Claire’s breath caught. She’d seen a few ballet recitals before—they were impossible to avoid if Sophie Martinson was your older sister—but these dancers were as different from the intermediate Tuesday afternoon class as a puddle was from a lake. This wasn’t even like the professional ballet the Martinson family had decided to see a few years ago over winter break. Those dancers had only seemed to fly across the stage, but in Arden … Claire leaned in her seat, squinting at the stage.

“Lyric,” Claire whispered, wondering if she were seeing things. “Their slippers—they’re not touching the ground!”

“Of course not,” Lyric whispered back. “Because they’re not slippers; they’re Flyers, which, you know, fly.”

How wonderful! And practical. Claire wished she could show the footwear to Grandmaster Carnelian of Stonehaven. If the Gemmers had some of these shoes, it would be so much easier for them to fix the crumbling gargoyles that lined the Citadel’s soaring domed roof—and much less dangerous.

The sounds of violins and harps reached inside and soothed her, and for a moment, Claire let herself get lost in the melody and movement. Each costume was an incandescent white, the color reminding her of a soap bubble when the sunlight caught its curve. With each kick and grand leap, the dancers sparkled. As the music gathered force, the twirls became tighter and the ribbons arced higher, looking like liquid moons. It was beautiful. It was magical. It was—

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

Claire jumped in her seat as a tall, thin man unfolded himself from where he’d been sitting in the front row. Like all the other Spinners, he, too, seemed to take his clothing seriously. Bedecked in a fine suit of orange brocade and with his Royalist cloak tossed jauntily over a single shoulder, he looked a bit like an off-kilter sun setting against a navy sky. But unlike the other Spinners, his white-blond hair was wild. It stuck up in all directions. Here and there, Claire could see some dangling threads as well as an unraveling braid or two, as though nervous fingers had been tugging at their ends.

“You look like a bunch of popcorn!” the man exclaimed. “And not beautifully falling stars!” Striding up onto the stage, he plucked a streamer from a stunned dancer and, with a flick of his wrist, sent it shimmying into the air. With another flick, the ribbon shifted direction, shuttling back and forth like a fish swimming upstream.

“Watch carefully,” he instructed, and with a final flick, he let go of the streamer—but this time, it did not float back down. Instead it stayed suspended, twisting itself into the shape of a star.