Chapter 1

Giselle

The air in Studio A is thick enough to taste. It’s a bitter cocktail of rosin, sweat, and the metallic tang of ambition. Dancers line the mirrors, their bodies creating a forest of sharp angles and impossible curves. We stretch in a state of suspended animation, a collective breath held in fifty chests, all waiting for one man to decide our fate.

Maestro Theron Dubois stands at the front of the room, his posture as severe as a metronome. His eyes, small and dark, sweep across us. He could be reviewing cattle for auction. For him, we are instruments, and he’s about to choose his Stradivarius. For the rest of us, it’s the role that can make a career: the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. The lead. The dream.

My stomach is a knot of terrified butterflies. I press my forehead to my knee in a deep forward fold, focusing on the pull in my hamstrings, the steady rhythm of my own breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. It’s a mantra I’ve used since my first recital, when I was a seven-year-old so scared she nearly threw up on her tutu. Some things never change.

“Giselle.”

My best friend Keisha’s voice is a low hum beside me. I glance over. She’s effortlessly laid out in a perfect center split, scrolling through her phone as if this is just another Tuesday. Her nonchalance is a carefully constructed performance I know well. Inside, she’s a buzzing hive of nerves, same as me.

“Stop thinking so loud,” she mutters without looking up. “You’re throwing off my aura.”

I offer a weak smile. “Sorry. I’ll try to project crippling anxiety with less volume.”

“Appreciate it.”

Across the room, Clara Sterling watches us, her gaze a physical weight. Her platinum blonde hair is scraped into a bun so tight it seems to pull her lips into a permanent sneer. She’s the company’s technical darling, a spinning top of perfect pirouettes with a heart of ice. She believes the role is hers by divine right. Maybe it is. Her lines are cleaner than mine, her extensions higher. But I have… something else. A softness. A heart I’m not afraid to show on stage. I hope it’s enough.

Maestro Dubois claps his hands once. The sound cracks through the studio like a whip, and a reverent silence falls. Phones disappear. Breaths hitch.

“As you know,” he begins, his French accent lending a dramatic weight to every word, “the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy is not merely a showcase of technique. It demands… magic.” He lets the word hang in the air. “It requires a dancer who can command the stage not with arrogance, but with grace. A dancer who can tell a story with a single glance.”

His eyes roam the room again, passing over me, over Clara, over a dozen other hopeful faces. My pulse thunders in my ears, a frantic, trapped bird. This is it. This is everything I’ve worked for. The sixteen years of sacrifice, the bleeding toes, the missed parties, the life I’ve poured onto the scuffed marley floors of studios just like this one.

He stops on me. His gaze is intense, analytical. He’s seeing every flaw, every strength. He’s seeing the ghost of my mother, a dancer in this very company two decades ago, whose own dreams were cut short. He sees the weight of that legacy.

“Our Sugar Plum Fairy for this season,” he declares, his voice ringing with finality, “will be Giselle De Lune.”

The knot in my stomach doesn’t explode. It dissolves. A warm, liquid relief floods my veins, so potent it makes my knees feel weak. The air rushes back into my lungs on a shaky gasp. A smattering of polite applause breaks out. Keisha lets out a whoop and throws her arms around me, squeezing the life out of me.

“Yes! I knew it! You brilliant, beautiful woman, you did it!” she whispers fiercely in my ear.

“I… I can’t believe it,” I breathe into her shoulder.

Over her arm, I see Clara. She’s clapping, a smile plastered on her face that is pure acid. It’s a work of art, really. A masterpiece of manufactured pleasantries that doesn’t touch the frozen fury in her eyes. Her gaze meets mine and holds it for a beat too long. The message is clear: You don’t deserve this.

I pull away from Keisha, my own smile feeling more genuine, more real. I will not let her dim this. I nod at Maestro Dubois, my head held high. “Thank you, Maestro. I’m honored. I won’t let you down.”

“See that you do not,” he says, already turning away. “Leo. Giselle. You will begin rehearsals immediately. The rest of you, five-minute water break.”

The spell is broken. The studio erupts into chatter. Dancers flock around me, a flurry of congratulations and air kisses. I thank them all, my face aching from smiling, but my eyes search for Leo. My partner.

