“Magic of pain. Blood is a small necessity.”
“If I had known I could bleed magic, I would have saved myself a lot of time in the practice rooms.”
He cocked his head. “What kind of magic do you have in your world now, after all of this time?”
“There is only one,” she said, tasting the soured truth on her tongue. She knew now that was a lie; she just wasn’t sure how big of one. The shadows whirled around her with a magic of their own, different from what the ghost had performed. “Music.”
The ghost made a small cut into his arm. The blood became shadow and the shadow swirled around him, forming a chair. “Someone has been lying to you, Selene.”
“It could have been forgotten,” she said.
“It seems a lot to forget in a hundred years.”
“They forgot you.” Selene swallowed. It had only taken a single act for the world to forget Giuseppe Dreshé, for them to replace him with a madman. But the ghost wasn’t wrong.
“And what of the Council of Mages? Surely they could not let all other magics be lost.”
“If you can’t remember your name, how can you remember a council?”
He closed his eyes. “I remember things with you.”
Selene considered what she had said to spark this memory, how she could repeat the process. “There is no council.”
“Who governs the magics?” Distress crossed his beautiful face. It should have made him less, but somehow it deepened his loveliness.
“No one.” Selene brought her hands up in supplication. “Magic is art. There’s nothing to govern.”
He turned his palms up. She watched him curl his fingers into fists and open them again. They were strong and calloused. Not the hands of useless wealth. Who had he been a hundred years ago and what did she need to do to help him remember?
“Who governed you?” she said at last.
“I don’t remember the names or the faces, just the feeling,” he said, as if it didn’t bother him in the slightest. He was distracted, focused on something else. “What is the purpose of your art, Selene?”
“To entertain.” She shivered at the sound of her name on hislips.
“That’s it? That’s all it is to you?”
“As if that’s not enough?” Fury rose in Selene. “I’ve spent the last seven years studying to compete in L’Opéra du Magician. To win and be the King’s Mage.”
He flinched and tried to hide it with the sweep of his arm up and into his hair. “To be a servant of the king is something you truly wish?”
“It’s the highest honor.”
He pressed his head into his hands. It was more than the grief of a hundred years’ captivity. There was a depth to this Selene did not understand.
Selene wanted to change the timbre between them, to change the key into something brighter. He was too beautiful for this profundity of sorrow. Perhaps if she asked the right question, he would have an answer, a memory.
Selene lit the space with her most dazzling smile. “Did they have horses when you were young?”
“Horses,” the ghost said. There was a twinkle in his eyes. His smile was haunting; he’d play this game with her. “As big as elephants.”
“Oh?” Selene was coy. “They’re much smaller now, the size of teacups.”
“Our teacups were the size of soup bowls.”
“Then they’re the size of thimbles,” Selene said. “And what of cakes, did you have those?”
“Alas, no cakes,” the ghost said. “Merely cubes of sugar stacked high, sometimes spun into webs.”
