Selene sang for fire. It coiled around the ghost, all passion and fury. He stood coolly in the center of the flame, hands in his pockets. He took out his knife and let a drop of blood fall to the ground. The fire turned black and slick as a snake. It slithered around them, eyes catching and swallowing the light.
Selene pierced the soft part between her forefinger and thumb and watched the blood form like pearls. The snake bit down on its tail, shrinking the circle and forcing Selene and the ghost closer together. Drawn in, the threat of their near touch imminent. She wanted to see what he would do.
He moved so quickly, wanting and bleeding and singing two elements all at once.
The serpent burst into flowers that were caught up in a brief tornado before they fell around them like snow. She was close enough to him that she could reach out and brush the flecks of dried blood from his face, make a constellation of his scars. Flowers drifted down around them like forgotten dreams. He was so much taller than she was. The linen shirt pulled up, revealing the bare skin of his hip.
His eyes never left hers.
She tilted her head up. “The glass cannot break. You cannot bleed yourself free. You cannot walk out that door. What am I missing? What is the key?”
“I would tell you, if I knew.”
“How can I save you?” she said, her voice soft as summer rain. “I’ve never seen anyone do what you can do.”
“Sing your tempest and bleed it true.”
Selene exhaled her frustration and focused on the music. This time, the sea rose up around her darker and grander than before. She didn’t waste time on its gentleness. She funneled her frustration at the unanswered questions and twisted mysteries and endless secrets into the song. And when it came time for the lightning, Selene didn’t think of her father. She thought instead of the unfulfilled promises that had led her to this competition, that had trapped her in this opera house, that had made her the girl to follow a voice into the dark. The lightning sundered the darkness, crackling down around Selene in a hideous halo of heat and light. Selene looked at the ghost, heady with triumph.
His face was dark with consternation.
“What have you remembered?” Selene’s voice was whisper- soft like the midnight hush of waves against the shore.
“Something I wish to forget.”
“Tell me.”
He closed his eyes. “There is a reason I created magic from pain. I had an excess.”
An ache permeated Selene. “Someone hurt you.”
“And I was resourceful enough to use it.”
“How can I help?” Selene kept her hands in tight fists, sure that if she forgot, even for a moment, that she was not allowed to touch him, she would. The misery on his face could unravel the world.
“The dark will take it away.”
Selene opened her mouth to say something—anything.
“I know your problem, Selene.”
“Tell me.”
“You have to get out of your own way. You have to want it enough.” The ghost was back to himself, all of that sorrow tucked away.
“When is it enough?”
“Bring for me a heart that does not bleed. You cannot return until it is done.”
“Wait—”
The dark came swiftly.
Chapter 15
Selene sat cross-legged on her bed, singing through her warm-ups. Her voice cracked and stretched, waking up as she moved it through arpeggios on different vowels. Finally, she lay down on the floor to release the growing tension in her shoulders and sang through her favorite aria. This one had no magic to it. Without the intent and precise alignment of motifs, it was just a song. Pretty and ambitious, taking her all the way up to the top of her register and back down again. She didn’t have to think. The music came to her with the relief and ecstasy of bleeding. She repeated it, until she felt like she was floating outside of her body, free from all the sorrow she’d trapped inside. Her father had taught her this one. Singing it was like coming home.
She’d been to the library this morning, combing through the familiar tomes to source some hint of magical mirror prisons for beautiful ageless boys. There were no leads, no explanations, nothing about magic that was older than twenty years. Most of the books were only a few years old, marking her father’s musical triumph as the beginning of a new era. Everything before that was irrelevant. Selene had never questioned that before. But now she wondered how so much history could be forgotten.
