Selene reached down between arpeggios. She wasn’t sure what compelled her to take it. She could offer him one that shemade, a drop of blood and the truth of this moment. It would be her heart, then.
But the seed was waiting there, like a mirror in a place that should not be. Like it had been put there for her. Selene stopped singing. She looked up at Madame. “Do you know what my father was trying to achieve before he died?”
Madame stopped playing for a beat. She continued on to the next chord. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that question for a long time.”
“Do you know?”
“Nothing is as simple as that.”
Madame kept playing. Moving away from scales and into a D minor sonata.
“When a king asks something of you, it is nearly impossible to say no. He has asked a great deal of my predecessors. To train up young magicians and present them like lambs to the slaughter.”
“I don’t understand.”
Madame’s fingers drifted over the keys. “Whatever it was, the king still hasn’t found it. Every mage since your father has lived but has given up magic entirely since their tenure as the King’s Mage. They won’t tell me what happened and perhaps that is for the best.”
“Why are you still doing this, then?” The words tumbled from her affannato. “Why bring the lambs to inevitable slaughter?”
“Sometimes young girls make foolish promises.” Madame’s mouth flattened into a thin line.
“And what of your promise to us? As our teacher, as our protector. Where was that promise when Benson was going mad?”
“There is one every year.” Madame picked her words carefully, like she was sharing a secret.
Selene counted the students she’d seen go mad. There were a few, but certainly not one a year. “Who?”
“You think you are the only mages in the kingdom? The Asylum fills with or without the Opera Magique. I do all I can to keep you safe. But these things do happen.”
Selene pondered that, her eyes drifting to a small portrait on the desk. She hadn’t seen it before. It could have been Gigi, but it wasn’t. A young Madame Giroux standing in the grand foyer with a look of light and wonder on her face. It was before the cane, before the years had carved a darkness into her face. Selene knew she’d been here, the cycle before her father. She was both singer and ballerina, blending the crafts much like Gigi. But she hadn’t competed in L’Opéra du Magician. Selene and Gigi had often wondered about what happened—settling on an injury. Madame caught her looking and quickly turned the picture over.
“If it were just me, I’d leave.”
“Gigi would go wherever you go.” The finality of the moment made Selene brave. “She wants your approval. Your love.”
Madame struck the wrong note. “Soon, this will all be over.”
The words rang through the room eerily.
“What do you mean?” Selene said.
“You’re asking the wrong questions, Selene.” Madame struck a chord with her left hand, the piano rumbling with music. “Haven’t you figured it out by now?”
Selene’s heart raced. Did Madame know about the ghost?
Madame shook her head, straightening at the piano. “There will come a time when all is brought to light. Until then, I am bound to my silence by our sovereign.”
“Who can say no to the king?” Selene said softly.
Her father certainly hadn’t. Selene had never considered that Madame’s role in their lives might be a burden, that she might not want this. It didn’t change anything for Selene. She couldn’t simply shift her goals, this close to the end. Could she? Madame played a few more arpeggios. Selene sang with her. Sheput her hand into her pocket, brushing her fingers against the seed. There was magic in it, she could feel it.
“Sing the aria.”
Madame played a chord, and then another. Selene tried to hold the notes in her head. But they kept slipping away. This wasn’t the song she’d auditioned with. This was the aria she had written for her father.
“You’re like a daughter to me, Selene.”
Madame knew.