He’s waiting for me by the barre, his familiar, easy grin a balm to my frayed nerves. Leo Maxwell has been my other half on stage since we were in the junior company. He knows my rhythm, my balance, my tells, better than I know them myself.

“Well, look at you, Sugar Plum,” he says, his voice warm. “Ready to fly?”

“Only if you’re the one lifting,” I reply, bumping his shoulder with mine. “Congrats on your Prince, by the way.”

“Please. Was there ever any doubt?” he jokes, puffing out his chest. “Come on. Let’s give them a little preview.”

I head to my dance bag to swap my warm-up booties for my pointe shoes. My hands are still trembling slightly. I dig past the tape, the sewing kit, the energy bars, and my fingers brush against the worn, velvet cover of a small booklet. I don’t need to pull it out. I know its weight, its texture, by heart. It’s the program from my mother’s final performance of Swan Lake with this company, twenty-five years ago. It’s frayed at the edges, the pages softened with time. It’s the constant, tangible reminder of the legacy I’m fighting for, of the dream she had to let go. This role, the Sugar Plum Fairy… it was the one she always wanted and never got.

This is for you, Mom.

I shove the thought down, tucking it away in that deep, quiet place where I keep all my hope. There’s no time for sentimentality now. There’s only work.

I tie the ribbons of my pointe shoes, the familiar ritual grounding me. Leo is already at the dead center of the stage, waiting. The accompanist begins the first few bars of the Pas de Deux, the notes cascading through the room like falling snow.

We begin. And for a few minutes, everything else melts away. There is no jealousy, no pressure, no ghost of my mother. There is only the music and Leo. Our bodies move in a conversation we’ve been having for years. His hands find my waist, strong and sure. I rise onto pointe, my body an extension of his. We are one entity, a story unfolding in muscle and bone.

But then, something is off.

It’s a tiny thing, almost imperceptible. On a series of supported turns, his grip is just a fraction too tight, a subtle compensation. And on his landing from a small jump, a jeté, I see it. A slight wobble in his left ankle. A flicker of something—pain? uncertainty?—in his eyes before he smooths it over with a confident smile.

A cold prickle of concern traces its way up my spine. I dismiss it as quickly as it comes. It’s opening-night jitters. The pressure is on him, too. He’s probably just in his head. We finish the sequence, and he dips me low, my back arching in a graceful curve.

“Everything okay?” I murmur, my voice low enough that only he can hear.

“Perfect, partner,” he says, his breathing a little heavier than usual. “Just finding my footing. Ready to run the final lift?”

“Always.”

We reset. This is our signature move, the one that always leaves the audience breathless. The Coda. The climax. The music swells, a triumphant, soaring crescendo. He runs toward me. I prep, my arms held wide, my focus narrowed to a single point: his eyes. He is my anchor. I trust him completely.

His hands lock around my waist. He lifts.

I am airborne, my body soaring toward the lights. It’s a moment of pure, weightless ecstasy. I hit my pose, a perfect arabesque in the sky. Below me, Leo’s muscles are coiled,  his expression becomes unreadable.

Suddenly, the music distorts.

Or maybe it’s not the music. Maybe it’s the sound that rips through the studio. A sound that is horribly organic. A dry, sharp crack, like a branch snapping underfoot.

Leo’s face contorts, not in concentration, but in agony. His eyes widen in shock and pain. His hands, my anchor, my foundation, spasm.

His support vanishes.

Gravity, the dancer’s oldest enemy, reclaims me with a vicious yank. The world tilts, a dizzying, sickening lurch. There is no floor, no ceiling, only a terrifying void. I am falling.

But it’s Leo’s cry, a raw, guttural sound of pure pain, that shatters me. He collapses beneath me, his leg folding at an unnatural angle. I land in a tangle of limbs, my own body absorbing some of the impact, but my mind is a million miles away, stuck on that single, horrifying sound.

The music cuts out. The chatter of the studio dies. A thick, ringing silence descends, broken only by Leo’s ragged, agonized gasps from the floor.

I scramble up, my own aches and pains nonexistent. “Leo!”

He’s on the floor, clutching his ankle, his face chalk-white and beaded with sweat. His ankle… it’s wrong. Twisted. Swelling already.

My dream, so bright and beautiful and real just moments ago, doesn’t fade. It shatters. Into a thousand tiny, glittering pieces, right here on the unforgiving wood of the studio floor.