Selene shouldn’t have done it. This was her secret, the weapon she needed to win. But it was Benson, and she didn’t want to see him hurt. Didn’t want him to be shot down like a rabid animal. Didn’t want to be the one to have to do it.
She could grow vines around him, like a rabbit in a trap. It would be as easy as breathing. If only she had a seed.
You don’t need one. You have so much more.
All it took was a drop of blood, emptied of everything except the pain of this moment, of moments passed. But that wasn’t enough. She was, after all, a performer. And she needed to protect the magie du sang and all her secrets. How quickly she strung together the notes, the words forming on her tongue without hesitation.
The thorns twisted up and around Benson. Sinuous vines thick enough to trap his hands and torso, then his legs. He thrashed, quickly realizing that stillness held the least amount of pain. Selene was careful; the thorns only pierced him when he moved. She constructed this prison to do the least harm.
His head dropped. The keening returned. Subdued, but not Benson. Not that bright, ambitious boy. Her friend. Her competitor. No. Before her stood a wild and broken man. Cracked wide. Defeated by the madness of magic. Consumed.
Selene took a step back. Her breath was even. Her heartbeat—though steady—pulsed an ache through her body that she could not contain. She should have done more. She should have stopped him. Would he have listened? At least she could have said she tried. She spun around, looking for relief from the shadows. She struck something. Someone. She looked up.
Victor.
Victor with his tea-dark eyes and broad shoulders and clever fingers. He gripped her shoulders, looking past her to the thorns. She knew that hunger. It was the same way she looked at new music. The same way she tracked the progress of her friends. The same way she looked in the mirror.
“You are dismissed,” Madame Giroux said curtly to the gathered crowd.
There was a murmur. Hesitation. Madame Giroux slammed her cane into the stage. The others scattered like frightened doves. Her eyes didn’t leave Selene, appraising her like she knew what Selene had done. It wasn’t possible, was it?
Selene pulled back. She couldn’t stand the tightness of Victor’s grip. The warmth of his hands. The taste of his breath as it mingled with hers. Salt and pomegranates and a hint of champagne. She should have known. Victor didn’t move. He held her there, captured like Benson was captured.
She whipped her head around. The movement caught him off guard. At last, he stepped back, looking at her for the first time.
“How did you do that?” There was no recognition in his eyes. “Did you know you’d need the seeds?”
She couldn’t answer him, not without lies. She had no problem weaving half-truths or falsehoods, or even staying silent. But she didn’t think she could lie, not to him. He’d seen her broken and bleeding, everything she’d loved stripped away. Even though he didn’t seem to remember. She couldn’t bring herself to smile and piece together a lie.
Selene dipped into a quick curtsy, ignoring the blood and water that stained her skirts. The cerulean dress was ruined. “Pardon, Your Highness.”
Selene moved like an arrow, cutting through the crowd. Victor wasn’t the only one asking those questions. They swarmed around her like bees.
She would not blink. She would not turn her head. She would not acknowledge them in any way. If she did, there’d be more questions than answers. She slipped her hands into her pockets, rolling her fingers together, feeling the ache of the cut she’d made with the pin. It had only taken one drop. The wound was already healing into a thin line that no one would notice.
Let them believe what they wanted.
Chapter 17
Selene did not cry. Not when they cut the thorns off Benson’s wrists and replaced them with cold iron. Not when they dragged him off the stage, down the expansive grandfoyer,and out the front doors. The carriage had bars on the window. She was sure the Asylum would have more of the same.
She held Gigi, anchoring her in the storm of her grief. There was nothing she could say to make it better, no magic she could sing to stop time and bring him back. The devastation of his loss was too deep a cut to be offered something as useless as words. But she could be here. That was enough.
Selene had been dragged away in a carriage once and taken to the opera house. At the time, she had felt smothered by the beautiful marble floors and immaculately carved columns that stretched up and up. She had wanted the room to be ugly. She’d wanted it to be as terrible as she felt inside.
Even now, the beauty of this room seemed at odds with the monstrosity of grief. Each of the entryways in the grand foyer opened into balconies that looked out, little stages of their own. There were gold figures throughout with glossy eyes and hands so real they could have reached out and touched her.
Selene pressed her hands over her eyes. The marble stairs were cold beneath her. She couldn’t worry about the ghosts of her childhood. Not when everything had gone so wrong.
“This feels like a dream.” Gigi shuddered involuntarily with the aftershock of her sobs.
“A nightmare.”
Just outside the grand doors, carriages rolled by. Women walked with their cloaks drawn tight. Men gripped their cravats. Concerned about the wind and upcoming winter, with no thought to the tragedy that had occurred mere meters away. It would hit the papers by morning. Just a line, so that those making and taking bets could strike Benson’s name from their rosters.
She thought of Benson’s blown pupils. The curve of his hands. The way he’d looked at her when he’d lunged.
Someone had brought them mugs of hot chocolate. Gigi’s eyes were red and swollen. They’d been through the best together, and now the worst. Selene wrapped her arm tighter around Gigi. It was only the two of them now, huddled on the magnificent stairs of the grand foyer. Everyone else had gone back to their practice rooms or dorms.
