“Sorry to disappoint you,” he says, rifling through a drawer for something.
“I wasn’t disappointed,” I whisper.
He pauses, his hand frozen on a measuring cup.
My cheeks warm. “I meant that your elixir was...nice. Not that I had any right to see it, I—”
“I get it, Isda,” he says, and I swallow the rest of my clumsy excuses before I can make myself sound like even more of a fool.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
He opens his mouth to reply, then shakes his head as though changing his mind. “Let’s talk about something else. What was it like growing up in the opera house?”
“It was...” I pause, searching for the right word as I drop my gaze back to the pot. “It was lovely. There was always so much color and light. I used to hide and watch the rehearsals, then teach myself some of the choreography on the stage after everyone had gone for the night.”
“No wonder you sing the way you do. You’ve been surrounded by music your whole life.”
I twirl the wooden spoon through the concoction, watching as the sugar bubbles into a golden liquid. Emeric taps a bit of vanilla into the mixture and dumps some milk into the pot. I stir vigorously to incorporate it.
“You’re a natural.” Emeric’s voice is close—right by my ear—and its nearness makes me jump.
“A—a natural?” I am a bumbling imbecile.
“At stirring. A born stirrer, if you ask me. It’s rare to find such talent in someone so untrained.”
I elbow him away, cheeks flushing under my mask. “Don’t make fun. It’s not my fault I’ve never cooked before.”
“Fair enough.” He laughs, turning to stack a few bowls. He hums under his breath as he works, and even with that small bit of song, my power perks up and reaches for him, begging to plunge into his memories.
As if on cue, he begins to sing quietly, wiping down the counters as he goes. He casts a glance my way, one full of questions and dares, as though this is a test he knows I will fail.
But even under his careful scrutiny, I exhale as a huge weight I hadn’t even noticed I was carrying releases from my shoulders. I let the flow of his memories envelop me in warmth and contentment.
Emeric stops singing, and I’m ripped back to reality. The sharp scent of scorched sugar fills the air. He jumps to my side. “Is it burning?”
I blink down at my hands. The spoon dangles from my limp fingers, and the caramel mixture bubbles a thick, sticky, brownish black.
Emeric wraps a towel around the pot’s handle and whisks it away to safety.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I must not have been paying attention.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” he reassures me. “It’s just a little overdone. It’ll still taste fine.”
“Are you sure?” I peer over the pot’s rim at the foul-looking concoction. “It doesn’t smell right...”
“Of course, of course. Trust me.” He picks up a spoon and scoops out a bit. “I’ve overcooked it a thousand times. Just makes it a bit harder to chew, but it shouldn’t be too bad.” He blows on the mixture to cool it.
“I’m so sorry,” I say again, fluttering around him feeling utterly useless.
He waves away my concern and asks, “What do you see when I sing?”
I search for horror or mistrust in his expression. Instead I find thoughtful curiosity. “Nothing,” I lie. “I just feel the elixir calling out to me.”
“Is that distracting?”
“You get used to ignoring it.”
“Except when you don’t ignore it, apparently.” His lips draw into a line, but the anger in his expression has cooled a bit since I arrived.
“I’m so sorry. I—”
He raises a hand to silence me. “I know.” Lifting his spoon to the sky as though making a toast, he says, “Bon appétit!”
“Are you actually going to eat that?” I grimace at the dollop of hardened sludge.
“Of course. It’s your first time making caramels. I want to be able to say I was a witness to this moment.”
“It’s going to be bad.”
“I’m the caramel expert here, not you. It’s going to be delicious.” He puts the spoon into his mouth and chews. “See? It’s...” He pauses, scrunches up his nose. “It’s not very good.” He swallows. “No, it’s quite terrible, actually.”
“I warned you.”
“You did.”
“In the future you should probably take my advice.”
He puts his finger to the side of his nose. “Duly noted.”
I snort. “Well, it seems we have a conundrum. We used the last of your milk in that pot of goo.”
He tosses his spoon back into the pot. “I’m sure I’ve got some spare caramels around here somewhere that’ll tide us over until I get some more.” He roots around in a small pile of clothing in the corner, shoving his hands into the pockets one by one until—“Aha!”
I sit on the floor by the fireplace where it’s warm. He settles next to me and hands me a caramel.
“Nothing like a little bit of sugar to make everything better, eh?” He chews for a moment, bending his knees up to his chest and resting those distracting forearms on top of them. His hair trails across his face as he tips his head against the wall.
Wiping my hands on my skirt, I angle myself toward the fire. The coals at its heart glow as gold as a memory.
“So,” he says. “You said you used to teach yourself choreography in the middle of the night?”
I nod.
“I suppose we’re not too different, you and I. I used to sing and dance for an audience of toys my mother made me. At least you had a stage.”
I chuckle. “I never considered how lucky I was in that regard.”
“Did anyone ever see you?”
