Marianna
“I don’t understand.” I swallow hard past the lie, folding my hands over my lap, meeting the headmaster’s shrewd gaze. She’s an otherwise lovely woman in her late fifties, I believe, with raven-black hair peppered with silver and bright brown eyes. Her pink lipstick crinkles when she gives me a sad, sympathetic smile I know all too well… because this has happened before. Twice. Three times now, if I count today.
The pewter stone walls of the exclusive, ridiculously expensive Children’s Academy of Crescent City smothers me. She looks down at her desk for a moment, sighing.
“Ms. Abbot,” she says, meeting my gaze again, her face washed in what I believe is empathy but could be something far less deep. “Skye doesn’t belong here. She's too–too–” She waves her wrist in what I can only construed as dismissal.
“Too intense?”
She purses her thin lips. “I have other students to think about. We’ve given this a shot, haven’t we? After her… premature departure from MoonWolf Preschool, I was reluctant to admit her here, and we’ve tried our best. You know we have–”
“She’s six years old,” I bite out, unable to hold back my emotions any longer.
It’s always the same story, the same excuses. Skye is too much for her teachers. She’s too intense, too… too big of a personality for such a small body. She doesn’t pay attention. Her head is in the clouds–past that, these days. Her eyes are full of starlight and nothing else.
She can’t make friends. She scares those few who get close to her and absolutely terrifies the rest with her stories….
“She’s an incredibly gifted young girl,” the headmaster says with the softest, but fakest, of smiles. “She’s years ahead of her peers when it comes to her academics. I believe… homeschooling would be a better option for her. I mean that wholeheartedly.”
“Homeschooling?” I mouth, my stomach going hollow, but I should be used to this feeling by now.
“I have some pamphlets I could share if you’re interested. She could graduate from high school four or five years early and go on to do great things in college with peers who are… more mature and able to understand her–”
“There’s nothing wrong with my daughter,” I rush out, biting back tears I’ve cried a million times.
The headmaster gives me a look I know all too well. Skye’s fate has already been decided. She is no longer welcome here.
End of story.
I gather my purse, stuffing the pamphlets I didn’t have the strength or wherewithal to decline deep in the recesses of the bag where they’ll find solace with some rogue sticks of gum and the rocks Skye likes to hide in there. I walk out of the school into the brisk spring air and breathe, filling my lungs till they’re near bursting, and choke when I attempt to exhale.
My phone buzzes repeatedly, but I ignore it like usual. My mom, Leona, never texts me. She always calls. It’s a new rule we have. It’s how I know it’s not her blowing up my heavily abused smartphone right now. No, the person who’s sent me a hundred texts in the last hour is someone I hope I never see again.
Crescent City comes into view around me. The hustle and bustle of the city streets suck me in, drying my tears in an instant. I knew this was coming. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the email in my inbox from Skye’s school. I should have known that day they called me to pick her up early and refused to elaborate as to why that something was wrong, and she was done, dropped from the exclusive program in an instant…
But it hadn’t been an instant, had it?
I hug my purse to my chest and stand at the bus stop, fighting to breathe. Music fills my mind, unraveling the tangled network of thought and emotion fighting for dominance. I wish I could say this is the hardest it’s ever been with her, but she’s been like this since she started walking. Since she could look me in the eyes and show me what’s really going on behind those beautiful, grayish-violet eyes of hers. Eyes that remind me so much of her father that it’s nearly enough to bring me to my knees sometimes.
“Goddess dammit,” I whisper over engine noise and chatter, leaning my weight against the plexiglass of the awning protecting the benches from the elements.
The bus arrives three minutes late. I board, swiping my metrocard and sitting toward the back, letting the rumbling vibration lull my senses into a stupor while the city bleeds past, the towering skyscrapers turning to silver blurs against the afternoon sunlight. It takes me all of twenty minutes to reach my stop, and I disembark without a word to anyone, walking down the street and into a wide, circular building–the royal performing arts center–as the first inklings of sunset turn the sky a deep orange.
