Mournful and wanting, more than any wolf in search of a moon. He came into clearer focus. The edges of him were still blurred by darkness. But his eyes. Oh, they were like water falling over pale sapphires. Blue fire opals beneath a sea. Precious and bright and pulling her in to drown.
If he were a song, she would have sung him until the world was filled with his music. If he were magic, she would have opened her mind and let him flood her until all the world was remade. If he were real, she could have loved him.
She shivered, the strangeness of that last thought drawing her back into herself. She’d pressed herself to the mirror. The tender wound on her hand throbbed against the cold glass.
Blood against the mirror.
Red and silver and gone.
Chapter 7
It was like falling into water. The absence of air, the loss of gravity, her limbs heavy and weak. It was like slipping into a dreamscape. There was shadow and movement and her sense of self but nothing else. She was dead or she was dying or she had never been alive at all.
All at once, up was up, and down was down, and dark was dark. The inky shadows were living, moving, all-consuming. They roiled at the edges of her vision like knots of snakes. It was a wonder she could see anything at all. The place she stood—not earth or stone but something flat and supple, like the stage—was a shade lighter. Like her mere presence brought in light. Not light exactly, something that had been light once and wasn’t anymore. An echo of light. A memory of what light should be.
But that wasn’t what felt so strange about this place. It wasn’t the colors or the shift of shadow. It was the absence of sound. No drip of water or whisper of breath. No wind or creak of wood. No swish of skirts or tap of boots. Not even the beating of her heart.
This place was wrong.
Just behind her, she could see the whirl of the bioluminescence before it stilled into watery dark. Tarnished, like she was seeing it through a dusty window, or from the inside of a mirror.
“Hello?” Selene said.
“Hello.”
There was a person at the edge of her vision. He was half in darkness, like he was being formed from it.
There and not.
The ghost stepped toward her. His movements were disjointed, like his limbs were a little too long. Like he’d forgotten how to be human.
Wake up,she begged herself.
Selene sang for light.
It was blinding, penetrating the darkness. The ghost threw up his hand to shield his eyes.
Selene was sure this was a dream. She’d fallen asleep below the opera house. There was no door, no underground lake, no secret mirror or creature trapped inside. Her subconscious had taken all her burdens and spun them into a vicious web. This was a culmination of the pressure of the competition, exhaustion, and Madame’s words ringing through her head.
Some stars burn bright, some stars burn out.
He came into the light.
Not completely, not at first. Half of his face was still cloaked in shadow. But it was enough for her to see him. There was a wildness to him, an unchecked beauty and power that was too familiar to be made up. She’d seen artist renderings of faces like his, carved-out angles and thick-drawn lashes, like some monument of youth and pulchritude and the insatiable mystery of the unknown that must be discovered. His linen shirt was wrinkled and thin, torn in places. There were stains on the sleeves. If the colors had been right, she might have guessed it was blood. The trousers had been black, now a faded gray.
It was more than his unearthly beauty, more than the siren song of his voice, more than the impossibility of the moment. This was someone her soul knew.
She reminded herself how to breathe, steeling herself for a sudden influx of darkness without an instrument to help her sustain the motif. Preparing for what might happen in the dark.
The light stayed. It was not snuffed by breath, or the end of her song.
The sphere of light was strong and unbreaking. She pulled her hand back like it might burn her. It hovered in the space before her. This was not the way the magic behaved. This was something different, something more, like a full moon on a cloudless night. The edge of the light hardened and rose, no longer a glowing orb. It transformed into a tiny moon. The magic worked without song or concentration, living solely on intent.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Magic needed more than just wanting, didn’t it? Selene measured all her years of training, of spending countless hours in practice rooms curating her talent, memorizing motifs, learning how to twine them together to form a song. She was sure she understood it, sure she could hold it inside her and transform it with her will and the direction of a motif.
And yet.
Curious, she willed the light apart, scattered it into constellations. The darkness shattered into a cluster of stars.
