“You were mistaken, then. I’m here to show you exactly what I mean to do with L’Opéra du Magician.”
Dread and excitement washed over Selene—stagnant and cold as the fountain water they’d once turned into a winter bath. If Victor already had his mind set on things, it would be hard to change. But maybe he was different now, just as she was different.
“You don’t like the sound of that?” Victor read her the way he would a cluster of stars, picking out the light from the dark.
“This is my home, Monsieur.” The playfulness of her tone fell away, the lie thick on her tongue.
“Victor,” he said, this time firmly. “But it won’t be your home for long. Soon you’ll be a part of L’Opéra du Magician and then whisked away to some nobleman’s hall.”
Or yours,Selene thought, and hated herself for it.
“Or mine,” Victor said. “Should you win.”
Selene took a step back, as if moving away from Victor could keep him from her, from knowing her thoughts. All pretense dropped. His eyes widened with concern.
“Too bold?”
“Yes,” Selene said quietly.
“Pardon.” Victor took her hand, brushed his lips against it in apology. His hands were worn and calloused, not the hands of a prince at all. She remembered the feel of them on her skin, the brush of their fingers as she’d taken the nautilus shell from him. “I don’t mean to overstep. The winner will, of course, take residence in the palace.”
“Of course, Monsieur.” She stepped back into the banter.
There was a moment when Selene thought of all the things she could say to him. She’d been making sculptures from her anger at him for years, chipping away at each corner of the stone until it was smooth and supple as skin. It seemed wrong, now that she knew the truth. He had written her letters. Hundreds of them. She wondered if she’d have been better if she had known. Or would she have tortured herself by hanging on his every word? She imagined herself reading those letters over and over until the pages were thin, the ink faded to nothing. No, she did not like that possibility.
“I would like to hear you say my name.”
She wanted to say no. She wanted to tell him that—despite the best intentions—they could not go back. There was no room for him in her life. But his eyes churned like the sea and she could not refuse him.
Selene curtsied. “Victor.”
His smile was radiant, light in all the dark places.
They turned into the auditorium. Selene’s heart beat accelerando. She hadn’t returned to this space since she lost Benson. She didn’t expect the grief to radiate from the seats, the walls, to drip from the statues. The air in here was different now. The stage haunted. Selene didn’t expect it, didn’t know how to move through this space. It occurred to her for the first time that if she became the King’s Mage, she might have to perform in the same room her father died in. The thought made the ground tremble beneath her.
“How is your friend?” Victor’s voice was soft. He seemed wounded on her behalf, picking up the threads of her sorrow and sharing the burden.
“Benson is …” Selene swallowed the edges of her tears. She would not cry in front of Victor.
He brushed the back of his hand against hers, the lightest touch. He’d been so brazen when he kissed her hand earlier, yet this was far more intimate. “Is there anything I can do?”
Selene shook her head. She led him up the aisles and onto the stage. Silence trailed her like a cloak. Moisture still clung to the air, little dewdrops on the velvet curtains. There were scratches in the wood from her thorns.
“Do you remember the time we stole all the honey from the kitchens?” Victor leaned into the space between them. The curve of his shoulder blocked out the grooves on the floor.
Selene welcomed the change in subject. “I remember the timeyoustole all the honey from the kitchen.”
“And His Majesty had to take his toast with jam instead.” Victor chuckled.
“You were whipped for that,” Selene said quietly. The image of his bloody back and the tracks from tears on his cheeks had never left her.
“Better me than some poor boy.” Victor shrugged his hands into his pockets, smiling away the sudden vulnerability.
“Your obsession with whipping boys persists, I see.”
“Another gruesome part of our history I wish I could make right,” Victor said with a wry smile. She wondered how much he’d done to make amends, or if he counted her name among the wronged.
“Have you made amends for all that history, like you dreamed?”
