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Clare sang. She had no interest in hearing what Madame Aria would have settled for. The derision in the woman’s tone, the assertion that Clare would not even know “The Summer Song”, much less be capable of singing it, fanned the ember of anger that was always, always smoldering in Clare’s chest.
Maybe if Clare hadn’t nearly broken down in the hallway earlier, or if she wasn’t trying to navigate a world she barely understood, or if Madame Aria hadn’t been so dismissive of her, both at the Musicians Guild and now, Clare could have shown the restraint logic begged for.
Instead, she closed her eyes and dove into the song’s depths. “The Summer Song” was arguably the most famous song of any in De Monin’s works, and unquestionably the most difficult. Likening a loss of innocence to the fading of summer, it covered the full range of voice, from bass to highest soprano, and the erratic tempo was difficult to keep properly, especially if one sang without accompaniment.
In melody and style, the song was undeniably beautiful, but its message—Clare hated its message. As if a girl faded forever from summer into winter once her first blossom was plucked. Why was it that the songs never sang of a man’s innocence fading once he first came inside a woman?
She couldn’t instill in her voice and song the sadness the character of Sofraya was meant to be feeling. Instead, the power that spiraled into her words was filled with bitterness; bitterness toward the song, toward De Monin, toward a society that bound women in glittering chains of purity and declared a woman’s worth depended on those chains, or at least on the illusion of them.
The gemstones atop the piano rattled and shot into the air, surfaces etching as Clare’s power surged. Her anger fueled it, had it coalescing into wide ribbons she wove into her words. She entered the mid-point of the song, her voice dropping a note with each word, down toward the low end of a second tenor’s range, the room filling with the power radiating from her.
The amber stone exploded. Then the jet and the coral and the malachite, stone after stone pulverizing as she finished the descent and began the climb out. There was a brief reprieve in intensity as the song demanded, and the final four gemstones—emerald, ruby, sapphire, diamond—hovered, waiting, the first three etched, the diamond as yet untouched.
The reprieve ended, and though Clare hated the song’s message, she couldn’t stop her musical appreciation of the piece itself as she entered its zenith. For the sounds, the bones, were beautiful. Words could always be changed. Skeletons, less so. The first eleven stones, she had broken with bitterness. These next three, she broke with adoration. With love. With everything in her that wanted those things.
When she hit the final note—when she held it, ringing out in the room—and the etching shot across the diamond’s surface, she wasn’t bitterness or love, but a bright column of anger. There was a moment, holding the final note, when she could have shattered the diamond, too. But as the gem clouded over, darkening from clear to gray to deepest black, she pulled her magic back. Because right now, she still fell within the range of the guild’s understanding of power. She’d been foolish enough to excel at their test—she wasn’t so foolish as to break its boundaries altogether.
She let the song die. The now-black diamond clattered to the piano top. Her anger remained in the room, past the fading of the last notes, past the silence that followed, past the reasonable limits of what the song should have awakened in her. Discontent roiled within her and she was not just angry about the song, but about everything she had ever been through, everything that made the world as it was, and everything that was yet to come.
Her vision darkened to a haze that she was unmotivated to clear. In the haze, the space between the here-and-now and the rest of the world, everything was hot and pure and simple. A flicker of the true Song licked up from its prison. She had diverted too much of her power from holding it caged, and it stretched seductive tendrils toward her, whispering that she should open herself up to the rage. Open up, and let the Song embrace her. Let its power mix with the purity of her fury and create a force whose desolation would far surpass anything this guild could offer.
It would be easy.
So pitifully, painfully, easy.
Verol coughed.
Clare opened her eyes, bolstering that inner song that held the other Song at bay. She looked to Verol, to see if she had given herself away, if he had sensed the otherness within her. He looked…sad, and yet something else, as well. Hopeful, perhaps. Proud.
No.
No, she was reading him wrong, must be reading him wrong. Because no one in the whole of her life had ever been proud of her.
Madame Aria wore, of all things, a smile. There was something off in her expression, something feverish in her eyes as she walked to the diamond and plucked it from the piano. She rolled it between her fingers, as if trying to memorize the etchings, or as if she was looking for some hidden meaning in them.
She closed her fist around it and turned back to Clare. “A diamond-ranked Songweaver. A black diamond.” Jealousy in the words, but hunger too. Hatred and desire. The woman moved closer—and Marquin stepped between them.
“We expected as much,” he said smoothly. So smoothly she couldn’t tell if it was a truth or a fiction. Had they expected this when they’d brought her here? Was that—and not this Kinthing—the true reason they’d interceded for her? Or had this been a surprise to them as well, and Marquin was even now downplaying the severity of it?
“We have all had a long day,” he continued, “and now that the formalities are concluded, we should be going.”
Clare turned, eager to get away from that look in Madame Aria’s eyes, to retreat and soothe the scraped-raw wound she’d become. She’d poured too much of herself into that song, felt as if she’d laid bare a part of her soul, and now all she wanted was to hide away in some forgotten corner and cover it back up.
“Wait.” Madame Aria’s hand latched onto Clare’s shoulder, pulling her back.
It took everything she had not to respond with violence. But ordinary people did not hit someone at the mere provocation of being touched. Instead, Clare glanced pointedly at the hand on her shoulder, but the woman didn’t remove it. A predatory air hung over Madame Aria, one Clare was all too adept at recognizing.
“Are you sure you want to apprentice to them? They know much about magic, yes, but their strengths aren’t in music. Mine are. We had a difficult beginning, but it’s nothing that cannot be smoothed over.”
“Thank you,” Clare said, in a voice that conveyed anything but appreciation, “for the offer. But I will stay with Verol.”
Madame Aria’s eyes narrowed, cracking the facade of beneficence. “I could have you singing for the king within three months. That’s what you want, isn’t it girl? Patrons? A quick rise to fortune? Stay with him and you’ll find yourself begging to be allowed to sing in the Lowtown’s winter festival.”
Anger was a hot rush inside her. “I don’t need you, or them, or anyone to get what I want. I have myself. And I haven’t forgotten the promise I made to you. Prepare yourself, Madame Aria. Because I haven’t taken nearly enough from you yet.”
The fingers on Clare’s shoulder tightened, the grip a force Clare knew from experience would bruise, would leave thin finger-like lines of purple that would remind Clare of this moment. Life was always, always reminding.
“You think you’re too good for me?” Harsh, whispered words. “You shouldn’t even be alive. You’re an abomination, a?—”
