The Final Curtain

The sound was like a thunderclap inside a coffin. The windows of the theater shattered inward, spraying the auditorium with glass.

Leo was thrown backward by a shockwave of force. He hit the floor hard, the breath knocked out of him.

He looked up, gasping.

Sera was floating. Her silk dress billowed around her as she ascended toward the Royal Box, drawn up by the violet beam. She was laughing, a sound of pure, unadulterated joy that slowly warped into something metallic.

"Sera!" Leo screamed, scrambling to his feet.

He ran toward her, jumping for her trailing hem. His fingers brushed the silk.

It was hard.

It wasn't fabric anymore.

Sera stopped rising. She hung suspended in the air, ten feet above the stage. The violet light intensified, burning away the color of her skin, her hair, her dress.

She turned white. Pale, gleaming white.

Her laughter stopped mid-note. Her arms froze in their open, welcoming gesture. Her face, twisted in a rictus of ecstatic triumph, smoothed out into a blank, perfect mask.

Porcelain.

She hadn't become famous. She had become a fixture. A statue. A prop for the Monarch Theater’s eternal collection.

The Shadow King in the box bowed slowly to his new acquisition.

Then the floor beneath Leo bucked.

"No! Give her back!" Leo roared.

A second shockwave hit him, this one deliberate. It slammed into his chest, lifting him off his feet and hurling him across the stage, through the velvet curtains, and out the propped-open loading door.

Leo crashed onto the wet pavement of the alleyway, rolling into a pile of trash bags.

The heavy steel door of the theater slammed shut with a final, booming clang. The sound of the lock engaging was deafening.

Leo scrambled up, ignoring the blood running down his face. He threw himself at the door. He pounded on the steel with his fists until his knuckles split.

"Sera! Open the door! Sera!"

There was no answer. The rain hammered down, cold and indifferent.

Then, faintly, through the thick brick walls, he heard it.

Music. A distorted, calliope waltz. And the rhythmic, hollow sound of porcelain shoes tapping against a wooden stage.

* Tap. Tap. Tap.*

She was dancing. She would be dancing forever.

Leo slid down the door, his forehead resting against the cold metal. The alley was dark, the city was asleep, and the applause in his head was the loudest thing in the world. He was alive, but the part of him that mattered—the heart that had beaten only for her—was locked inside the tomb, listening to the Queen perform for her King.