Please, Celeste thought. Please, please, please. Don’t make me do this.
“Louise is right. It’ll thrill the audience more.” Katherina said, spearing the director with her matter-of-fact gaze. “And Celeste’s never learned the full pas de deux technique. If you want to open in two weeks—”
“Fine,” Verón snapped, slicing the air with his hand. “Saint-Léon, do the lift with Miss Bonechoix, then.”
Saint-Léon turned to Louise and swept her up effortlessly, her feet lifting clean off the stage as if she were made of nothing at all.
Celeste watched Louise spin in his arms, radiant beneath the footlights. Every turn scattered fragments of light across the boards—red, gold, white. Colors of love. Colors she could never quite hold.
Love was like fireworks—brilliant, reckless, gone too soon.
Celeste only wished she were brave enough to touch the spark before it faded.
***
Celeste lay sprawled across the divan in Katherina’s office, cheek pressed into the silk of her skirts, her sobs rising and falling like waves against a shore. The fabric was damp beneath her face, drenched from tears she couldn’t seem to stop. She’d ruined it. Again. The role she’d prayed for, the dream she’d clutched since childhood.
Katherina’s hand rested on her shoulder, waiting for the storm to pass.
How ridiculous she must look. She was among the tallest soloists in the ballet. Her limbs had lengthened, but the Papillon… the Papillon had grown too. When she had been thirteen, it had filled her—like batter poured into a tin, settling into every corner. She had told herself that once she was bigger, it would feel smaller.
But she had grown, and Papillon had risen with her, filling her to the seams—and sometimes, when she wasn’t careful, spilling over.
“I wish I could be someone else,” Celeste whispered.
Someone like Rosalind, who had disguised herself as a man and tested love on her own terms, and not Ophelia, who’d dissolved into water and grief and silence.
“If a storm came right now,” Celeste murmured, “I wouldn’t run. I’d let it take me. Wash me up in a new world. Give me a new name. A new part to play. Like Viola. She shipwrecked into something better.”
“You will dance the solos, and a nymph does not cry. It makes her eyes puffy.” Katherina’s fingers drifted through her hair. “You always had such beautiful red hair. Ever since you were a child.”
“Perhaps,” Celeste said quietly, “if you’d cut it. Or hidden it under a cap like a nun. Maybe he wouldn’t have—”
Katherina’s hand stilled. “What, Celeste?”
“Nothing,” Celeste said.
“Sometimes it helps to speak of the past,” Katherina said.
Celeste caught a faint glimmer of herself in the glass-paneled cabinet—tear-streaked cheeks, swollen eyes, mouth trembling. She looked pathetic.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s over. I’m over it. I should be over it.”
Katherina watched her with her unnerving kohl-lined eyes.
“Would you like me to fetch something?” Celeste said. “I heard the kitchens received smuggled champagne. Or bonbons. I could steal you three.”
“What happened that night?” Katherina asked.
Celeste sprang to her feet, dashing away her tears with both hands. “Nothing happened,” she said, her voice cracking. “That’s how weak I am. Helene or Louise would’ve laughed in his face. They wouldn’t still be afraid of shadows.”
Katherina exhaled, then turned to the liquor cart. She held out a glass of brandy. “Here. It will soothe your nerves.”
When Celeste was about to reach for it, a throat was cleared in the doorway.
Katherina moved in front of Celeste, shielding her. “May I help you, sir?”
The man dipped his head. “Madam Katherina, I presume. I hope I do not intrude on your schedule.”
