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Go, he told Verol, mind-to-mind through the connection. I will ensure her safety, if you are not back by the time the performance ends.
They had been together too long for hesitation, too long for Verol to waste time with objections when he knew very well that what needed doing outside this theater was something only he could do. And that if Clare needed a physical defender, Quin was better suited to the task.
Take care of her, he said.
You know that I will.
Don’t let the prince get his claws in her. She’s too young.
Marquin didn’t bother reminding Verol that the prince was hardly older than Clare, or that he suspected it would take diamond claws to pierce her skin. He only repeated his reassurance. I’ll take care of her. Go. The sooner you return, the better.
Chapter Thirteen
The Rival Theater
Clare felt the magic of the theater shift as a man walked down the center aisle and placed his chair before her dais. The lights shining on her were too bright for her to make out in detail anything past the darkness that lay beyond her stage.
She saw the chairs, the rows, but not the faces. But she didn’t need to see them. Her voice amplified as the two rows nearest her turned their chairs to face her. Across the theater, Estrella’s magic turned the other singer’s words into battering rams.
But Clare had been a cliff wall too long to let something as unrefined as brute power and anger dent her exterior, and the vehemence of the attack failed to knock her off stride. Besides, Estrella was putting all her confidence in her magic—she wasn’t paying enough attention to the song she sang, the one she was hitting all the right notes on with soulless precision.
Clare took the added weight given her by the voice crystals and strummed the first few notes on her guitar. It was no simple task, stealing a song from another. They had an intention of what they were doing, of where they were going, and by virtue of being the first one to the stage, they carried the most weight, in the beginning.
But as Clare wormed her way deeper into the melody and the lyrics, as more chairs in the theater turned to hear her voice, she slowly became the dominant in the song, her chords on the guitar turning the melody into something new, something the piano player accompanying Estrella failed to follow.
They failed to follow it so badly that Estrella cut them off with an irritated flick of her hand, all but shoving them out of the way as her own fingers found the keys and the piano’s notes flowed once more into the auditorium.
But the short lapse had turned more chairs in Clare’s favor, and control of the song had shifted to her, leaving Estrella to blend. And it became all too clear that Estrella did not blend well. Her voice and song continued to hammer against Clare’s, creating an unpleasant dissonance and this—this was why the Rival Theater had done everything possible to shut down rivalries on major performance nights. Because when a singer took a brute force approach, there was nothing fun or unique in the musical exchange. There was nothing created.
Of course, it was the rival the theater expected to perform so badly—not the reigning queen—and Clare wasn’t going to let Estrella ruin this night through her own failure to remember that this moment wasn’t about winning or losing—not truly—it was about performance and creation. Clare took a breath between notes as more chairs turned toward her, and that magic that had always been a part of her song when she willed it, the magic that felt like her and not the Song, poured out of her in a wave.
It swelled as it moved across the audience, so soft and gentle its true size and danger went unrecognized until it crested—and broke over Estrella. Clare’s words and the power wrapped in them didn’t try to convince the other woman to quit—she could likely have achieved that only by imbuing the world’s wealth of hopelessness into her song, and if she had no doubt she could do it, hopelessness was not what she wanted this crowd to feel. It was not what she wanted them to remember, when they thought of her.
Instead, she gave Estrella what her career had made her forget—the rush and joy of first discovery, the love of the music first and not the fear of losing it, the reminder that Estrella had started down this path in life because she was good. Because she had once been extraordinary.
Estrella’s hands stilled on the keys, her voice dropping to a mere accompanying hum for two beats as she fought the insistent push of Clare’s magic. Then her own magic snapped, no longer trying to beat Clare’s into submission. Her fingers found the keys again but this time when she played, it was as Clare had sung in the beginning—a joining, an accompaniment, biding time while she looked for an opening.
Estrella Vane was finally playing the Rival Theater’s game.
Chapter Fourteen
Hope Is a Terror
Numair could hardly breathe as the music crested around him. There had been a moment when he’d feared Estrella’s stubbornness would ruin everything. He’d known she’d react badly to the rivalry but he’d counted on her adeptness with music and her unwillingness to look like a fool to carry her through.
Apparently, he’d overestimated her intelligence. But just when he’d feared she was going to push forward with that obstinate, blunt-force approach, the one that had the theater’s staff looking as if they were about to step in and fabricate some emergency that required the ending of the performance, Clare’s Songweaving wrapped around the other singer. And for a brief time, Estrella Vane became again the singer Veralna had once adored and still pretended to.
Even though he knew how it would end, now that Estrella was trying and the performance would be allowed to run to its conclusion, he couldn’t relax. Every push and pull between the two, as they vied for dominance in the song, was something he felt in his core. That dead place in his heart, where he hadn’t felt anything but numbness and a cold-burning anger in years, stirred and he felt, for the briefest of moments, something else.
Something foreign, and horrifying, and unwanted: hope.
He knew it was only the song, the mood, the power of Clare’s Songweaving ensnaring everyone in its path. But it made fear pulse through his veins all the same. He couldn’t hope anymore, was done with imagining he could. Because hope was the thing that made a person keep living through the worst humanity had to offer, and he was done surviving.
He sat there, in the grip of terror and hope and futility, as the song Clare and Estrella wove together built toward its inevitable conclusion.
Chapter Fifteen
His New Apprentice
