Chapter 27
Selene found Victor in the grand foyer. His trousers were dirty with horsehair and road dust. His hair was windswept, and his eyes were fever bright.
Yet still he belonged among the golden statues and carved banisters and expansive ceiling.
He was a handsome, confident man in a beautiful, opulent place. Some things never changed.
She walked soundlessly down the stairs. She caught her reflection in one of the many polished statues.
What reflected back was a distortion, altered by the contours of the metal.
She wondered what her life would have been, had she lived the last seven years with mirrors.
Would she be as vain as Priya or as fearful as Gigi?
Would her magic be sharpened by the frequent sight of her tableaux reflected back at her?
Would her power be endless, with nearly seven years of shadow magic taught to her by the ghost trapped inside?
Victor busied himself with the contents of his pockets: a watch, a knife, a knot of string.
She wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to seeing him inside the opera house.
Victor existed inside her mind, inside the palace, inside the life she’d been forced to leave behind.
He was a fantasy, a ghost in his own right. One slip of light and he’d be gone.
She made a deliberate tap of her sole against the stair. Victor looked up sharply, tucking his collection of things back into his pocket.
“Miss Dreshé, how lovely to make your acquaintance again.” His smile was bright as the penny on his palm.
“Your Highness.” Selene dropped into a curtsy, leaning into the playful formality.
“None of that,” he said in mock offense. “We are old friends, remember? If I wanted bowing and scraping, I’d be in the court with my father, instead of here spending his money.”
Selene’s lips tipped into the barest smile. “How much money are we talking, Monsieur? That will impact the quality of my tour.”
“Victor, if you please,” he said. “His Majesty will be forced to do an honest day’s labor in order to make up the difference.”
“Then I shall show you every part of the theater, from the ballasts to the loo.”
“I’ve seen the loo, thank you.” He cleared his throat and gestured with a flair. “This is, as you know, the grand foyer.”
“I thought I was giving this tour.” Selene reclined on the banister.
“You were mistaken, then. I’m here to show you exactly what I mean to do with L’Opéra du Magician.”
Dread and excitement washed over Selene—stagnant and cold as the fountain water they’d once turned into a winter bath. If Victor already had his mind set on things, it would be hard to change. But maybe he was different now, just as she was different.
“You don’t like the sound of that?” Victor read her the way he would a cluster of stars, picking out the light from the dark.
“This is my home, Monsieur.” The playfulness of her tone fell away, the lie thick on her tongue.
“Victor,” he said, this time firmly. “But it won’t be your home for long. Soon you’ll be a part of L’Opéra du Magician and then whisked away to some nobleman’s hall.”
Or yours, Selene thought, and hated herself for it.
“Or mine,” Victor said. “Should you win.”
Selene took a step back, as if moving away from Victor could keep him from her, from knowing her thoughts. All pretense dropped. His eyes widened with concern.
“Too bold?”
“Yes,” Selene said quietly.
“Pardon.” Victor took her hand, brushed his lips against it in apology.
His hands were worn and calloused, not the hands of a prince at all.
She remembered the feel of them on her skin, the brush of their fingers as she’d taken the nautilus shell from him.
“I don’t mean to overstep. The winner will, of course, take residence in the palace. ”
“Of course, Monsieur.” She stepped back into the banter.
There was a moment when Selene thought of all the things she could say to him.
She’d been making sculptures from her anger at him for years, chipping away at each corner of the stone until it was smooth and supple as skin.
It seemed wrong, now that she knew the truth.
He had written her letters. Hundreds of them.
She wondered if she’d have been better if she had known.
Or would she have tortured herself by hanging on his every word?
She imagined herself reading those letters over and over until the pages were thin, the ink faded to nothing. No, she did not like that possibility.
“I would like to hear you say my name.”
She wanted to say no. She wanted to tell him that—despite the best intentions—they could not go back. There was no room for him in her life. But his eyes churned like the sea and she could not refuse him.
Selene curtsied. “Victor.”
His smile was radiant, light in all the dark places.
They turned into the auditorium. Selene’s heart beat accelerando.
She hadn’t returned to this space since she lost Benson.
