Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 28

"Well. Wasn't that fun?" Iris calls from across the studio.

I can do nothing but bark a laugh. "Yeah. Fun."

My feet went numb a while ago, so I don't feel much as I pull off my pointe shoes and the bandages wrapped around my toes. In lieu, I fish out a pair of ordinary socks from my bag to cover my blisters and calluses, cringing just a little at the sight of my feet. I try not to look at them too often.

It's just about six o'clock now, and every second of rehearsal rings clear in my muscles, that ring either pain or euphoria. Maybe both. I had forgotten until today what it felt like to dance to actual choreography that Elara didn't make up just to toy with us. The Corps plays the part of the Wilis along with the villagers in Act One, and smiling like some festive town fool . . . glowering like a betrayed maiden . . . it's the best feeling in the world.

Today, under the instruction of Rane Arven, choreographer extraordinaire, I learned the first dance of the Wilis. He's a smaller, almost unassuming man with his white hair and wrinkled skin, yet as fierce and cold as Elara when it came to drilling out step after step. One of the big gun choreographers the Academy brings in for its shows, brilliant beyond his years, trained in Paris, Elara boasted of Rane Arven before she took a seat at the room's edge and left us to his devices.

And what devices he had. Even in the Corps, where twenty-four women will dance on stage as the Wilis together, Arven still managed to conceive the most exhaustive steps. Then there were the moments of standing still, foot pointed behind me and threatening to cramp up while imaginary Principal dancers performed in the imaginary spotlight.

Arven didn't yet assign actual places, only cutting the Corps in half between left and right stage. I wonder where I'll end up in the end.

Regardless, in eight weeks all of the grand movements and minuscule footwork I sweated through today will culminate into a masterpiece. I see it already in the blinding stage lights that'll put the Academy's theatre to shame and the gloomy forest set that the Calores will commission Broadway architects to design. Top-notch seamstresses will sew gorgeous costumes that have such a tendency to turn me into a girly-girl. And of course, the Met Orchestra will play every night, the sounds of the piano and strings enough for me to think that all the sore muscles and feet are worth it.

"Will you miss the jazz classes?" Iris calls again from the other end of Elara's studio. She stayed late after class with me today, taking her time with cool down stretches.

I look up from the hand I had massaging over my calf to debatedly the only other friend I've made at the Academy: Iris. She's standing now, towering over me on her tall legs while I sit on the floor.

Iris is like me in the way that she's reserved and doesn't talk most to the other dancers. Why she bothered with me on that first day, I don't know, but ever since we've formed a quiet sort of friendship, if it can be called that. Whenever we see one another, namely at the barre and between classes, neither of us talks much about our lives. I'm grateful for it. We'll complain over Blonos's work at the barre and Elara's sweet voice, laugh over an awful combination or the occasional fall from a dancer, but nothing more.

It's the kind of friendship I need. Especially now.

"A little." I shrug as she tilts her head, narrowing her intuitive dark eyes at me. Though I don't know her well enough in the ways that count, she has this . . . perceptiveness about her. She's always watching, glancing around the halls and studios as if there's something to be found. "Jazz and hip hop . . . not exactly my thing. What about you?"

Iris shrugs right back at me. "I think I will. I love ballet to death, but I suppose it's a good thing to get outside of your comfort zone once in a while."