Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 20

I must admit: it's strange not dancing in the front of the room.

I had the time of my life in Blonos's technique class. A substantial layer of sweat from the two and a half hours coats my neck, and I have to resist the urge to pull off my pointe shoes and massage my feet. But it was amazing. Once she finished torturing us with twenty sets of pirouettes, we moved into combinations and about every skill I might come across in a dance. The footwork and leaps we rehearsed were foreign and familiar and most definitely challenging. Blonos found ways to point out errors in our most simple of tasks, from turnouts to plies, mistakes I couldn't have identified with a microscope.

Everybody at the Academy is elite in a sense if they made it in at all. I fell thirty feet onto a hard and unforgiving wooden floor for this, an opportunity to start in the best dance Corps in the world. I won my place, a place sought after by every girl who didn't make it.

Cal and Evangeline are strange exceptions to be Principal dancers at their age. If I somehow survive here, it'll take years and years to earn a position as a soloist, to so much taste a solo in the professional limelight. Maven, too, is just beginning his long and painful journey through the ranks of the dance world, his brother to contend with. As promising of dancers as we both might be, I doubt we'll actually dance together much. Perhaps for practice, for when we're older . . .

It's only strange, nothing I didn't expect.

I was in the front line almost always during my old days of dance—first for my zeal when I was small, and then for my technique when I was older. Once, on a day I went home with a smile that stayed until I fell asleep, my ballet teacher had whispered into my ear that I was her little protégé. I'll never forget that line.

But unless you're Evangeline Samos, you do not simply become a Principal.

As groups took turns across the floor, I watched Cal and the other Principals especially close. For everything he said about ballet, it seems like an utter lie after I've watched him dance. Every motion was powerful, controlled, even as he made it beautiful. About as flawless as a dancer will ever get, with his perfect leaps and a la secondes. He undersells himself.

But so I do, perhaps.

It's only strange, nothing I didn't expect

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I arrive at Elara's studio with little time to spare, having gone back to my room to get a granola bar.

Over half of the ladies I had technique with are in the room, and I assume no more will be coming. The principals and soloists have no use for this class, having gone their separate ways to individualized sessions. Off to learn their new parts for the Academy's first performances of autumn. There's no sign of the male dancers of the Corps, either, leaving me to a room of nearly thirty ballerinas.

The room is worth hardly any notice. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's just another studio overlooking Forty-Second. A grey floor, a long panel of mirrors, and barres tucked to the side walls. I have trouble believing Blonos and Elara are ones for frivolous decor, like the inspirational quotes and posters my teacher used to have strung up on her studio walls. Maybe that crap is for the young anyway.

Elara Merandus catches my attention, who happens to be sitting on the only piece of furniture around: a lovely metal folding chair. Like Blonos, she wears all black, but in the form of a dress: with a sweeping neckline exposing the wholes of her collarbones, the dress flows to her knees and ends in an asymmetrical skirt. Elara pours over a notebook in her lap, perhaps choreography notes or sheet music—or something else on the order of dance—and her mouth bent into a slight frown, she rhythmically taps on the paper.