This is always the costume.
Black armor and hidden light.
I don’t see the need to change. What I’m wearing is as close to a performance outfit as anything in my limited wardrobe, andthe idea of walking to the changing room, peeling off layers, and reassembling myself in something different requires a level of investment in other people’s expectations that I simply cannot manufacture today.
What I do is this:
I pull my hair up.
My fingers work through the dark blue strands with practiced efficiency, gathering the length into a ponytail that sits high on my crown. The motion lifts the hair away from my neck and shoulders, and the auditorium’s eastern light catches the pale blue highlights threaded through the darker base and sets them alight—a shimmer of color that transforms the otherwise somber palette into something arresting. The soft blonde threads catch differently, warmer, like veins of gold running through lapis lazuli.
Under stage lights, the effect would be dramatic.
Under these thin columns of natural light, it’s merely beautiful.
Which is more than this auditorium usually gets.
I touch up the few strands that frame my face, tucking them behind my ears where they’ll stay until the movement of the dance displaces them. Then I walk to my bag by the barre and extract the box.
The ballet shoes.
Blush pink velvet. Parisian craftsmanship. Ribbons that cascade like liquid silk. The shoes that Hawthorne Kennedy somehow acquired from an atelier on the Rue de Rivoli without leaving Savage Knot’s territory, through means I haven’t fully deciphered and suspect I never will because the man guards his methods the way I guard my emotions—thoroughly, aggressively, and with an unwillingness to explain that borders on pathological.
I sit on the edge of the stage and slide them on.
The fit is exact. Not approximate—exact. The box cups my toes with the specific contour of a shoe made from measurements rather than standard sizing, the shank supporting my arch at precisely the angle that distributes weight evenly across the metatarsal heads. The velvet exterior is warm against my skin, and the interior—lined with something soft and breathable that I’ll need to examine more closely later—conforms to the unique geography of my feet as though it was waiting for them.
I tie the ribbons.
Slowly. With the reverence the craftsmanship deserves. Each ribbon wraps around my ankle in the traditional pattern—over the arch, around the back, crossing at the front, secured with a knot that is tucked beneath the inner wrap where it won’t shift during movement. The satin is cool against my skin, the edges smooth, the tension perfect.
I admire them quietly.
Not with the wide-eyed wonder of this morning—the involuntary brightening, the trembling hands, the eye contact with Hawk that I couldn’t break. This is the private version. The version that happens when no one is looking and I can let the appreciation settle into my chest without armoring it against vulnerability. The shoes are beautiful. They are the most beautiful things I own. And they were given to me by a man who noticed I needed them before I found the words to say so.
When did anyone last give me something without expecting something in return?
When did I last let them?
I rise to my feet.
The shoes respond instantly—the box firm beneath my weight, the shank flexing with the precise resistance that allows for controlled relevé without compromising stability. I take three steps on demi-pointe, testing the balance, feeling the waythe velvet grips the marley surface, and the sensation is so close to perfection that something in my chest shifts in a way I don’t have vocabulary for.
I walk to centre stage.
The marley floor is cool beneath the thin soles, and the auditorium opens around me like a held breath—the empty seats, the dormant lights, the high windows admitting their columns of dust-flecked gold. The space is vast when you’re standing in the middle of it, vast and hollow and waiting, the way all stages wait for the person who will fill them with something that justifies their existence.
The girls giggle from the wings.
“Well, Ms. Martinez is going to miss her audition since she isn’t even here.”
More laughter. The tone is conspiratorial, delighted by the perceived absurdity of the oldest, most wounded, least impressive Omega in the program being selected to perform first for a visitor who hasn’t arrived.
I don’t care.
The words form in my mind with the quiet certainty of something I’ve verified so many times it no longer requires evidence. I’m not doing this to impress Violet Martinez. Not doing it for Miss Renard’s approval or the younger Omegas’ respect or the institutional validation of a system that has never valued me and likely never will.
I’m doing this because my body remembers how to be beautiful even when my heart has forgotten.
