My eyes were burning, and holding the tears back was as difficult as holding back vomit when sick. I was sick.So sick.No one had touched my hair since my mom dropped me off here. My mom would go on and on about how pretty my hair was, and like the other things she sent with me, I valued it. My mom had the same hair. I remembered running my hands through it, and her sighing at my touch. Like she just loved me so much.
Maybe I’d be sick before this was over, and the tears wouldn’t come, but Régine would be messed up, all messed up, from what she was doingto me. The acid in my stomach would stain her pristine appearance. But I was powerless here, and she knew it. She was sending me a warning.
She could easily sever the memories I had left of my mom from me, just like she was doing with my hair.
Oh. Oh. Oh.The sound came in the form of panic.Did the witch know about my hiding spot?
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
I gagged instead, and she pushed me forward, almost hard enough that I hit the floor. Gravity shifted at the last second, and I was able to stay on my feet. Gravity, however, had brought the strands of my hair to the floor. The sun sneaking through the gauzy curtains caught the gold and red in the auburn, and it seemed like the strands were on fire.
Régine waved a dismissive hand and plopped down in her chair, like what she’d doneto mehad taken allherenergy. “Yourtruehair is not sitting properly. You will feel lighter. Like a star in the sky.”
Your true hair.She was talking about the stupid fucking black wig she made me wear. She even covered my irises with silver contacts so that I’d look, “not of this world.” Régine got a thrill that the natural black ring around my irises bled through, which gave me atruecelestial look.
Mytrueeye color was what Henri had called moody gray, the same color as his.
Acid burned the back of my throat as Régine turned on music. “Now it is time to do what you were born to do, Étoile.Danse.”
ThatI understood, and with just the thought of her stealing another memory of my mom from me, she had me on my toes.
Chapter 3
Stella
As usual, the potato sack’s fibers felt like they were embedding into my skin as I was escorted back to my room underneath the château. This area had been built for the servants back in the day, but since Régine had trust issues, as she should, she kept me locked down here. It had become my area to “get closer to my celestial home,” as she had put it.
Lonely,oh so lonely, was what it was.
At first, the solitude only made me feel safe. There was no one around to bother me or hurt me. But after years, the cement walls had become ghosts caging me in their realm. The walls even leaked water like tears. The only light in the darkness was the old record player Henri had convinced Régine to give me to help me stay in character.
“How will she choreograph if she does not have music to listen to?”
His favorite records, though, were hidden in the vanity, where he’d instructed me to hide the things my mom sent with me when I arrived at his doorstep.
Henri had told me no one knew about the secret hiding place because the vanity had belonged to hismaman. It was all he had left of her when she died. Régine hadn’t liked the piece offurniture, so she stuck it in the dungeon with everything else she wanted to hide. Including me. Except where the vanity was ugly to her, the money I made for her was not, so we both ended up being stuck in darkness to hide.
“You are a star, Étoile. Do not fight the darkness. It is where you will thrive! Where the darkness of this world will cling to you, so you only shine brighter!”
I clenched my fists and unclenched them, both to fight the urge to scratch my skin off and to keep my temper in check. Even the thought of Régine’s voice made the acid rise in the back of my throat again.
The solider escorting me glanced at me from the side of his eye. A frown had been stuck on his face since he’d first seen me. I guess it was the haircut, or hack job. I hadn’t seen it myself yet, but I knew it was bad. I had to wrestle with the impulse to shiver and then burst out crying. The pressure to sob was building in my chest.
The solider unlocked the door leading to the steps that took me to my area. He nodded for me to go. Like he needed to. None of them ever came down with me, unless they were instructed to, and that was rare.
I paused halfway down, deep in the abyss of darkness, when the sounds of celestial music met me.Celestial musicwas what Régine had called it. It sounded like a bunch of wind chimes with other sounds mixed in to me. Those other sounds were kind of sexual. But I hadn’t been playing that track when I was summoned upstairs for my weekly weigh-in and naked dance session, where Régine contemplated my weight, how Sasha would fix it, and then critique me on my dance routines. Basically, what she’d done before she sent me back to my area, except without the question about Matteo.
I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t the last record I’d listened to. Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me.”
Henri had told me it was one of his favorites, and I remembered…I remembered a time when he was with me and mom, and he’d taken us to a cabin somewhere by the water in Louisiana. He’d danced with my mom to that song. She’d listen to it after he left, but when I’d asked her if she was sad, she’d told me no, not really. The memory of us at the cabin was bittersweet.
Bittersweet because Henri was my dad? And he wanted us but couldn’t have us?
I wasn’t sure what the answers to those questions were. I was never told if Henri was my father, or why I was brought here. When my mom dropped me off, she’d told me it was because here, with Henri, would be a better life for me. She couldn’t take care of me, but if she ever could again, she’d come for me. I’d spent so much time hoping for that. Wondering if she ever knocked on the door, asked for me, and had been told her Estella, her daughter, had died.
In a way, that girl had. Régine Nemours had killed her, along with Henri, but where Henri would never come back, Stella had become a phoenix and transformed into Étoile. A star that had fallen from the sky and stolen a body to inhabit. The Nemours knew this “being” was special, and they had trapped her in a bottle, or an underground club, where she danced for people who saw how bright she could shine in the darkness. It was all smoke and mirrors, but the weak of mind always believed it.
These people could see the truth moving before them.
