Page 27 of Of Might and Mettle

Lorelle made her way to the front, where she found la directora speaking with the conductor. Her eyes widened when she spotted Lorelle.

“Where have you been?” she snapped, eyes narrowing as she looked Lorelle up and down.

Lorelle swallowed, trying to find the words to explain her absence.

“Get in costume,” she said, not waiting for a response. “Vanesa hardly knows half the steps and she’s had two days. If you can do it, the part is yours.”

Lorelle nodded, snapping her mouth shut, not wanting to lose her last chance.

She found a room to change quickly, but couldn’t tie up the strings at the back of her costume. She stepped out of the room, hoping to catch Isabel’s eye in the audience for a hand. But when she stepped outside, one of the corps girls was quick to help her tie her shoes and the back of the costume. “La directora is waiting,” she said in a hushed, almost frightened voice beneath her mouse mask.

“Gracias,” Lorelle breathed.

But the girl was gone to the wings, and now Lorelle was about to go on stage.

The music signaled her cue, and Lorelle stepped out on stage. But even as she caught sight of Vanesa and Sara, two cardinals dancing in the midst of the storm, she remembered a fateful detail from her drop into the river.

She’d been pushed. By a cardinal.

Lorelle swallowed the bile that surged up her throat. One of them had to have pushed her, but why? Would they really resort to murder just to get a role? Applause wasn’t worth that much.

Lorelle followed the rest of the dance without complaint, keeping an eye on her fellow dancers, even as the stage lights blinded her to the rest of her world burning down around her.

Chapter fifteen

The Toymaker

After two days of confinement in her room, Teresa had finally convinced her parents that she had not relapsed, only aggravated a previous strain from a few weeks ago. A hot bath had done much to soothe her aches, and she’d excused herself in her room by taking to her studies, but even though she still felt like she’d been dragged and wrung out by the churning riptide, she endeavored to be the picture of wellness.

So, she sat in the royal balcony of the theater, under supervision of one of Mamá’s guards. This time, Mamá did not trust Cerise to be enough to keep Teresa in check.

And Teresa wouldn’t make her lady-in-waiting suffer all the more—it was already enough that she asked Cerise to keep her silence. Cerise was the only soul who knew Teresa’s secret, and this time, she would not be persuaded to be anywhere else but at Teresa’s side, perched on the edge of the red velvet seat as if sitting there was a crime. Her lady-in-waiting cast a third glance her way, prickling Teresa’s frustration.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, frustration coloring her tone.

“Do you need anything, princesa?” Cerise asked.

Teresa stifled the sigh churning in her chest. She needed many things, none of which she could ask for if she was claiming health in order to finally get her freedom. To ask for help would reveal too much.

The velvet cushions, though soft enough to coax Cerise into finally relaxing into them, weren’t enough to soften the feel of the hard chair beneath for Teresa. But she would insist on having the same accommodations as her family, lest she lose all that she had fought for. Even the beginning of a headache, which she knew the music might tempt into a full-blown pounding, was worth the beautiful strains of music and the promise of adventure.

And she would dream yet. The stagehands may have been gathering fake snowflakes to sprinkle over the opening number, but she could imagine feeling the sting of snow against her cheeks. Miraculously, Papá had come to her defense, convincing Mamá that she was still fit to travel to Elevsk sometime soon after her birthday. And she would do everything she could to make it through the next two days like she was fine, so that future wouldn’t be stolen from her, too.

Then, with a grand sweep of the crimson curtains, the snowflakes were falling onto the dancers below. Red flitted as the cardinal made her way to look for the wooden soldier.

The first half of the ballet told the story of the fall of the toy kingdom. The mice stole in under the guise of seeking shelter, but really, they came to steal power from the Toymaker. The mouse king had stolen an ember from the Toymaker’s furnace, dimming the heat and casting a bitter snowstorm across the land. But the Toymaker, knowing the mice’s wiles, had prepared for this day. He’d carved a wooden soldier, one who would fight for the fate of all the toys and banish the mice from the kingdom. And Maria, the porcelain doll and princess of the land, had sent for the wooden soldier’s help with cardinals fighting through the snowstorm.

Then came the second act, when the Toymaker’s furnace went cold and Maria and the wooden soldier were banished from the kingdom. Maria was injured, and the wooden soldier bore far too many nicks and grooves. He was in danger of cracking at a swipe of a mouse’s tail. But, trusting in the Toymaker, they went back to fight for the kingdom.

In the final battle, they were surrounded by mice on all sides. Teresa leaned forward, both to catch a better glimpse and to stretch her aching back.

The wooden soldier was firing a musket into the aisles, aiming for the mice, and Teresa caught sight of some of the mice even in the upper viewing balconies before the wooden soldier took them down with the clash of cymbals and recoil that sent him leaping back.

The new girl playing Maria spun with the flurries of snowflakes. Had she learned the whole dance in just two days? But it wasn’t just the way she knew each move and flowed from one movement to the next. No, what really drew Teresa’s eye to Maria was how fully she became the role. Teresa could almost imagine that the dancer was fighting for the fate of her family, for her kingdom.

And if rumors were true—or at least what she heard from Yair’s quick responses when she needled him—Elevsk was in as precarious a position as the toy kingdom.

Only . . . the troubles don’t end when the curtains are drawn.