She didn’t expect the grief to radiate from the seats, the walls, to drip from the statues.
The air in here was different now. The stage haunted.
Selene didn’t expect it, didn’t know how to move through this space.
It occurred to her for the first time that if she became the King’s Mage, she might have to perform in the same room her father died in.
The thought made the ground tremble beneath her.
“How is your friend?” Victor’s voice was soft. He seemed wounded on her behalf, picking up the threads of her sorrow and sharing the burden.
“Benson is …” Selene swallowed the edges of her tears. She would not cry in front of Victor.
He brushed the back of his hand against hers, the lightest touch. He’d been so brazen when he kissed her hand earlier, yet this was far more intimate. “Is there anything I can do?”
Selene shook her head. She led him up the aisles and onto the stage. Silence trailed her like a cloak. Moisture still clung to the air, little dewdrops on the velvet curtains. There were scratches in the wood from her thorns.
“Do you remember the time we stole all the honey from the kitchens?” Victor leaned into the space between them. The curve of his shoulder blocked out the grooves on the floor.
Selene welcomed the change in subject. “I remember the time you stole all the honey from the kitchen.”
“And His Majesty had to take his toast with jam instead.” Victor chuckled.
“You were whipped for that,” Selene said quietly. The image of his bloody back and the tracks from tears on his cheeks had never left her.
“Better me than some poor boy.” Victor shrugged his hands into his pockets, smiling away the sudden vulnerability.
“Your obsession with whipping boys persists, I see.”
“Another gruesome part of our history I wish I could make right,” Victor said with a wry smile. She wondered how much he’d done to make amends, or if he counted her name among the wronged.
“Have you made amends for all that history, like you dreamed?”
“What do you think I’m doing here?”
“Vexing your father. Vexing me.”
“Magic can be dangerous.” Victor looked at her like he was trying to decide if he could tell her the whole truth. “And there is already far too much suffering in the world.”
It was an answer to her question and not an answer.
There was something he was hiding, something more to his presence here.
Far too political, with a grain of painful truth.
He knew the dangers of magic, had seen them carved into Selene’s skin.
He’d been there with her when her father had gone mad and ripped out her throat.
If he was here to keep her safe, then he was here to stop her.
Something sparked within her. Just a thought, planted in her like a seed, echoing within like an ocean trapped in a nautilus shell. She opened her palm and gestured to the rows and rows of blue velvet seats, adorned with gold.
“In a few short days, these will be full.” She pointed back to the boxes that framed the stage. “You will be there, of course.”
The King’s Box was the second closest to the stage, with a wide balcony.
Victor smiled, a dimple forming at one side of his mouth. He pointed to the other side of the stage. There was a smaller box there. It lacked the elegance of the King’s Box but had a slightly better angle to the stage and superior acoustics. “I will be there.”
“You’ve done your research.”
“I like to know what I’m getting into.”
Selene took him through the side exit. “To our right is one of our rehearsal spaces. To the left is the orchestra’s space. And back that way is the grand hall. Where would you like to go?”
“I need to see this place as you do. To the right, please.”
It shouldn’t have surprised Selene, but it did. She had taken visitors on tours before. They always avoided the dark corridors and drafty rehearsal spaces and marveled at the art and architecture of the public rooms. Everyone wanted to see the show. They seldom wanted to know what lay beneath.
“It’s too dark in here. That will have to change. Electric lights. A little illumination. There might be fewer accidents if you could see.”
Selene hated electric lights. They were so gaudy and without any nuance.
Victor must have noticed the slight downturn of her mouth. “You do not approve?”
“It is not my place.”
“Please, tell me. This is your home, not mine.”
“There is something distasteful about modern lighting. It takes away the shadows, the mystery. There is no magic like the flicker of candlelight.” Selene exhaled, thoughts roiling like the dark. “There are better ways to protect us.”
“Like what?”
Mirrors, she thought. The one thing Madame had made sure to remove from the opera house to keep the ghost hidden away. But she didn’t want to come out and say it, not yet. It had to be his idea.
“Let me think on it.”
“All right.” Victor chuckled. “You shall keep your candles, then. But more of them. I would not want anyone to twist an ankle in these dark spaces.”