Storm clouds funnel in the distance, casting shadows over the side streets. I rush through the lobby and through a doorway that closes me off from the world at large, and sucks me back into the one place where I can be me again.
“Anna,” Jesse, fourth chair of the strings, says with a hushed sigh as I speed past him toward the locker where I left my violin two hours ago. “Michael’s looking for you. Where have you been? You missed practice this afternoon.”
“I had a meeting. He was aware of that,” I grit out, fishing my phone out of my purse. “Did I miss something important? The music is already finalized for both acts–”
“There’s a rumor going around that the prince is coming to the concert tonight,” he says with effort, his cheeks going a ruddy pink, a sharp contrast to his nearly white-blond hair.
“The prince?” There’s three. The chances it’s him are… thirty-three percent, which means it’s highly likely it’ll be Prince Liam, a true lover of the arts, of his younger brother, Prince Noah.
Not Blake. Never Blake.
He nods, leaning his shoulder against the lockers. I slide my phone into view, but I don’t even look down at the flashing screen. “For the last concert of the season, too. You’d think he’d have come to the opening show.”
While Jesse inspects his nails and drawls on and on about the prince, whichever one, showing his face at tonight’s finale, I reel, my fingers trembling as I quickly delete the seventy-six text messages clogging my notifications.
“Is Michael changing the music? Is that why he wanted to see me?” I ask, blindly dialing my first contact on speed dial–my mother–but I don’t press call just yet.
“It kinda sounds like you have a solo tonight. The guest violinist can’t make it.”
“What?” My tone is lifted in actual surprise.
Jesse shrugs as he picks up his cello case. “That’s just the word on the street. We got time. The concert doesn’t start until–”
“Seven,” I reply, checking the dainty wrist watch I’ve been wearing since I was seventeen. I haven’t taken it off once. The white-gold band and matching face are a sharp contrast to my golden-bronze skin. “An hour and a half. I’ll talk to Michael, okay? If I make any changes whatsoever to the music, I’ll call everyone together before we settle on stage. Can you let everyone know? Give me like, thirty minutes.”
Jesse nods and gives me a bow that makes my spine tingle. It’s a joke, of course. I’m not royalty. I’m just second chair of the strings behind Lorna Johnston, the real queen of the Crescent Falls Philharmonic Symphony, and I’m her assistant.
Well, not by definition. Her slave is a better word for it. I do all of the administrative stuff she hates because, as first chair, we’re all terrified of her. I’ve never said no to the woman in my life, even if she’s a cold, hard bitch who doesn’t even know my name, and we’ve been working side by side for three years.
She’s a legend. I’m just… me.
“Mom,” I say into my phone, hurrying down a long, twisting hallway in the deepest depths of the arts center. “Everything okay? Did Skye eat her dinner without a fight?”
“She’s fine, Marianna,” Mom says with a short laugh. I can hear a kettle squealing in the background, and Mom’s shuffling as she movies around our snug kitchen making her evening cup of tea. “How… how did it go?”
I lean against a wall, my eyes locked on the HVAC system weaving through the open ceiling above my head. “How do you think?”
“Everything is going to be fine. This was meant to happen, you know. The Goddess wouldn’t have given you an opportunity like the one you’re facing if you didn’t have to close a door first.”
“I wouldn’t consider your granddaughter getting kicked out of a third school an opportunity–”
“Have you given it any thought?”
I smile weakly and wave at the bass players as they wheel their instrument cases past my perch. “Of course I have, but it would mean uprooting our lives, Mom.”
She sighs heavily, “Anna, don’t let this pass you by because you’re worried about him–”
“I’m not,” I rush out, gripping my violin case so tightly my knuckles turn white. “This isn’t about him.”
A tall, blond man walks into view, spots me, and exhales deeply as he rushes in my direction. Michael’s eyes are pleading when he mouths something I don’t catch, his hands extended in surrender.
