Chapter 38
At some point, Selene’s legs crossed the ice bridge and walked her up the stairs and left her in bed.
She hadn’t bothered to shake the glass out of her hair or wash the blood from her face or bandage her still-weeping hand.
She burrowed into her down blanket and fell into the inexorable darkness of sleep.
“Selene?”
Gigi’s voice pulled Selene out of dreams. It felt so much like the mirror that she had forgotten what was real and what was not. But Dream Dante had been ever out of reach. A step too far into the shadow.
She forced her swollen eyes open. The piece of glass from her mirror was still clutched in her hand. The sky was white with snow outside.
Gigi swore in three different languages and dropped onto the bed. The movement pulled the fabric where it had dried on Selene’s various cuts. She winced. Gigi froze, then moved more carefully, brushing her fingers against the wounds on Selene’s face and arms.
Selene closed her eyes. She didn’t know how to put it together in a way that anyone could understand. The ghost was gone, lost to her. Shattered beyond repair.
The pain was enough to remake the whole world.
She let out a sob.
“Oh, Selene.” Gigi brushed her fingers over the bruise on Selene’s face and the deepest cut on Selene’s palm. “Let me see.”
Selene held her hand very still. Gigi sighed and went to the nightstand.
The song for heat rang out in her sweet soprano.
Gigi returned with a bowl of steaming water.
She helped Selene out of her ruined dress and into a simple shift.
Carefully, so carefully, she cleaned the blood off Selene’s face and arms and legs.
With a gentle wind, she blew the glass from Selene’s hair.
“How did this happen?” Gigi dipped the cloth into the bloody water for the last time. It was red like a rose, like a dying sun before it melted into dark.
Selene thought of all the things she could say. The secrets and the lies and the last threads of herself, pulled so taut any part of her might snap.
So she told the truth.
From the beginning to what was now the end. The mirror, the bargain she’d made, Victor, her father, and Dante. A man and a ghost and now nothing.
“All I’ve ever wanted was to have my father remembered for the good things he did. To rewrite his legacy and restore him as the Great Giuseppe Dreshé. I don’t care about any of that anymore.” Selene sobbed. “I’m sorry about yesterday. Do you hate me?”
“I could never hate you. That wasn’t even a real fight. We can do much better, I’m sure.” Gigi wrapped her arms around Selene. “What will you do?”
“I have to sing. He died for this, gave up everything so I could have this chance. I can’t let it go to waste.”
Gigi’s hand rested on the folio. “I want you to be happy, Selene.”
“But?”
“I don’t know if this will make you happy.”
Selene was out of tears. She was so tired she could sleep a thousand years and the ache would never fade. Dante had told her to be it all. What choice did she have? She had to see this through. She had to go on. She had to sing.
“This cut is too deep.” Gigi turned Selene’s hand.
Selene had clutched the mirror shard so hard she’d almost sliced through. The pain registered the moment she looked at it, sharp and impermanent.
With a look of determination and resignation, Gigi sang softly. Parts of the melody were familiar. Some inversion, with the motif for growth worked in. She knew the rhythm of it. Her father had tapped it on the wall, on the table, on the floor.
After a moment, Selene joined in. Opening herself up to the magic and letting it flow through her. Gigi’s eyes went wide. She didn’t stop singing.
The skin on Selene’s hand pulled together. The heartbeat of pain dissipated. Not only her hand, but the aching in her limbs and the pulsing bruise on her face. When Gigi released her, there was nothing but a thin, white scar. Weeks of healing done in a breath of a song.
“It’s never done so much before,” Gigi gasped. “It’s much more powerful when we’re together.”
“Where did you learn that?”
“You aren’t the only one with secrets.” Gigi pushed off the bed. She stretched her leg onto the mattress and leaned over it. Her feet were bare and unmarked. “Had to find a way to keep dancing through the blisters and bleeding toes.”
