Chapter 36
Selene counted her breaths. Tried to find a rhythm in her frantic heart.
This wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be happening.
She’d seen the smoke rise from his body, limp against the floor.
He was dead. This was a ghost. The images of that day slammed back to her in the same impossibly bright colors from before the magie du sang, as if his presence had restored the memories.
She hadn’t quite realized how much she’d forgotten, how much the magie du sang had taken from her.
Every memory she’d used had been compressed and smudged, and it wasn’t until she looked at her father that she even realized how much she’d given up.
He dazzled her with a smile.
Giuseppe Dreshé was very much the same, despite the years.
There was a lightness to him, a comfortable ease.
She counted the differences. His hair was mostly silver, a little thinner on top.
His arms were softer, not strong and cut like she remembered.
He had wrinkles on his forehead and beneath his eyes.
“Selene,” he said. He tapped the wall, the rhythm familiar.
He knew her.
“Yes?” She dropped down to her knees beside him.
He pulled away from her, startled, and pointed to the wall behind him.
Madame Myrtille stood in the doorway. She’d brought tea. “He’s talking about the painting.”
There it was, on the wall. A painting of a man and a girl on the beach.
They were surrounded by nightingales. A murmuration of them, each of their mouths open to sing.
For a moment, Selene thought there might be some order to it all.
She could almost make out the music in it.
But the more she looked, the more she was sure she was looking at the art of a madman.
She was looking for something that couldn’t be there.
A weight settled on her. He remembered her, at least. He remembered something. But he didn’t know her.
Madame set down the tray. Father got up and sat on the wooden chair. It had been painted in gold and navy, like a seat in the Opera Magique. “It’s not unusual for them to gain some sense of themselves over the years. Our doctors and therapists do their best.”
“I didn’t know,” Selene said.
“Not many people do, love,” Madame Myrtille said. “They’re different, not gone. It’s hard for some families to adjust.”
“I didn’t know he was here.” Selene pressed her fingers to her eyes, trying to stop the tears. Trying—and failing. Her father pulled his long legs into himself, as if he were trying to disappear.
“Oh. We thought … Never mind that.” Madame Myrtille handed her a cup of tea. “You’re here now.”
Tea splashed onto the saucer. Selene’s shoulders shook. “He’s afraid of me.”
“Just give it time,” Madame Myrtille said.
Time, such a slippery thing.
But Madame Giroux had spoken of his death, hadn’t she? She must have known. The betrayal was a knife in so deep that Selene didn’t know how to get it out.
Giuseppe leaned conspiratorially toward Madame Myrtille. “Can she see me?”
“Yes, Pippo, she can.”
Her father had hated that nickname. He’d once sung a raincloud on a courtier who dared to call him that.
The man had been flirting with Selene’s mother.
Father had soaked her silk dress but stolen her heart.
He’d made a name for himself as a temperamental artist. The narrative had been reapplied to make sense of his impending madness.
It was an unfair framing. This wasn’t a feral madman.
He was loving and gentle and kind and perfectly controlled.
He picked up his tea and sipped it carefully. “Who is she?”
“I’m Selene,” she said.
“Can’t.” He shook his head. Tapped his foot in agitation. “Can’t be. Selene is—” He put out his hand to indicate the height she had been when she’d lost him. “Not possible.”
Madame Myrtille put a hand on his shoulder. “Pippo, remember when we mixed a little bit of white into the blue? It was still blue, just different.”
“Two blues.”
“Many blues.”
“Many Selenes?”
“Yes,” Madame Myrtille said gently. “And we like this one very much.”
“Can she sing?”
Selene’s heart was in her scarred throat.
“Why don’t you ask her?”
He fixed his intense gaze on her. “Can you sing, Blue Selene?”
The sound of her name in his musical voice made her want to curl up at his feet just to listen. He was here. He was here and he was alive.
Selene smiled. “Yes, I can.”
Giuseppe sat back. Waited with wide-eyed wonder.
So different from the calculating way he used to watch her sing.
Measuring each beat, listening to every note for perfection.
Except he wasn’t the brilliant man who’d remade the world magical with his voice.
He was broken and small and thin and not who she remembered.
No magic, Madame Myrtille mouthed.
Selene nodded and sang his lullaby.
The wolf has the moon
And the hawk has the sky
You’ll always have my heart, my love
Leedle-lie, leedle-lie, leedle-lie
“Sing it again,” he said, like he used to say.
She did. And again. And again. Until she was a hole dug into the sand, waiting for the tide to ebb.
She was so full. Full of magic and happiness and pain.
This was her father. Still blue. Alive, after all.
His death returned to her, his voice solid in her mind.
All of him that she gave up she had back.
He reached for her hand, holding it tentatively.
“I like you, Blue Selene,” he said. “You sound like a bird.”
“A nightingale?” She wanted the familiarity of those words on his lips.
“No.” He scrunched up his face, thinking. “A mourning dove. Different.”
He took a piece of paper from his table. It was still a little wet with paint. It was a picture of a bird perched on the chandelier from the opera house. The same scrollwork and sparkle painted in all the sunset shades and nestled in a backdrop of blue.
“For you, Blue Selene.”
“Thank you.”
Selene held the painting in her hands, careful not to smudge the still-drying paint. She thought she saw notes painted into the candles and all the edges of the crystal. But when she looked again, they were gone.
“It’s time for him to rest,” Madame Myrtille said. “But please, come back anytime.”
“I will,” Selene said.
“Promise?” Giuseppe said.
Selene had made promises. Promises to herself, to the ghost, to Gigi. Promises to the world when she’d agreed to sing in L’Opéra du Magician. She couldn’t keep them all.
