“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.
