Chapter Text
DANIELA / PRESENT
I hurried through the atrium beside the Royal Opera House, my footsteps echoing against the marble floor. The building was quiet at this hour, stripped of the usual crowds and applause. From the outside, it probably looked abandoned.
But the Royal Ballet never truly slept.
The administrative offices were tucked away beneath the theatre, far removed from the grandeur upstairs. The auditorium was all red velvet, gold trim, and polished mahogany. Downstairs felt clinical by comparison. Concrete walls. Narrow corridors. The freshly waxed linoleum floors reflected my movements in blurred streaks as I made my way toward the last office at the end of the hall.
Most of the lights were off.
Except one.
I could already hear the faint tapping of computer keys before I reached the doorway.
Megan Skiendiel sat hunched over her desk, reading glasses low on her nose, a half-finished coffee beside a stack of rehearsal schedules. She looked exhausted. When she noticed me standing there, she leaned back slightly in her chair.
“Hello, Daniela.”
I held up the letter in my hand. “What is this?”
It wasn’t addressed to me. The letter had been sent from Kenneth O’Hare, the company director, to Manon Bannerman.
My stomach had dropped the second she showed it to me. I’d been promoted to principal dancer two years earlier. Manon was still a soloist, but everyone in the company knew she was next in line. When one of the senior principals announced her retirement at the end of the season, the role should have gone to Manon. Nobody even questioned it.
Then this arrived. A formal notice informing her that the position had been filled by an outside hire.
I dropped the letter onto Megan's desk. “Who could possibly deserve that promotion more than Manon?”
Megan exhaled slowly and rubbed at her temple. “She was considered very seriously.”
“Considered?” I repeated sharply. “She’s been carrying this company through half its productions for the last three years.”
Manon would never have come down here herself. She hated confrontation too much. So I had done it for her.
In the autumn season, the company was staging a gender bent version of Swan Lake. I’d already been cast as Siegfried, and everyone had assumed Manon would dance Rothbart opposite me. The choreography had practically been built around the two of us. There was no one else who made sense.
Megan looked tired rather than defensive, which only irritated me more. “When Kenneth and I were in Moscow last month,” she said carefully, “we had the opportunity to recruit someone from the Bolshoi.”
I stared at her. “You’re serious.”
“She’s extraordinary, Dani.”
“I thought this company cared about developing its own dancers,” I snapped. “Since when do we go stealing Russian prodigies every time a principal contract opens up?”
“We didn’t steal her,” Megan said calmly. “Not technically. Her contract was ending. And she isn’t Russian. She’s Filipina.”
A horrible feeling settled in my stomach. There was only one Filipino principal dancer at the Bolshoi.
“Oh, no.”
Megan gave me a tired look. “Dani, she gave one of the best performances I’ve ever seen.”
“I don’t care if she gave you a damn Fabergé egg,” I snapped. “Sophia Laforteza is impossible to work with. We’re going to kill each other.”
Surely Megan had heard the stories by now. Everyone in the ballet world had. Choreographers walking out midway through productions. Dancers reduced to tears during rehearsals. Company administrators quietly replaced after conflicts no one would explain directly. Sophia’s talent was undeniable, but so was her reputation. People admired her from a distance and dreaded sharing a studio with her up close.
Megan sighed and pushed herself carefully out of her chair. The limp in her right leg was still noticeable, even after all these years. Before joining administration, she had danced with the company herself. During her first season, she shattered her ankle attempting a triple tour during a performance. I’d been sitting near the back of the theatre that night and still remembered the sound.
One bad landing was all it took. Seeing Megan every day felt like a reminder none of us were untouchable, no matter how successful we became.
She crossed the office and crouched beside my chair. “You’re catastrophizing.”
“She’s going to want Siegfried,” I muttered.
“Actually, no.” A faint smile pulled at the corner of her mouth. “She specifically asked for Rothbart.”
Of course she did.
“The villain,” I said flatly. “Why am I not surprised?”
“We saw her perform the role in Moscow.” Megan leaned back slightly against the desk. “It was extraordinary.”
I folded my arms tightly across my chest, trying to ignore the sudden twist of insecurity in my stomach.
“She isn’t better than me.”
“That’s not the point,” Megan said gently. “You dance completely differently.”
I looked away.
“Your Siegfried beside her Rothbart…” She paused for a moment. “It would be unforgettable.”
I wasn’t worried about dancing with Sophia. Onstage, we would be fine. Ballet gave us structure. Timing. Rules. We knew exactly where to stand, when to move, when to touch each other and when to pull away. None of that scared me.
What worried me was everything around it. The rehearsals that stretched late into the evening. The press events. The donor dinners. The endless afterparties where everyone drank too much champagne and pretended not to gossip about one another. Spending hours trapped beside Sophia outside the safety of choreography felt far more dangerous than sharing a stage with her ever could.
Megan leaned against the desk and studied me carefully. “You know,” she said, “I remember her being quite sweet when you two were students.”
I let out a short laugh.
“I’m serious,” she continued. “You were inseparable at the academy for years. Surely there’s still some part of you that likes her.”
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my sweatshirt and looked down at the floor. “That’s the problem. I don’t think I ever actually knew her.”
When Sophia first arrived at the academy, she had seemed almost painfully openhearted. Awkward sometimes. Earnest. She laughed too loudly in the library and cried during films no one else took seriously. Back then, I would have trusted her with anything.
Somewhere along the line, she learned how ruthless the ballet world could be, and instead of resisting it, she adapted to it better than anyone else ever could.
“You have no idea what she’s capable of,” I said finally. “She’s cutthroat.”
Megan smiled faintly. “All dancers are”
Maybe that was true now. But it hadn’t always been true about Sophia. That was the part I couldn’t let go of.
People assumed our history would make things easier, but it did the opposite. The closer you once were to someone, the more damage they could do when everything fell apart. Sophia hadn’t just hurt me. She had humiliated me at the exact age when every feeling seemed Shakespearean. Time should have dulled it by now. It hadn’t.
I looked back up at Megan. “Please tell me the decision isn’t final. I can still talk to Kenneth, right?”
Megan's expression shifted then. The sympathy faded, replaced by the calm authority she used whenever rehearsals got out of control.
“It’s final,” she said. “Sophia’s already in London.”
My stomach sank.
“She’ll be at the patrons’ dinner tomorrow night.”
“Megan—”
“Play nice, Avanzini.”