“I promise.”
Giuseppe took off his shoes and put them beneath the bed. He untucked the top sheet and pulled it back. The last time Selene had seen him do that, it was for her. He lay down on his side and curled his knees up to his chest. He tucked his hands beneath his armpits.
“Tomorrow,” he said sleepily.
“Tomorrow,” Selene said.
Madame Myrtille shut the door behind them. Selene rolled up the painting and slid it into her pocket. She had a piece of her father again. She’d come for Benson, but she couldn’t see him now, not when her whole world had been remade. Tomorrow, and those promised afters.
“Here, dear.” Madame took a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to her.
Selene was still crying. Had she been crying all this time?
“I thought he was dead.”
Madame Myrtille smiled sadly. There was something in her eyes so close to pity that it made Selene want to sing for fire and burn this whole place down. “I’m sorry. We were told you didn’t want to see him. Because of what happened.”
Madame’s eyes lingered on Selene’s throat. The scalloped neckline of her dress let the scars peek through.
“Who? Who told you?”
Madame Myrtille hesitated. She looked to her right, like she was searching for a suitable answer.
“The truth.” Selene stabbed the pin through her pocket and into her thigh. She wasn’t sure it would work, if the magie du sang was powerful enough to coerce the mind.
“It was the king,” Madame Myrtille said, compelled to honesty. There was a hazy look in her eyes. Selene should feel sick by this, should be horrified at the power she didn’t know she had. “He came and told us himself.”
And maybe the mad magicians here could sense the magic in the air. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was Selene’s voice transmitted to all of those empty throats.
The screams echoed in the halls. Echoed in the city. Echoed in her bones all the way out.
Snow had dusted the Asylum grounds. Everything was white and cold and clean.
New and unmarred. This was an entirely different world.
As she walked down the narrow, rose-rotted path, Selene kept her hands in her pockets.
She used the pressure of the pin against her skin to keep herself grounded.
A few more steps and she’d be back on Tonnerre.
A few more breaths and she’d be back in the opera house. A few more moments. It wasn’t enough.
Everything inside her burst into music. She was singing before she could stop herself. Singing for life, for growth, for anything. The vines twisted up and up. The roses bloomed and burst and bloomed again. Petals fell around her. Red and red and red like blood on the snow.
Her father was alive.
Her father was alive and every part of her life had been a lie.
Victor sprang up from Tonnerre’s side. He looked at her like he’d been the one to see a ghost, and not her. “Selene, are you all right?”
“Did you know?”
She was singing the words, but it was the roses that were talking. They wrapped around his wrists and ankles. All thorns and bite. Pinned him up against the closest headstone. A weeping angel.
Let him weep blood.
“Selene, what in heaven’s name—”
She cut off his voice with the fury of her pain. The thorns twisted themselves around his throat. “My father is alive.”
“Yes,” Victor gasped.
She could see all the white around Victor’s eyes. His own realization dawning.
“Selene,” he choked. She loosened the vines around his throat. “I didn’t know that they’d kept him from you. I swear to you.”
She wished he were culpable. There was so much of the king in his face. If she wanted to, if she pretended, she could exact her revenge. Take away another heir. Burn this city to the ground. But he was innocent of this, and she knew it. The fury inside her turned to ash.
The vines browned and broke and crumbled.
“All of these years wasted.” She fell to her knees. “Some stars burn bright; some stars burn out.”
Victor was there beside her. There was blood on his wrists and throat, leaving ruby droplets in the snow.
She was sorry she’d hurt him. This wasn’t his fault.
He brought her to his lap, his arms around her, and she tried to breathe, but she could not fill her lungs.
Her chest compressed. She tried to remember what it was like to breathe. She couldn’t. She didn’t know how.
Victor held her. He whispered words to her, sang the waiting song. After a while, she was able to match her breathing to his. Slow and even. She felt dizzy and sick.
“You’re wrong about the stars,” he said gently, face nestled in her hair. “The death of a star is not a winking out of existence. When it runs out of fuel, it collapses into itself and explodes. Brighter than ever. More than it ever was. A supernova.”
Selene let out a shaky breath. What did that make her?
What did that make her father? His star wasn’t gone.
It was merely shadowed, forgotten. She had to do something to help him.
She remembered the way the ghost—Dante—had bled to burn away her migraine.
How much it had taken out of him. How much more would the cost be for a shattered mind?
She’d pay it. She’d find a way to pay the price.
Could magic undo what magic had done? She had to hope. The ghost would know. The ghost always knew.
And now she had his name.
Victor pressed his lips to her forehead. “I’m sorry. I would have done all of this differently if I had known.”
“It’s not your fault,” Selene said, certainty settling into her bones.
It was the king’s fault. Hatred for him burned in Selene with overwhelming certainty. He was the center of everything that had gone wrong in her life.
Victor caught the tears on her cheeks with his thumb and brushed them away.
For three slow breaths, Selene let herself savor this moment and the softness of his touch.
There was a world in which she could be this girl: uncomplicated and savable.
A girl waiting for a triumphant rescue by some lovely prince.
But she didn’t know how to be that girl.
She broke free of him and stepped away. All of her secrets seemed so small.
She didn’t care about anything, except what she had to do next.
This time, it was pain, and not music. She took hold of the thorns and let them sink deep into her flesh.
The blood turned to shadow in an instant.
She was present in her pain, no need for memory.
A force of wind strong enough to carry her up and over the city.
She didn’t care who saw her. She didn’t care for the consequences or cost.
She crossed the sky like it was a dance floor, her cloak whipping behind her. She flew, bleeding shadows and singing a requiem for a dream.