Vaine slipped through the vine-choked door of the abandoned greenhouse before dawn, her bag heavy with worn shoes. She would be prima ballerina of the underworld opera. To survive opening night, she needed hours no one could see — hours that left bruises she could not explain in the studio. Glass walls dripped with ivy and pothos. Vaine laced the black ballet slippers and began. She spun until her ankles burned. She leapt until her arches split. The shoes darkened from black to wet red, and small smears followed her across the tile like footprints of a ghost. She finished, chest heaving, and lifted her eyes to the old baroque mirror leaning against the far wall. A man in a dark suit stood reflected in the glass — a hazy silhouette, watching. Vaine spun on her bloody feet. The greenhouse was empty. Only leaves moved. She stared at the mirror until her breath slowed. He had seen the blood. He had seen her. The secret was no longer hers alone — and now something would have to break before he could speak.

Vaine washed the blood from her feet and laced fresh shoes before sunrise. The man in the mirror could wait. The ceremony could not. She had spent no time courting a creature, and the ritual chamber would decide her fate by noon. The chamber smelled of cold stone and water. Students lined up before the dark bonding pool, each touching its glass-smooth surface. Colors bloomed under their fingers. A floating tome inside a glass case scratched out new names on its own, recording each pair. Vaine watched a girl ahead of her draw up a small, winged thing that perched on her shoulder like a ribbon. Vaine smoothed her hands and stepped forward. She touched the water. The pool flushed deep green, then gold. A shape rose — scaled, long-necked, far too large for the surface. The tome's pages turned themselves and inked her bond in heavy script. A keeper led her down to the caves and showed her the den waiting in her room: a woven dome of shed scales, old bones, and creeping vines that swallowed half the floor. Vaine stood in the doorway and counted what she had lost. The barre was gone. The clear stretch of wood where she practiced turns was gone. Her creature blinked at her from inside its nest, and the tome upstairs had already sealed the pairing. She could not refuse it. She would have to learn to dance around it — or find somewhere else to train before the directors noticed her slipping.