Chapter 2.
"Les loups portent parfois des masques de velours."
The news arrived like a storm clothed in silk.
Two days after Rosétta's debut, the city of Solenne stirred to a chorus of whispers. The morning air, still touched by winter's breath, carried the scent of fresh ink and warm bread, and something more intangible—curiosity, laced with hunger.
Newsboys perched at every street corner, waving broadsheets above their heads as horse-drawn carriages clattered by. Their cries rang through the cobbled boulevards like bells at a coronation.
"The Nightingale of Le Voile Doré!"
"A New Muse Rises!"
"Mystery Siren Captivates Solenne's Elite!"
Each headline was a dagger wrapped in silk, sharpened by speculation and dipped in desire.
The gossip columns competed like debutantes at court, each more desperate to own the narrative, to coin the first lasting rumor. One claimed she was the illegitimate daughter of a fallen count, raised in seclusion and taught to sing by ghosts.
Another insisted she was a courtesan exiled from the southern isles, her voice trained in the temples of the abandoned gods. A third whispered she might be a foreign enchantress sent to enchant the empire from within.
Not one story matched the next. And that—that was precisely the point.
Solenne had not seen such a stir since the scandalous ballet of Duchess Eline and her married violinist, or the murder trial of the Viscount of Tarquaine. But this—this—was something rarer. Not politics, not blood. It was beauty. Enigma. The kind of mystery that left ink-stained fingers flipping pages, and powder-faced noblewomen leaning across lace-covered tea tables with wide eyes and lowered voices.
In the gilded salons of the Fifth Ward, noble daughters who had once scoffed at the theater now begged their mothers to attend next week's performance. In smoke-scented cabarets, stage actors gritted their teeth as their own names were buried beneath Rosétta's in the cultural section. Jewelry merchants received urgent commissions for black pearls and silver motifs, desperate clients wanting to mirror her appearance.
Even perfumers began recreating the soft, unfamiliar scent that had followed her like a dream on opening night—violet, rain, and something faintly bitter beneath it all, like regret.
Armanda called it "the scent of reinvention."
In the underground cafés near the Rue des Ombres, poets scribbled verses on napkins in her honor. One wrote:
"She sang like someone drowning in moonlight—
and we all begged to be pulled under with her."
Everyone was talking about her.
From the châteaus perched on the cliffs to the coal-stained parlors of the factory wards, from candlelit brothels to velvet-draped drawing rooms, Rosétta's name was passed from mouth to mouth like a spell.
It had been a long while since a splash created a wave this large—longer still since a wave had risen without noble blood behind it.
Solenne was a city that prided itself on decorum, tradition, rank. But it also craved novelty. And nothing fed its hunger more than the perfect illusion: a woman of unknown origin, cloaked in elegance, beautiful but unknowable, who had appeared from nowhere to steal the breath of the empire's most jaded elite.
was a phantom stitched into velvet and starlight, a whisper of something almost too beautiful to be real.
And the city, for all its sophistication, behaved like a starving beast.
The big splash created big waves, news reached the shore and the wall of the imperial castle.
The big splash created big waves—waves that rolled far beyond the gaslit boulevards of Solenne.
They reached the marble steps of embassies, stirred the gilded salons of provincial courts, and, inevitably, crashed against the white stone walls of the Imperial Castle itself.
In the east wing, beneath the frescoed ceilings and vaulted halls of the old seat of governance, the Council of Ceremony gathered in haste. Composed of aging noblemen in brocade coats and pale, ink-stained clerks, the Council was the most anxious arm of the Imperial Household. Their sole task: to design and execute the first Imperial celebration in four years—a grand spectacle to mark His Imperial Majesty's birthday.
It should have been routine. In years past, the Emperor's birthday had been commemorated with parades, orchestral performances, and extravagant banquets that stretched long into the night. But those were before the coup d'état.
It had been four years since the capital last celebrated anything. The bloodshed from the Night of Feathers—the day the old regime fell—had stained not just the cobblestones, but the hearts of an entire empire. The new Emperor, in his wisdom or guilt, had issued a moratorium on public festivals. He called it a time of "mourning and rebuilding." But in truth, it was an unspoken acknowledgement of how the empire had become.
The common folk, hailed the Emperor as a liberator, their living did somewhat improve but bread lines still stretched through the industrial quarters. Widows still sewed by candlelight. The factories ran hotter than ever. And still, justice felt far away.
Meanwhile, the nobility—those who had bent the knee to the new regime to keep their titles—seethed beneath silken manners. They smiled in public, drank toasts in the Emperor's name, but behind closed doors, they whispered. The court had grown quieter, duller, poorer.
Their masked galas were now modest luncheons. Their influence diluted by the Emperor's attempts to appeal to the lower classes. Legislation now prioritized coal miners and trade guilds, not lineage or old names.
The birthday celebration, therefore, was more than a tradition. It was a chance to restore image, to remind the people—both highborn and low—that the Emperor still reigned, with power, dignity, and grace.
And yet, the Council floundered.
What performance could bridge the gap between disillusioned nobles and exhausted commoners? What celebration would not ring hollow in a city that had, for four years, known nothing but restraint and silence?
The answer arrived on wings of gossip and perfume.
At first, the Council dismissed the stories—surely just another theater girl with a pretty face. But the name—Rosétta—refused to die. Her performance at Le Voile Doré had been nothing short of mythologized. Even those on the Council who claimed never to attend the opera found themselves requesting discreet transcripts of the reviews. Some even sent aides to see her in secret, only to return wide-eyed and murmuring phrases like "She sings like heartbreak reincarnate."
But what struck the Council was not merely her voice. It was her symbolism.
Rosétta had no noble background. No house, no heraldry. Her identity was obscured, her origins unknown. She had, in the words of one court advisor, "risen like a ghost from the gutter"—yet commanded the attention of the highest echelons of Solenne.
She was, in every way, an emblem of reinvention.
And that was precisely what the Empire needed.
An idea took root.
What if this woman—this mysterious nightingale—were invited to perform not in the seedy back halls of Solenne's theater district, but within the Imperial Palace itself? What if the symbol of modern beauty, the talk of the streets and the salons alike, could stand in the Emperor's court—not as a noble, not as a courtesan, but as a chosen entertainer, hand-selected to represent art, unity, and the new era?
It would be unprecedented.
Opera singers had never performed within the royal banquet hall before, certainly not at a state occasion. But neither had the Empire ever faced such fragile unity.
By inviting Rosétta, the Council could offer the nobles novelty and sophistication, wrapped in a mystery they could gossip about for months. And to the common people? They could see in her someone who had risen without title or blood—someone like them—standing beneath the golden chandeliers of the palace, singing for an Emperor who had not forgotten them.
It was a brilliant compromise. An illusion of intimacy. A mirror of aspiration.
Thus, the decree was drafted.