On the evening of the Christmas Grand Gala, the Richmond Theatre was a sea of tuxedos, evening gowns, and expensive perfumes. London's nobility and Europe's most influential critics sat composed in their red velvet seats, oblivious to the fact that hell was about to break loose beneath the stage floorboards.
Behind the scenes, the air was electric. Azzurra was ready. She wore a costume that Mrs. Bennett had ordered to be sewn in secret: not silk, but a dark, almost organic fiber that resembled sharkskin. Oliver was by her side, his back covered by a thin veil that hid his bruises but not the vibration of his body. Maya, unusually silent, gripped her wrists, ready to provide the rhythm.
Belinda sat in the front row, next to an Erica who was as pale as a corpse. Silence fell over the hall as the lights dimmed.
There was no orchestra. Only the first, dull beat of the soundscape. Boom. Boom. The sound of Samuele's heart beneath the pier.
The curtain rose.
Azzurra did not begin with a graceful pose. She started on the ground, contorting in the smoke that simulated the fog of the Strait. When she leaped to her feet, the audience held its breath. This was not classical dance; it was a divine convulsion. Every movement Azzurra made seemed to tear through the air. When Oliver lifted her, the marks on his back began to glow through his costume, casting long, distorted shadows onto the theatre walls.
"What on earth is she doing?" a critic in the second row whispered. "This isn't the Richmond Academy."
Halfway through the choreography, the incredible happened. The humidity in the theatre rose suddenly. The walls began to ooze water. The audience assumed it was an avant-garde special effect, but Belinda knew the truth. Azzurra was opening a portal. While dancing the "Draunara," the girl was summoning the storm inside the theatre.
Oliver spun Azzurra with superhuman strength. The burns on his arms began to emit a violet vapor. Maya stamped her feet on the wood, and with every strike, the theatre floor shook as if there were an earthquake.
In that moment, Azzurra's voice exploded throughout the theatre—not through a microphone, but through the minds of those present: a cry of pain for every stone fallen in Messina, for every life shattered. Belinda stood up, her shawl slipping from her shoulders. She began to intone Nonna Anna's chant, her voice weaving into the rhythm of the dance.
Erica tried to stop her but was repelled by an invisible force. The theatre had become the Strait. The seats felt like jagged rocks, the ceiling like a storm-tossed sky.
Azzurra and Oliver joined in the final pas de deux. As they spun, a vortex of real wind began to lift the programs from the critics' hands. Azzurra arched backward, her arms stretched toward the ceiling, and for a fleeting instant, the spectral image of the lighthouse lantern exploding appeared above her.
Applause did not come immediately. First came terror, followed by an absolute silence, broken only by the sound of rain that—inexplicably—had begun to fall inside the theatre. Then, a single clap. Then ten. Then a hundred. The audience was in ecstasy, terrified and moved. They had witnessed the end of the world and its rebirth in ten minutes of dance.
Azzurra collapsed into Oliver's arms, both exhausted, both scarred. But as the lights returned to normal, Belinda heard a piercing cry coming from her cell phone, forgotten in her bag. It was Elia.
The bond had snapped. The showcase was over, but the war in Sicily had just moved to the final level.