She needed something new. She could not afford to rest.
Selene took a quick bath, washing away the salt and sand from the night before, scrubbing the last of the glitter from her skin. She listened to music in the stir of the water, in the birdsong outside the window, in the patter of her bare feet against the hall floor. She needed a song without experimentation, something sure. The king’s insistence had put her into the competition, and she had to prove to him that she was worthy of that faith. More than worthy. She would be the best.
She dressed quickly and quietly, slipping her sheaf of sheet music in the front of her dress, hoping to keep it safe from the splatter of water. She had some ideas, but she could already feel the knife of a migraine pulsing in her jaw. The music had to be perfect. She wanted it lacrimosa, a blend of fury and weeping. If she could sing the night, capture each burning star and the razor’s edge of the moon, the longing so pure and pervasive that she’d bring the audience to its knees, she was sure she could win.
She’d go to the practice rooms first. Her time with the ghost was limited. She wanted to gather herself and get the best of her ideas down before she sought his intercession.
Everything needed to be perfect.
The halls were quiet—mostly. She heard the soft sounds of weeping behind some of the doors. She caught a glimpse of Priya outside Revelio’s door, whispering something against the wood. Those who had not moved into the next round of the competition would be expected to pack their things and be out by noon today. Their lives here were over. Most of them would move on in society, with their years of magical training no more than a party trick.
Selene settled into her practice room, fingers resting above the keys. She traced out dozens of possibilities. Music reverberated, rife with promise and empty all the same. None of them were right. She could feel the wrongness of it. No matter what order she put the notes, she couldn’t seem to coax out a song.
Take your broken heart, turn it into art.
But there were too many pieces, the shards too sharp. They cut away at her, leaving the music disjointed and fractured. She didn’t know what story to tell or how it should be shaped. Everything was grief: her father, Benson, Victor, the ghost, her own perilous ambition. No matter how many ways she approached it in song, she couldn’t seem to capture it. She was close to something. But it wasn’t quite right.
There were three days until L’Opéra du Magician. Three days for her to compose and perfect this song, along with the magic. Three days for her to master the magie du sang.
She couldn’t do this alone.
Selene passed through the silent halls of the opera house, past the portraits and the statues and the library. Benson’s seat was empty.
She didn’t want to think about him now. She didn’t want to think about anything but what came next.
And for that, she needed a song that sang itself. She reached for it in her pocket, silently cursing herself. The shell was upstairs in her room, sitting on the dresser next to her father’s pocket watch. She rolled her shoulders back and started the journey back upstairs, feeling the stab of every lost second.
A pair of young girls—no older than sixteen—whispered at the bottom of the steps. Selene recognized the awe and naivety in their faces. These were the next generation of King’s Mage hopefuls, eager to take the space in the upper dormitories and continue their training.
Selene rushed past them. There was nothing left in her to be shared, even though it would be a kindness. She had to focus.
Gigi slammed her pointe shoes on the floor. She got them custom from a shop that worked with the Opera Magique during the regular season. They’d been dyed to match the umber of her skin. Now they’d be broken and cracked and made perfect for Gigi’s nimble feet.
“Can you believe it?” Gigi hit her shoe against the floor again and again. Her eyes were rimmed red. “How can the worst thing and the best thing happen in the same space of a day?”
Selene thought of the bright, brilliant blue sky and her father, dead on the floor. “Sometimes that is how it goes.”
Each pound of the shoe brought a shock of pain behind Selene’s eye.
“I thought you just broke in new shoes.”
Gigi held up the pointe shoes she’d carefully broken and sewn. She turned one of them over, showing the wooden block her toes rested on. Someone had driven a razor blade into the wood. “I knew something was off before I put them on.”
“This has to stop,” Selene said furiously. “These stupid, petty attempts to ruin one another.”
“It won’t,” Gigi said. “It’s only begun.”
Selene knew it by the new lock on the door. She knew it by the last few days of misery while she held on to the hope that she still had a chance in the competition. “I confronted Madame last night.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I don’t think she sees what she’s doing is wrong.”
“The people who think power is best won by a knife in the back are never truly punished. They just wait for you to turn around.” Gigi slammed her shoe down again.
“Do you think that’s what happened to the girl who jumped? One sabotage too many?” Selene leaned forward, hoping against all hope that Gigi would know something, anything.
“If that’s it, then why did Madame remove the mirrors and enable the sabotage?” Gigi hit her pointe shoe one more time, then held it to the light, satisfied.