Selene brushed her fingers against the healed skin of her palm, trying to find words for it. It was the antithesis of her magic. She called upon pain, needed it, leaned on it. Dante’s magic—her magic—it was something dark. But Gigi, Gigi was a healer. This was more than art.
“Incredible.”
This kind of magic could change lives.
She thought of her father, of Benson, of all the magicians trapped in their own minds.
“Did you try to heal Benson?” Selene said.
“It seemed like it might work, at first. I could see him, trapped inside. But then he was gone again.” Gigi’s eyes were bright, the seed of hope planted. “But if we sing it together?”
“Yes,” Selene said. If they could heal Benson, maybe they could heal her father, too. “We’ll try. We’ll get every damn mage in the world to sing, if it can undo what has been done.”
But not Dante, she thought. It’s too late for him.
“Come on.” Gigi picked up the box she must have dropped when she came in. “We have to get ready. Did you get your dress? I think I saw it just outside.”
Selene shook her head. In her grief, she hadn’t even seen. Gigi got to it first. Selene’s name was written in gold ink on the outside.
Gigi opened her box and held it up proudly for Selene to see. The dress was delicate, with flowers stitched up the bodice. The tulle skirt was adorned with ribbons. It was a meadow in spring, the epitome of all brightness and joy.
“It’s gorgeous,” Selene said. “Put it on.”
“Get yours first.”
Selene opened the box.
The dress she and Gigi had sketched out was there. Or it had been. Before someone had sliced it into pieces.
Selene held up the ruined dress, wondering if there was anything she could salvage. The skirt was shredded, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Someone had taken red ink and splashed it over the collar.
Selene’s hand went instinctively to her own throat and the scars there.
This was meant to rattle her. But Selene didn’t care about the dress.
She put it back in the box. Standing in her chemise, she took Dante’s dagger and slid it over her thumb.
She thought of Dante’s mouth on hers and regretted it.
She didn’t want to lose any part of him, didn’t want the fire of that kiss to fade away.
There’d be no chance to rejuvenate them or bring new memories.
Selene wasn’t ready to give him up. Instead, she pulled up the restored memories of her father’s madness.
They were bright again, the pain renewed.
Even if they lost their color, Selene felt certain that she could get them back when she visited her father again.
There was a moment of doubt. Of fear that the magic would cease to exist because Dante had.
But the darkness rose from her skin and wrapped around her body.
The shadows thinned to sheer black that moved up her arms and shoulders, hugging her chest and waist and hips and then flaring out into the skirt.
They spread down her back to form a cape that dragged and pooled on the floor.
It wasn’t enough. She reached deeper into her sorrow, looking at the little knife.
Threads rose from her hand, iridescent oil slicks that wove into the fabric in ornate patterns. It would have taken years to embroider something this lovely. Selene had done it between heartbeats.
She left the collar open, the pale spiderweb of scars visible for anyone to see. She was sick of hiding. She wanted everyone to know what had happened to her. She wanted the king to know what he had taken from her. And that she was here to take it back.
Let them all look at me and remember Giuseppe Dreshé. Let them know who I am. Let them come.
“That’s the magic he taught you?” Gigi’s mouth hung open. “He was real this whole time, and not the monster we thought.”
“All I have to do is bleed,” Selene said.
Gigi shivered. “I’m glad you found the ghost and not me. I would never be able to hurt like that.”
“You’re a ballerina,” Selene laughed. “You’re all pain and beauty.”
Turning away to the window glass, Selene brushed the silver powder over her cheekbones and throat. Lined her eyes dark with kohl. And her lips. She painted them red. Rich and bloody like poured wine and torn-out hearts. Like handprints on the mirror, pretty and dark.
She put on her black boots. Not quite a match, but it felt right. A reminder of her sins below the hem of her dress. They felt like an option. She could heed Victor’s advice and run, run, run away.
Lastly, she left her hair half up and half down. Neither wild nor tamed.
“You look like a vengeful goddess.”
