Selene sighed, her patience waning. “You know what I want.”
“This is the first thing I ask of you, Selene.”
Selene straightened, chastened by the edge to his voice. “I want to learn the magie du sang so that I can perform in L’Opéra du Magician and become the King’s Mage.”
The ghost rolled back his shoulders. “This I have asked and you have answered.”
She quirked her head. “So formal?”
“There are no shortcuts in magic. Blood is the seed. Magic is energy. It is not creation or destruction. It can only be gathered and directed.”
“Like with music.”
“A candle compared to a moon. Your music requires exactness. The notes must be sung properly and in the right order and offered with intent. Pain is merely felt and focused. It is far more powerful.” He drew the knife across his forearm. “Once you’ve felt the pain—really felt it—the magic will be yours to command.”
Selene counted the hours she’d spent in the practice rooms, the nights she’d gone to bed with her fingers cramped and her throat raw from singing. “It’s that simple?”
The ghost smiled all the way to dark. He offered her the knife. “Is anything ever that simple?”
Selene pierced the tip of her finger with his borrowed knife. “Is this enough?”
“Blood is the beginning. You have to use the wounds within you.”
Selene exhaled and focused on the pain. She’d cut too deep. Blood splattered around her like fallen cherries. She thought of awful things: of the views from her window, the narrow, meandering streets where the rich used the poor like stepping stones, the sickly-sweet scent of decay, lesser magicians gathering up coins in stained silk hats. She focused that all into wanting.
Color leached from her blood. The splatters on the floor faded, growing more faint with each moment. She was doing it. The whole world was at her fingertips—like a rose waiting to be plucked. But then it was gone, the burn of magic she’d felt beneath her skin dissipating. The tip of her finger healed into a thin line. Disappointment sliced through her, sharper than any knife.
“That’s not enough. The memory—it has to be black. A cut to the soul.”
“How will I know if it’s enough?”
“You’ll know.” He turned his head into a hanged man’s tilt, brushed his fingers against his exposed throat. “Tell me something true.”
There were so many things she could say. She shifted through them, like riffling through sheet music. She could tell him about the last time she’d seen Victor, but that didn’t seem right. She could spill out the first cold night she’d spent in the opera house, orphaned and miserable. She could describe for him the first time she’d sung alone after her father’s death.
“I killed my father.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to form the words. But it was the truth, always waiting there inside her. The secret that had sundered her world and set her on this path. It was the truest thing about her, who she was at her core. A killer. She’d destroyed the person she’d loved the most.
“That is a terrible burden to carry,” he said.
She tried not to think of her father’s body, prone on the floor. Still sizzling with the melody of lightning. Bending, broken, gone. She swallowed a sob. “You are the only person who knows other than the king and Victor—the ones who were there.”
“It is an honor to be in your confidence.” There was such determination in his gaze, an ease of power. “Use it.”
She braced herself and brought the blade down again on her already healed thumb. A shallower cut but a deeper pain. She let the onslaught of memories cut her more than a knife ever would. They were too sharp, too real. She couldn’t hold on to them.
The magic slipped away before she had a chance to grasp it.
“Talk me through it,” he said.
“He had his fingers in my throat. Tearing, like he was trying to rip out my voice.” Selene closed her eyes, fighting to remember and wishing she could forget. “Do you know the sound a body makes when it’s struck by lightning? There’s the flash, the heat. The sound of flesh against stone. And then the boom. Thunder, at last.”
Selene shook the image from her head of smoke rising from his body, tossed across the room like a broken doll.
“Who killed your father, Selene?”
“Please don’t make me say it again.”
