Page 61 of Reverence

Then Juliette was running. There were screams behind her, Katarina’s voice calling her name, someone else yelling at them for making so much noise with an ongoing performance on stage, Foltin bellowing for people to grab a mop and clean the mess Juliette had made.

She simply ran, not even feeling the pointe shoes, the unforgiving marble of the floors, the gawking dancers in the hallways. Katarina was behind her, she was not letting up, getting closer, and Juliette knew that no matter what, she could not get caught because what would happen then would surely cost them both their hearts.

Though, perhaps, Katarina did not have a heart. Tatyana must have been Belova, the famed “sad story” of Bolshoi of the last decade, who was supposed to dominate the stage for years—until a bad fall backstage cut her career short.

And propelled Katarina to take over…

Tears stung Juliette’s eyes, her chest a dark pit of ichor. Desperation shouted in her ears a litany of instructions.

Turn around and tell her. Scream your pain. Let her have it.

But the audience was clapping for the second act to begin, and Juliette knew she was out of time. Out of options.

Dance. Entertain. Drown later. The wave is too big to survive it anyway.

The entire Palais Garnier was waiting, Gabriel standing in the wings for their joint entrance, his face awash with worry and confusion at seeing her running, Katarina on her heels. The music soared. Gabriel gripped her listless hand and led Juliette out, Katarina missing her by seconds, stopping behind the curtain just in time to avoid being spotted on stage.

The face, that beloved face still held the horror, and now there was the guilt. Juliette knew this look. She had seen it before. Well, she had seen and heard enough to last her a lifetime. A lifetime of regret. A lifetime of agony over being so foolish as to believe. To trust. To love.

A pirouette. The wind instruments ominously setting the mood.

Gabriel, sensing her tumult and having danced with her for years, took over seamlessly, spinning her, supporting her through the more challenging parts, giving her time to catch her breath, come to her senses…

A lift. The percussion entering in support of the cellos, winding the atmosphere up a notch.

How to explain to this wonderful man that there would be no coming to her senses? That the stories she had once heard in the dormitories in London, of betrayal and intrigue, of drama and harm, of pain and ballet dancing forever arm in arm, were all true? And that now Juliette Lucian-Sorel was one of those stories, perhaps one of the most awful ones?

Well, she always did reach for the stars.

A series of supported jumps. The violins soaring with each one, the conductor's hands flying.

Gabriel held her through each leap as if she was fragile, as if she’d break.

Well, fuck this.

She let go of his hand and moved into the familiar, into the steps that were second nature. Her calling card. The first grand jeté.

The grand battement, the push off, and then, natural as breathing, the split at the apex. The first violinist solo shredding the short pause, a warning, a prophecy.

Gabriel, now a distance away, watched on, his eyes tinted with so much worry, so much anguish. Juliette closed her own. She couldn’t break for him just now. She was busy tearing her own soul to pieces. The initial jump was followed by a series, and Juliette took a deep breath.

She felt the shackles of her shuttered heart fall as she started the chain of leaps, the perfect split accompanied by the beginnings of thunderous applause. The second one was higher, her legs straighter, and the audience, perhaps sensing that something extraordinary was happening, was on its feet by the third one, and Juliette jumped again. And then again. In the wings, Katarina’s face was now awash with tears, and at her right, Gabriel broke character and called her name. But she was no longer Juliette. She was a loose cannonball hurling to the zenith.

On the switch leaps, one jump flowed into another, and then another with the audience in a continuous ovation that drowned even the orchestra. Perhaps for the better, because Juliette had long since left the music in the dust, extending her part beyond the libretto.

In the pit, Monsieur Lenoir watched her with a rapturous and yet decidedly uncomprehending expression, keeping his strings and winds in check, making them repeat the melody, his baton tentatively tracking the beats.

Juliette landed on the opposite end of the stage after three switch leaps and then turned back. Gabriel and Katarina were now both on stage—which was madness, since the former was no longer supposed to be there and the later couldn’t be there at all—and the sheer presumptuousness tore something in Juliette.

The hole in her chest opened, all-consuming, and all the anger, the rage, the pain of a heart ravaged by betrayal poured into the next set of leaps as she took the shorter, direct line to the front instead of the diagonal that would take her to Gabriel and Katarina.

It was the second grand jeté, as she was right in the center of the stage, at the very edge of it. With the music subdued and the ovation fading, the snap of the hamstring was particularly loud. An obscene sound of flesh tearing. For the longest moment, everything stopped. Then pain, late, like thunder after the flash of lightning was long gone, followed the tendon rupturing. It blinded her, and still in flight, Juliette felt as if she had been carved open.

Suddenly the world spun faster, trying to recover the lost seconds, and Juliette reeled from the fast-forward motion. In her periphery Katarina rushed the stage, Gabriel running past her, but even he wasn’t fast enough to catch Juliette. If only she had taken the diagonal, she’d be closer to him, closer to his safe, sure arms. He’d have caught her…

Juliette landing on the leg with the torn hamstring meant only one thing. In an instant, that landing turned into a crumbling as her knee gave out, the speed and momentum too much for the injured limb to bear.

The cascading effect of her body failing her was truly overwhelming, as one after the other, her muscles, tendons, and bones shattered underneath her weight. And before her head hit the much-adored wooden floorboards, all Juliette saw was another beloved sight—Katarina’s arms reaching out for her.

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