Selene arched an eyebrow. “Do you make enemies everywhere you go?”
Victor laced his fingers together and turned them out, his scarred knuckles popping all at once. “One of my few talents.”
“Like magic?”
When they were children, he would sometimes sit in on her lessons with her father. But he never sang a note. He often complained about the boredom, wanting her to go stir up trouble with him outside.
“I picked up a few things over the years.”
“Offra?”
Offra had taken the last competition with a spectacular display of fireworks that turned to ice and snowed all over the theater. A complex and dangerous combination of motifs that she pulled off with ease. She had a lovely, warm alto and a smile that could have won over any audience, even without magic. Selene had watched the king put the onyx necklace around her throat. She wondered what Offra thought now that she was passing her position on to the next person, now that her tenure as the King’s Mage was up.
“Offra wants nothing to do with me,” Victor said. “She believes the papers. Thinks I’ll try and make a plaything of her heart.”
“Would you?” Selene’s gaze was pointed as Madame’s.
“Heavens, no. Internal organs make terrible toys.” The mischief melted from Victor’s eyes. “I had hoped those rumors had not been so far-reaching.”
“You’d be surprised what we hear.”
Victor faced her. “You know me, Selene.”
“It’s been a long time since we were children.”
He reached forward, brushing back one of her dark curls. An acquiescence. An acknowledgment of the distance and time and what had changed between them.
“Only rumors.”
“If you say so.”
This had been so much easier in the moonlight, wearing masks of every kind. No matter how she wished and wanted, things could never go back to the way they were. But Selene had learned to use every opportunity, and she would not take this lightly. If that meant mirrors or the pain or a piece of the past, she’d take it. And then she’d go back to her world, and he’d go back to his. Perhaps they’d see each other in court, but she doubted it. Victor was not made for confined spaces. That’s why he’d done so well in the military. Why he’d always slept with the windows open.
“Are these your only rehearsal spaces?”
She gestured down the dark hallway. “Down here, we have more practice rooms.”
Victor tilted his head. “Do all of them need mirrors, too?”
Selene led Victor to the front doors the long way around, avoiding Madame Giroux’s office. “We’ve seen everything there is to see.” She couldn’t help but look toward the exit.
Victor followed her gaze. “You haven’t shown me the roof.”
“I don’t have time.” Selene raised an eyebrow. “Afraid to go home?”
“Afraid that I’ll stay?”
She turned away from the split of a stairway and the watching eyes of all the statues and faced Victor. For a moment, she imagined him as they had been in those last days. Thirteen and fourteen and unaware of the world’s pain. They’d been on the precipice of change. There was nothing between them, nothing owed. They were nothing but a bittersweet memory. She wished things could be as easy as they had been when they were children.
She looked at him, thinking of all the things she could say. She wanted to ask him where he’d been. What had happened between the then and the now? It didn’t even matter. They couldn’t go back and borrow the time.
Instead, she brushed a speck of dust off the bodice of her dress and gathered her courage.
“I need something from you,” Selene said. “You have to promise you won’t ask me any questions.”
“All right.” Victor rolled his shoulders back and leaned against the closed door.
She took a deep breath. This was for the ghost, for the mirror. “I need a lock of your hair.”
