
A lie bubbled in Selene’s throat. She borrowed enough truth to assuage the guilt. “Nothing has been good enough.”
Selene had been given a yes. The door had been cracked open enough that she might slip in.
All she had to do was be the best. Show everyone that she was made of stars and shadows and a power so great she’d break them all.
She would be the bird, not the shell. She would be the thing inside with a voice and wings.
Not left on a shelf. Not an end, but a beginning.
“You have to go and write your aria.” Disappointment crept into Gigi’s voice.
“Yes. But if you need me …”
Gigi rippled with emotion, no doubt wrestling with the options. Selene could stay, but at what cost? They both knew what was at stake.
“Go.”
Gigi turned the pad of paper around. She had sketched a preliminary dress for herself. The gown was blue taffeta, soft embroidered flowers up the bodice. It was a spring day over a crystal-clear lake. It was a promise of new life, of new magic. That’s what Selene needed. Something new.
“Draw something for me? Make it red as blood.”