Chapter 27 #2
They stopped at the door at the end of the corridor. Selene sang open the lock with three short notes.
“Why is your practice space locked?”
“A precaution,” Selene said. “To keep away peeping eyes before the competition.”
“Weren’t you just practicing onstage?”
“Auditions.” A smile tricked up her lips. “There is more to L’Opéra du Magician than one night.”
The room was dark, save for the light of one high window. From the looks of the door, someone had tried to carve out the lock, to no avail. Priya. As if stealing her music hadn’t been enough.
“If I may,” Selene said.
“Please.”
Selene took a step away from Victor. She breathed in deep, expanding her lungs fully.
The rhythm of the familiar melody echoed in her chest. She could feel it in her bones, in the blood pumping through her veins.
She let out the first note in her clear, lyrical soprano, singing the line slower than she might have if no one was watching.
One by one, the candles around the room flickered and burned with warm light.
She could have lit them all at once. It would have been easier.
Instead, she started at the one closest to her and followed it around the room, ending with Victor.
“It is a beautiful space.” Selene let her eyes trace the bare wall. “It is a shame we cannot see the magic we create reflected back, like in a proper rehearsal space. That may have been enough to save Benson.”
Mirrors couldn’t have saved Benson any more than they could have saved her father. But Victor didn’t need to know that.
Victor’s brow furrowed as he considered the room. “Why are there no mirrors in here?”
“Pardon?” She would not let the anticipation slip into her voice. He was asking all the right questions.
“This is a rehearsal space. You should be able to see yourself.”
And the ghost.
If the mirrors were there, he would be, too. He would be everywhere. She imagined his prison flooded with light; the shadows kept at bay. And with the shadows away, what could he do? She imagined him reflected in all the mirrors. A hundred ways in and a hundred ways out.
“There is a ghost in the glass.” Selene lowered her voice, as if she was telling him a secret.
She had known Victor, years before. How to get him to do exactly what she wanted.
It was time to see if things had really changed.
“Years ago a girl became so frightened she threw herself off the roof of the opera house. Surely you’ve heard the rumors? ”
Victor waved his hand in dismissal. “Sometimes I prefer the company of ghosts to people.”
“Me too.” Selene matched his smile.
“But the mirrors.” Victor pressed his hand against the wall. There were scars on his knuckles that hadn’t been there when they were children. “This is a safety issue. This must change.”
“I would not do that, sir.” Madame Giroux’s voice echoed through the rehearsal space.
Selene winced at the way she addressed him. She tried not to let her growing disdain for Madame rise off her skin like smoke.
Victor’s smile was all poison and charm. “Madame, how do magicians know what they are crafting if they cannot see?”
“You think this is about what you see?” Madame Giroux crossed her arms over her chest. “Spoken like a man who has never known magic.”
“It is a performance.”
“It is a competition,” Madame Giroux said. “If you think it is about what you see on that stage, then you are sadly mistaken, sir.” She looked sharply at Selene. “It begins before they appear on my steps, small and weak, before they crawl out of bed, before they even know the language of music.”
Victor smiled easily and then started to hum. Selene knew the melody. His voice was easy and natural. He did not have the training, but there was a loveliness to it, like an uncut gem. The flames in the candles burned higher and higher, until they were bonfires, melting the wax down to the wick.
“We do not suffer fools in this theater.” Madame’s eyes darkened. She hit her cane against the wood, countering his melody. The candles doused. Steam wisped out of the sconces, the only shade against the shadow.
“It is a good thing I am not a fool,” Victor said. “I will not bow to superstition, Madame Giroux. If installing mirrors allows your performers to recognize when they’ve pushed themselves too far and prevents incidents like the one I witnessed, it will be worth a little fear.”
His eyes—like tea steeped to bitterness—were locked on Madame’s. Selene had seen him look this way at a chessboard, at his older brothers, at the sea. Like he was trying to solve the puzzle of Madame Giroux. It was a glimmer of intensity. Not the boy from the papers, but a strategist and a leader.
Victor relaxed his shoulders, easing into one of his crowd-pleasing smiles.
“Good day to you, Madame. I’m sure we will see more of each other over the coming days.”
“I shall warn you once, boy.” Madame Giroux’s voice was so quiet that Selene leaned in to hear. “You will bring ruin upon us all if you insist on tricks of glass and fancy.”
Fear traced down Selene’s spine like the brush of a feather.
“Is that a threat, Madame Giroux? Are you afraid of ghosts?”
“Just one ghost.” Madame’s eyes were cut to slits. She leveled her gaze at Selene. Her hands were tight against her cane. “We should all be afraid.”
She gave Selene a long, appraising look and stepped out of the room.
Selene arched an eyebrow. “Do you make enemies everywhere you go?”
Victor laced his fingers together and turned them out, his scarred knuckles popping all at once. “One of my few talents.”
“Like magic?”
When they were children, he would sometimes sit in on her lessons with her father. But he never sang a note. He often complained about the boredom, wanting her to go stir up trouble with him outside.
“I picked up a few things over the years.”
“Offra?”
Offra had taken the last competition with a spectacular display of fireworks that turned to ice and snowed all over the theater.
A complex and dangerous combination of motifs that she pulled off with ease.
She had a lovely, warm alto and a smile that could have won over any audience, even without magic.
Selene had watched the king put the onyx necklace around her throat.
She wondered what Offra thought now that she was passing her position on to the next person, now that her tenure as the King’s Mage was up.
“Offra wants nothing to do with me,” Victor said. “She believes the papers. Thinks I’ll try and make a plaything of her heart.”
“Would you?” Selene’s gaze was pointed as Madame’s.
“Heavens, no. Internal organs make terrible toys.” The mischief melted from Victor’s eyes. “I had hoped those rumors had not been so far-reaching.”
