“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.
