His neck popped. His head turned at an odd angle, eyes fixing on her. She did not recognize those eyes. The pupils were blown. Blood vessels burst. Dark against dark. Black against blood. All the laughter ironed out. All the light gone.
His hands shot out like a viper. His fingers—long and strong from years of playing—burrowed into the skin around her throat. She didn’t even know how to scream. How to make a sound when the man who had once been her father tore at her flesh.
Scratching deeper, trying to gain purchase, trying to get in.
He was going to rip out her throat.
Selene was never sure how it happened. Music had always been a part of her life, and the magic, the magic was there, waiting for her. She didn’t remember singing at all. She didn’t know how it started or how to stop it, just that it was there. Sudden and perfect and exactly what she needed, even though she didn’t want it.
Lightning cut the air, the smell of it sweet at first, and then burning.
The violin clattered to the floor; the bow splashed in the spreading pool of her blood.
Father crumpled on the ground, smoke rising all around him, a black burn mark at the center of his chest, below the onyx and gold of the King’s Mage necklace. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing.
Selene’s vision blurred. She brought her hand to her throat. It felt like a sun-ripened pomegranate, cracked open on a rock. The fragile seeds burst sweet around her fingers. The king’s eyes were wide, his mouth working around words she couldn’t hear. Victor stood at the edge of the shadows, the ruined rose at his feet. Thunder cracked like great applause.
She looked into the pale blue eyes of the ghost and grounded herself in them.
The blood on Selene’s thumb deepened, darkened into black. It ascended like smoke from her thumb, spectral and new. She wished it, willed it, coaxed and called it. The heat of it swirled beneath her skin, like her blood was hungry to do more. To be more. All she needed to do was want.
She would start with a rose.
The flower took shape in her hand. She didn’t want just any rose. She wanted something that hadn’t been seen before, something indomitable. The petals formed, bright white as newly fallen snow. The thorns pressed sharp against her palm.
And then it bloomed. The inner petal was such a dark, rich red that even this place could not steal the color away. The fragrance was sweet, intoxicating. She brought it up to her face, brushed her lips against the soft petals to know that it was real. She tried not to think of Victor. Selene offered it to the ghost.
He took the rose from her, careful never to touch her. He turned it in his palm, dragged his fingernail over the waxy stem. The rose bled, as all living things do, dark and red as its petals. She’d done it. She’d made something real.
“Pain is meant to be felt.” His lips curved up into a sickle moon. The light in his eyes was brighter than the cascade of false stars. “Take your broken heart, make it into art.”
A chill ran up Selene’s spine. “My father used to say that.”
“Show me what you can do,” the ghost said.
Chapter 11
“Once more.” Selene stood in the wake of what she’d created. A fantastic, impossible garden. Flowers of every color. Ivy that tangled with the dark. Lilacs hung down from the constellation of stars and brought their own glowing light. “It hasn’t lost its power.”
“It will. Remember, the magic is closer here.” The ghost leaned against a giant, phosphorescent mushroom. “You have to rest.”
Selene knew he was right. Despite the exhilaration of what she had learned, she was wrung dry. Her limbs tingled with exhaustion. She was too tired to even cry.
“Isn’t there a magic for that?”
“Sleep is a sort of magic,” the ghost said. “Close your eyes, and when you open them again, the whole world is new.”
Selene looked at every corner in the dark and imagined waking up to this. There was no crime worth being trapped here for a hundred years. She wanted to tell him that. She wanted him to know that she believed that he was worthy of light.
Instead, she said, “Where do you sleep?”
“Wherever the dark won’t touch me,” he said.
“And what happens when it does?” She suppressed a shiver.
“It takes something from me.” He rolled the words around in his mouth like cherry stones.
Selene reached up and plucked a glowing blossom. “I thought the light might stay.”