“When I was little, I wasn’t very careful. There were a few instances where I was almost caught. I would sneak into the dressing rooms during the day sometimes. Cyril used to get so mad at me for trying to steal jewelry from the dancers while they were busy onstage.” I snort. “It took me forever to realize he didn’t care so much about the theft as he did about my being noticed.”
“Did Monsieur Bardin really raise you?” His voice is a little too quiet all of a sudden, as though he’s afraid he might miss something I’m about to say.
His earlier words—He does not care for you—swirl in my ears, and I harden my jaw.
“He’s the only father I’ve ever known. He taught me everything—mathematics, reading, science, music. He made me handwritten cards on holidays and brought me chocolates on my naming day anniversaries.” My words rush out faster and faster as I speak, as though I can convince Emeric with the force of them that he was wrong about what he said. “He’s the one who bought me my organ and all of my music.”
“Really.” He purses his lips like he’s trying hard to marry his perception of Cyril with the reality I’m showing him.
“Yes. There was a special production we did the year I turned six where the score called for an organ. He had one brought in, and I fell in love with it. I begged him for weeks to let me have it when the show finished. It was a rental, and he kept telling me he had to return it, but on the night of the final performance, he had it brought into that crypt downstairs and set up for me there.”
A lump of tears rises in my throat as I remember the way Cyril beamed down at me when he told me I would get to keep the instrument. I flung my arms around his neck so tight he had to pry me off to breathe.
“I’m sure it was extraordinarily expensive,” I continue, my voice thick. “But you don’t understand the significance of a gift like that for someone like me.”
“What do you mean?”
I pause, swallowing. “I don’t have friends, Emeric. Outside of you and Cyril, I’ve never interacted with a soul, never ha
d a conversation.” I stare at my hands as I speak, hoping the heat flushing into my ears isn’t turning them red, praying he can’t see how embarrassed I am to admit this to him. “But that organ makes me feel less alone. It speaks my language. Every time I play it, it’s like I’m sharing a part of myself with it, and it’s giving me something in return.” I press my hands flat on my thighs. “I know it probably sounds stupid—”
“It doesn’t,” he whispers.
“But that organ has become my friend. In a world where people like me are afforded very few of those, that means more than you can possibly imagine.” I pause, close my eyes, and let the fire’s glow trace its sparkling light on the inside of my eyelids. “Cyril gave me that.”
I shift back to face Emeric, and the afterimage of the fire lines his face with flares of gold and red.
“The organ is why I live in the catacombs. It’s the only place Cyril could find where it wouldn’t be heard if I played during the day. He didn’t banish me to the sewers. I used to have a bed up in one of the practice rooms.” I smooth my skirt with my palms. “I chose to build a life down there underground. Because in the dark, my beauty is as unlimited as the music I create. In the dark, I can be anyone, go anywhere, do anything. That crypt you think a prison is the one place in this world that offers me the freedom you get just by breathing.”
He ponders that and raises his eyes to meet mine. “It seems I owe you an apology as well, then. I’m sorry for what I said. You were right. I didn’t know what I was talking about, and it was wrong of me to speak that way about him.”
I turn away from the intensity of his gaze. “Thank you.”
Emeric is silent for a long time. He stares at his hands, opening and closing them.
The silence makes the thudding of my heart seem so impossibly loud I’m sure Emeric can hear it.
“So...” I search for something, anything, to fill the quiet. “Where’d you learn to make caramels?”
His face instantly relaxes. “My uncle is a candymaker. The best in Luscan. After my mother died, he became like a father to me. He taught me how to make all kinds of things, but caramels are my favorite. They remind me of my sister.”
“Why?”
“You know how once the sugar melted, everything was oozy and golden and popping? She was like that. Bright, spunky, and sweeter than any sugar.” He pulls another pair of caramels out for us to eat.
I unwrap mine enthusiastically, loving that of all the words he could have used to describe a gravoir, he chose those ones. “If the opera thing doesn’t work out, do you think you’ll become a candymaker, too?”
He shrugs. “It’s a definite possibility. My uncle promised there’d always be a spot in his shop for me if I ever want a job.”
“Why did you come to Channe, then?”
“I actually came to audition for Le Berger, if you can believe it.” He chuckles, shaking his head. “But you were right about no one wanting to even consider me without training.”
“You’ll be on that stage, Emeric,” I say with certainty. “You were meant to sing, trained or not, and the world needs to hear you. If you let me, I will get you there. I will force them to listen. I will make you the thing you were born to be.”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “I hope you’re right.”
If anyone deserves to have his dreams, it’s Emeric. This kind, accepting, honest boy with a heart full of hope and pockets full of caramels.
“Tell me,” he interrupts my train of thought. “What is one thing you’ve always wished you could do but haven’t because you’ve been stuck in an opera house your whole life?”
I laugh sheepishly. “Play Chasseur et Chassé, actually.” I’ve seen it played a few times in people’s minds, but since most of the memories of the game are from their childhoods, the details have always been too foggy for me to make out the exact rules. All I’ve gleaned is the intense joy they all seem to experience when they play it—that and the camaraderie of sharing those moments with people they love.
“You’ve never played?”