“You’d be surprised what we hear.”
Victor faced her. “You know me, Selene.”
“It’s been a long time since we were children.”
He reached forward, brushing back one of her dark curls. An acquiescence. An acknowledgment of the distance and time and what had changed between them.
“Only rumors.”
“If you say so.”
This had been so much easier in the moonlight, wearing masks of every kind.
No matter how she wished and wanted, things could never go back to the way they were.
But Selene had learned to use every opportunity, and she would not take this lightly.
If that meant mirrors or the pain or a piece of the past, she’d take it.
And then she’d go back to her world, and he’d go back to his.
Perhaps they’d see each other in court, but she doubted it.
Victor was not made for confined spaces.
That’s why he’d done so well in the military.
Why he’d always slept with the windows open.
“Are these your only rehearsal spaces?”
She gestured down the dark hallway. “Down here, we have more practice rooms.”
Victor tilted his head. “Do all of them need mirrors, too?”
Selene led Victor to the front doors the long way around, avoiding Madame Giroux’s office. “We’ve seen everything there is to see.” She couldn’t help but look toward the exit.
Victor followed her gaze. “You haven’t shown me the roof.”
“I don’t have time.” Selene raised an eyebrow. “Afraid to go home?”
“Afraid that I’ll stay?”
She turned away from the split of a stairway and the watching eyes of all the statues and faced Victor.
For a moment, she imagined him as they had been in those last days.
Thirteen and fourteen and unaware of the world’s pain.
They’d been on the precipice of change. There was nothing between them, nothing owed.
They were nothing but a bittersweet memory.
She wished things could be as easy as they had been when they were children.
She looked at him, thinking of all the things she could say. She wanted to ask him where he’d been. What had happened between the then and the now? It didn’t even matter. They couldn’t go back and borrow the time.
Instead, she brushed a speck of dust off the bodice of her dress and gathered her courage.
“I need something from you,” Selene said. “You have to promise you won’t ask me any questions.”
“All right.” Victor rolled his shoulders back and leaned against the closed door.
She took a deep breath. This was for the ghost, for the mirror. “I need a lock of your hair.”
Victor laughed. “Is that all? Heavens, I thought you were going to ask me to jump off the building or something half as terrible.”
“Why would I ask for anything like that?”
“You’d be surprised.” Victor took out his dagger and cut a curl from the nape of his neck. He dropped it into her open hands. It coiled there, like a small snake. “I get asked all sorts of requests in court.”
“To leap off buildings?” She tucked the curl into her pocket beside her father’s watch.
“Once a woman asked me if I’d murder her husband.” He sheathed his knife.
“Did you?” Selene leaned closer.
“Of course not. And I didn’t murder her when the husband asked me to. Nor did I smuggle tigers, like the papers are suggesting.”
“You lie to your friends, and I’ll lie to mine.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “But let’s not lie to each other.”
Victor’s smile was genuine. “I’ve never even seen a tiger.”
“Not in all your adventures?”
Victor reached over and brushed one of her curls off her shoulder again. She could feel the heat of his fingertips through the fabric of her gown. “Nothing so wild as this.”
And her heart matched the cadence of his words, a tremulous rush of familiar wanting.
No, no, no.
She couldn’t do this. She’d been just a girl, then.
She hadn’t known about broken hearts or blood or desire.
She’d wanted to be at the edge of the sea with her father, singing the world into a more beautiful place.
In those dreams, Victor was there, too. She hadn’t understood how—she just knew she wanted him in her life, forever.
Selene was old enough to know now that dreams didn’t come true. That she had to claw and bite and bleed to get what she wanted. She was old enough to know now that Victor wouldn’t stay.
Victor must have sensed her turmoil. He crossed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around her.
Selene couldn’t remember the last time she’d been held like this.
She fought the rush of her heart, trying to stay grounded in her resolve not to be pulled into Victor’s orbit.
But then he pressed his face into her shoulder, and she breathed in the sweet salt that permeated his clothes.
She could have this. She could abandon her whole life and let Victor take her away from her dreams, her grief, her ambition.
Like the dark, he could make her forget.
She closed her eyes, trying to keep the world from slipping away.
He took a step away from her, hand still resting on the small of her back, fingers against her skin in between the ribbon lacing of the dress.
He brushed his thumb down her jawline. She shivered beneath his touch.
She could taste the sea on him—the brine and wildness of a storm and something else she couldn’t quite name.
“I missed you,” he said.
He rested his hand against her neck, fingers against the black lace choker she had secured there.
His eyes dropped from hers, down to her lips, and back again.
Oh, she could do this. She could get caught up in Hurricane Victor, let herself get swept away like she had when they were children. It would be so easy.
But this wasn’t what she wanted anymore. She had her own life, her own wants. She had music to write and ghosts to save and competitions to win. Victor was a memory. She took a step away.
“I have things to do.”
“You said that.” Victor’s smile fell into place. “Anything better than this?”
No, she wanted to say.
“Join me for dinner.”
For one fleeting moment, Selene thought she would say yes.
“I have to rehearse.” She looked to the stairs, to the door, to the balconies. Anywhere but Victor.
“Surely you must nourish your body, rest your soul.”
“I don’t have time, Victor.”
“A quick dinner, then. Please.”
Gods, the way he said that word. It was made new. It was a thousand symphonies folded up into that single pang of emotion. Selene remembered the thousand times she’d answered that plea. But as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t give in.
“Damn you, Victor,” she said. And she could see by the way his hand curled over the door handle that he had expected this answer. Resigned himself to a fate without her. He wasn’t angry about it, like she was. And that’s what softened the hardness of her heart. “Ask me again tomorrow.”
Victor stopped, hand against the door. Hopeful. “And you’ll say yes?”
“Just ask me again,” Selene said.