Selene took a breath. She could be if she wanted. She had not forgotten the flood of power outside the Asylum and how good it had felt to wield it. But tonight wasn’t about that. She wanted to honor her father and show the world what a Dreshé could do. Tonight, she only wanted to sing.
Gigi dusted her dark skin with gold powder, highlighting her cheekbones and shoulders and clavicle. There were flowers in her hair. She looked like a sprite, a wood nymph, a faerie. Selene could only imagine the tableau Gigi would create.
“What will you perform?”
Selene only had one song left.
“Something new,” Selene said.
Selene walked with a chattering Gigi down the stairs.
She talked and moved like she hadn’t found Selene in a pile of blankets and congealed blood.
Like she hadn’t seen Selene bleed herself a new dress.
But she watched Selene from the corner of her eye the way she would watch a captured kestrel.
Bird of prey, feral and frightened and so fragile.
Selene didn’t like it, but she appreciated it.
It was a reminder that someone in this world cared for her.
That someone would have noticed if she’d stayed in the darkness below the opera house.
Victor would have noticed her absence. She didn’t know what to say to him after what she’d done. After what he’d seen.
Everyone was gathered in the black box. The five who would compete. And in the end, there’d be one to emerge triumphant. The King’s Mage. Over a hundred years of tradition, of magic as beauty and performance and art. Magic for pleasure. A necessary, impractical art.
All of that was about to change.
“Oh,” Gigi said softly beside her.
Selene looked up then.
The walls of the black box were made entirely of mirrors.
Reflections that swept back to infinity.
Gigi gripped Selene’s hand. It might have been fear, but something was different now that she knew her fears were warranted.
The ghost had been real and now he was gone.
Madame Giroux stood in the center. Mouth a thin line.
Knuckles white against her cane. She wouldn’t look at her own reflection.
“He’s not there,” Selene said, only loud enough for Madame and Gigi to hear. “He’s gone.”
“A word,” Madame Giroux said.
Selene stepped away from the half-moon of her competitors.
“What do you mean, Selene?”
“The mirror shattered. There’s no ghost in the opera house.”
All the color drained from Madame Giroux’s face. Selene’s brow furrowed in confusion. Wasn’t this what Madame wanted?
“You little fool.” Madame’s voice was soft.
“You knew he was there the whole time. You knew he was trapped and you left him.”
Madame looked at Selene’s hands. The cut on her thumb was far from healed. “You think you know what you know. You don’t. You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“Stop talking in riddles,” Selene said, frustration forming a knot in her chest. Madame Giroux was her teacher, her mentor.
Wasn’t this why she was here? “Everything you’ve ever said, everything you’ve ever done is rooted in lies.
You let me believe my father was dead. I thought I was like a daughter to you. ”
“And that’s why I tried to get you out. The music was the least of it. But you fought and you clawed and now you’re here. And thank the gods for that, Selene. I hope you win.” Madame’s laugh was weak. “You’re like a daughter to me. But you are not my daughter.”
Madame struck her cane against one of the mirrors. The glass shattered, raining shards between them, a river of broken things to divide what Selene thought she’d known.
“Clean this up,” Madame said to one of the startled servants before she moved to the stage door, her limp more pronounced.
Cold understanding washed over Selene. She’d lived this moment a thousand times, the precipice between greatness or disaster. She’d always choose the dark. She’d always choose whatever was beyond her. There was no going back to the light.
Some stars burn bright, some stars burn out.
When a star burned out, it didn’t wink out like a candle. The death of a star was a burst of light, more powerful than the life of a star. If this was the end for Selene, she wouldn’t fade into nothing. She’d go out like a supernova.
She took her place in line. Selene could not look away from the mirrors. She searched each silvery surface for some hint of Dante. For the promise of him. If he was the ghost in the mirrors, then he should be here. She should see the scythe’s edge of his smile. The cold impossibility of his eyes.
The mirrors had come too late.
“Welcome,” Madame Giroux said. Her tone implied anything but. “Tonight, as you all know, is L’Opéra du Magician.”
Selene took a breath.