“It was no accident,” Victor said. “Though that’s what the people have been told. The truth is far more sinister.”
Selene exhaled, a crescendo of anticipation taking hold. “Tell me.”
“No one wanted to be the hand that spanked the royal bottom,” Victor said. “So some family was paid handsomely to relinquish their son as stand-in for the prince for punishment. Renard was a bit of a beast, not unlike my dearest brother. He’d get himself entangled in trouble just so he could see the punishment acted out. Well, one day, Renard took things too far. There was a girl—the daughter of a minor lord—and Renard hurt her. The whipping boy caught him. He beat Renard within an inch of his life.”
“Knocked out his teeth?”
“Would have been better if he had just killed him,” Victor said jovially. “But then I wouldn’t exist, so I suppose I should be grateful the boy showed mercy.”
Selene’s heart beat steady and strong. The scars that stretched the ghost’s back and his arms burned in her mind. He knew so much about pain. “What happened to the whipping boy?”
“If I had known this would be such a riveting subject, I would have brought it up earlier.”
“So you don’t know?” Selene rolled her eyes. “What about his name?”
Victor shrugged. “He was lost to time.”
Selene breathed in deep enough to make her lungs ache. There would be records, somewhere. First, she needed her way back into the mirror, and then she’d find the one thing that mattered most to the ghost: his name.
“Are you cross with me?”
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“Excellent.” Victor’s smile was endless. “Onward!”
Chapter 35
Selene could not remember the last time she’d been on these steps or down this street. The air was fresh and cold, another turning of the season. The trees had shed their leaves and the leaves had been swept away by the last autumn wind. This was a breath away from winter. It was a different world than the one she saw through the windowpane, different than the night bustle of the Unmasking Ball. Carriages rolled by with little concern for what happened inside the opera house. There was something deeply unsettling in that for Selene. She’d made this place her whole life, rested her sense of self in what was achieved in these walls. And yet the moment she stepped outside, it all seemed so inconsequential. She didn’t like that. The sky was bright and clear and blue in a way that made Selene long for darkness.
A crowd had gathered at the base of the steps. The tickets to L’Opéra du Magician had long since sold, and some desperate few would garner secondhand stubs at the front door for a high price. The rest lined up now to save seats to watch arrivals for the evening, to catch a glimpse at the glamorous excess that would spill out of carriages and into the Opera Magique.
“Sing for us!” one of the men shouted.
Selene turned to the man, surprised he recognized her. The crowd cheered in agreement. Her anonymity sloughed off so easily, replaced with the confidence of knowing she was close to achieving everything. A sense of gratitude for this stranger overwhelmed her. But Selene couldn’t sing now. She didn’t have the time or the will to entertain.
Victor made circles on the back of her hand with his thumb. “I’m afraid she must save her voice for this evening.”
The disappointment was palpable on the man’s face. A murmur spread through the crowd. Far more outrage than disappointment, and it unnerved Selene. Did they think she belonged to them? Did they think they could beg her voice and have her answer?
“Isn’t that the Mad Mage’s daughter?”
Selene went cold. Victor carefully pressed one of her dark curls behind her ear, leaning in with a whisper so soft Selene wondered if she’d dreamed it.
“Let’s give them something to talk about.”
He kissed her.
It was the barest brush of lips, barely a kiss at all.
No more than she’d given him below the opera house.
And somehow it was everything. It was a breath on a spark and a wind in sails and the magic in the music. The world, still new to her, fell away.
The crowd cheered and the reality of what he’d just done struck Selene.
“You’ve made a grave error of judgment,” Selene said.
“Have I? Tomorrow, the papers will write about what could have been mistaken for a kiss instead of you snubbing this ravenous crowd.”