“I have to go. I’ll be home later tonight. Way late. I’m sure Michael will force my hand when it comes to the after party.”
“Enjoy yourself, sweetie,” Mom says in a light, sing-song voice before hanging up.
I’ve barely lowered the phone from my ear when Michael says in a whispered hiss, “We have a situation.”
“What’s going on?” I resist the urge to remind him that I’m second chair, so whatever drama is currently taking place should not be going from the conductor to me. It never works out that way though, does it?
Michael, a kind, slightly aloof, but incredibly talented, conductor glances warily around the now empty, but echoing, hallway and comes to a stop at my side. “Lorna isn’t coming tonight. I need you in first chair.”
I look up at him, squinting, like that’ll help me hear better.
“She’s not coming,” he repeats, his cheeks growing pink. “She’s in Celestoria, or something, with her new boyfriend–”
“The Alpha King,” I correct, glaring at him. “Are you fucking serious, Michael? You’re moving me into first chair an hour before the concert–”
“This concert is falling to pieces. We already lost the soloist performing tonight, so that’s going to be you now–”
“I’ve never soloed as a guest–”
“You’re going to solo as first chair. It’ll be fine! You’re far more talented than Lorna, anyway.” He cuts himself off with a ferocious blush then amends under his breath, “Do not tell that witch I said that.”
“I–I haven’t practiced any of the music for Lorna’s solos tonight, Michael.”
“You can sight-read. It’s fine.”
“It’s not–”
“Prince Blake is coming to the concert,” he says over my rushed protest, and the floor cracks beneath me, threatening to pull me into the void. “With the Alpha King and Luna Queen.”
I black out. At least, I wish I did. Goddess, take me now.
I gape, my mouth opening and closing like a fish.
Michael thunders forward, saying, “And Marianna, I’m aware of the offer you got from the Philharmonic in Moonrise.” He leans in, resting a supportive hand on my shoulder. My just-above-the-shoulder-length, wavy dark brown hair brushes the top of his hand as he continues, “You should take it. This is the last concert of the season. Consider it a goodbye. You get your solo.”
My eyes water against my will when he pulls away.
“Take the job,” he says sternly, nodding. “You know I fought for you to get first chair when Lorna started… pulling away in favor of her boyfriend, but she’s a celebrity and the board–”
“The Alpha King of Celestoria,” I correct him under my breath even though he barrels over me again.
“You deserve first chair. You’re the best violinist I’ve ever worked with. You’re so talented, and it’s been wasted here.” His eyes drop from mine to the fading, yellow bruise under my left eye, and he sighs. “Plus, I think a change of scenery would be… good for you.”
I jolt back into awareness and fix him with a cold, but professional, look, nodding. “I’m still considering it.” I absently feel my pocket for the compact concealer that I’ve been carrying around so long it’s left a permanent imprint in my favorite jeans.
He claps me on the shoulder and walks away, leaving me alone in the gaping, never ending tunnels running beneath the concert hall, where I’m sure guests are starting to arrive for early cocktails before the final show of the season begins.
I walk to a bathroom, setting my case down before catching my worn expression in the mirror. I dig the concealer out of my pocket and carefully pad it onto my cheekbone, covering the bruise that’s taken weeks to heal.
A chill runs up my spine, and I turn ever so slightly to find a trio of women standing just a few feet away in what should have been an empty bathroom. Silver white robes brush the group as the center woman takes a step toward me, her face obscured by a mask of crystal, her hair covered by the hood of her robe.
I bite back a sob. “She’s so young,” I whisper, “I’m not ready to let her go yet.”
The Mystic nods and says, “But she is ready for us.”
And they’re right.
I wonder if Blake knows.
He warned of this when she was born.
And we’ve done everything to give her a normal life thus far, haven’t we? A life he’s not in?
“Give me a few weeks, okay?” I beg, and the Mystics disappear, leaving me alone once again.