Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 27

"Giselle."

I barely hear her. My eyes half-closed, I go through motion after motion at the barre, in somewhat of a trance. My feet sweep from position to position, my arms come up and down, and I remember all the details I always have. It's a simple warmup, one of Blonos's countless variations and full of tendues and plies and arching and stretching. It grounds me, and I focus on those things. From across the room, Evangeline's rage is steaming off of her.

Blonos always starts us off this way during technique class, though it never lasts. By the end, I'll be turning until I don't know what's in front of me anymore—not that I didn't feel that way a moment ago—and performing combinations that take all of my effort to remember this early in the morning.

Five feet ahead, Cal performs in time with me. Every now and then, I watch his movements through my slit eyelids. The muscles in his back move with his shoulders, and tanned arms flex as he raises them over his head in fifth position. Sweat already stains his shirt at the armpit; even for a ballet dancer, he's in better shape than most if he runs in the mornings and then dances for nine-plus hours. His body says that much.

After my little competition minutes ago, Cal waltzed over to my barre and settled himself at the spot right next to me. He didn't say anything, but the act did. Evangeline just about had smoke coming out of her ears at that.

"Giselle is a story of twisted fairytale love and betrayal," Blonos continues as she passes my barre, hair tightly-bunned and hands crossed behind her back as usual. Her rigid voice filters through the soft ballad the pianist in the corner plays, keeping us together as we go through the warmup sequence. "It was first performed in the eighteen-hundreds by the Paris Opera Ballet and has since become one of classical ballet's greatest hits. Though many of you have performed it before and already know this."

Rounding my barre and heading for the mirrors in the front, Blonos releases one of her signature bland chuckles. "Giselle is a peasant girl of the Middle Ages who loves to dance. She's beautiful, she captures the hearts of all, but she herself has a naive and weak heart."

"Quite literally a weak heart," somebody adds from above, and I have to stop myself from jerking out of my stretch at the sound of Elara Merandus's voice. With a glance upward, I find Elara leaning over the balcony railing, clad in her typical all-black ensemble. She does a once-over of the studio, quite literally looking down on us with the added height. "Giselle's mother wishes she wouldn't dance anymore, for the fear that her heart will give out because of it."

Blonos nods. "So one day, a young nobleman named Duke Albrecht arrives amid the town's grape harvest. He falls in love with Giselle, and hiding his old clothes, sword, and hunting horn, he disguises himself as a peasant so that he may court her. Albrecht—or Loys, his peasant name—whoos Giselle out of her cottage to partake in the harvest festivities with him, and he soon declares his undying love for her. It is enough for Giselle to fall in love with Albrecht."

"Yet," Elara adds, dull eyes still examining us, "Hilarion, the town gamekeeper, is hopelessly in love with Giselle. He doesn't trust the peasant Loys, but Giselle pays no heed to his warning when he tells her as much.

"Soon after, a ring of noblemen come across the village in search of drinks, having completed a hunt. Aware that his betrothed, Bathilde, is with the noblemen, Albrecht flees the village as the rest of the peasants welcome them with refreshments and dancing. Bathilde and Giselle meet, and Giselle tells Bathilde of her courtship, who ironically gifts her a necklace in congratulations. The two depart, utterly oblivious that they're with the same man."

Though the pianist remains striking her ballad, most of the dancers have fallen out of the variation. I find myself pausing in my tendues. My eyes dart back and forth from Elara to Blonos, and I grip the barre to my side firmly.