“Games aren’t really Cyril’s thing.”
“Well, as it turns out, you’ve come to the right janitor.” He hops to his feet and crosses to his bed. Crouching, he reaches underneath and slides out a wooden box. The game pieces rattle inside as he carries it over to the table. “Come on. I’ll teach you.”
“Are you sure?” Excitement dances through me. “It is three o’clock in the morning.”
“I can’t think of a better time.” He grins in that devastatingly lopsided way of his and pulls out one of the chairs for me to take. “Please play Chasseur et Chassé with me.”
A giggle bubbles out of me before I can tamp it down, and I take the offered seat.
He pulls the game board out of the box and settles the different pieces in their proper places. As he describes the rules of the game, he waves his hands around with enthusiasm, and I catch myself watching the way his shirt opens and closes over that blue stone and the bare skin at his collarbones.
Once I’m pretty sure I’ve got the rules of the game down, he takes his place in the chair across from me, and we begin to play. I’m slow to remember where each piece is allowed to move, and with so many new thoughts swirling in my head, it’s hard to come up with an effective strategy. But after his first win, he offers to play again. And again.
By the fourth game, I’m getting the hang of it, and on the fifth time through, I actually manage to win.
It isn’t until the grayish blush of dawn feathers through his window that I realize how much time has passed. Sunrise is when many merchants begin to make their way to their shops. The streets will no longer be deserted. I might be seen on my way home.
I leap to my feet. “I need to go.”
He follows me to the door as I pull my hood back on and stuff my hair inside. “When will I see you again?”
The soft, hopeful tone in his voice makes me pause. He watches me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“Do you mean you’d like to start lessons again?”
He chuckles and tousles his hair so it sticks out in even more directions. I’m overwhelmed by how untidy and yet how perfect it is.
“Sure, I guess that’s what I mean,” he says.
“I’m not going to get that key for you,” I remind him, pulling the door open and peeking into the hallway to make sure it’s empty. “If you’re willing to come back without that...”
He sighs, the upturned corners of his lips dropping slightly. “I’ll figure something else out.”
“What do you want from his office?”
He reaches out to tuck a tuft of my hair behind my neck. I freeze at the rough brush of his fingers against my skin. “We all have our secrets, Is,” he whispers. “You keep yours. I’ll keep mine.”
With a simple touch, he has stolen every bit of air from my lungs, every word from my mouth, and every thought from my mind. There is nothing but those dark eyes and his fingertips on my neck.
“Midnight?” His voice is but a breath.
“Actually...” I clear my throat. “Would two o’clock be too unholy an hour? I have another obligation at midnight now.”
“Two o’clock should be fine. It seems you have made me nocturnal these last few weeks.” He glances back at the golden light brimming over his windowsill. “You’d better go.”
I turn, then pause. “Sorry about the candy, by the way.”
He grins. “That was just about the worst caramel I’ve ever eaten.”
I snort. When he chuckles, a bubble releases in my chest, and suddenly I am laughing, and we are laughing together, and it doesn’t matter that the sun is cresting the horizon because I’ve lost myself in this tiny, tattered room and the scent of smoking sugar.
Our laughter fades as we hold each other’s gaze a moment longer. The fire is low behind Em
eric, and silvery sunlight shines across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose.
A small bit of burnt caramel clings to Emeric’s cheek near his left dimple. Before I realize what I’m doing, I’ve reached up to brush it away. Just as my fingertips graze his skin, I freeze and pull back, cheeks heating.
He catches my hand in his. I stifle a gasp as he presses his lips against my palm. “See you tonight.” His breath tickles goose bumps up my wrist.
“See you then,” I echo, stumbling backward, my whole body vibrating with light. Forcing myself to appear calm, I nod in his direction and retreat into the hallway.
As I make my way down the stairs and out into Channe, I duck my head away from the view of passersby and keep my pace brisk. Even with the incriminating sun climbing its way into the sky and the pulse of fear in my limbs, I cannot help but trace the lines in my palm where the ghost of Emeric’s lips still tingles.
Chapter Fifteen
My nights blend together, a string of performances lit by the fire in Monsieur LeRoux’s parlor and late night vocal lessons spent drowning in the ecstasy of Emeric’s music.
The more I meddle in LeRoux’s past, the better at it I become. Soon, I am not simply flashing images into his dreams but reworking entire waking memories, complete with the demon chasing him through streets in broad daylight, interrupting his meetings with the Council, and awakening him in his bed at night to whisper treachery through fanged teeth. As the weeks pass, LeRoux’s mannerisms begin to change. He becomes twitchy and paranoid, jumping at the tiniest of noises. The only thing that seems to relax him is my voice, which simultaneously pleases me and makes me feel like someone is kneading my insides with something acidic.
But I remind myself that in doing this, I’m keeping Cyril safe. The fendoirs out there may be dangerous to him now, but I have no doubt once he takes charge, they’ll grow to appreciate him the way I do. He raised me to be better than the monster society would have made of me, and I know he will do the same for them.
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