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beauty is terror, whatever we call beautiful we quiver in front of it
WE CANNOT SIMPLY WAKE UP AND BECOME A BUTTERFLY. Celeste Alarie knew this, but her wings itched to be spread, to show themselves in their full glory, to prove their magnificence had never been dulled. Yet, would they be able to stand the test of time? A childhood prodigy slowly fading away with time, they said. She didn't want to fade, to be forgotten, to let her talents waste away.
Star student at Beauxbatons, the pride of the school, wearing the pretty pale blue colour as she soared higher above all of them—that was where she belonged. Six years at Beauxbatons had past; she was expected to leave a legacy on her last next year before graduation. She had it all, just the way it should've been.
Flying too close to the sun, however, will always have its undesirable consequences. What was she to do, when her family was insistent on clipping her wings until they never grew again?
"I didn't do it, I swear!"
"We can't prove you did it, but neither can we prove you didn't. The decision looks clear."
"You believed me yesterday. I know you did. Why did you change your mind suddenly?"
"You are a bright girl, Celeste, with a bright future—just not at Beauxbatons."
Just like Icarus, she fell towards the earth, her wings melting. The carriage ride home was painfully silent; she could feel her mother's eyes fixed on hers, looking for tears threatening to spill out—but all Celeste felt was anger. Anger that made her lips tremble and her eyes sting painfully, but she was determined not to cry.
Not over them.
Home is where the heart is, yet the people inside were the heartless ones. Her father's last wish was for his wife and daughter to live under the protection of his family, yet Celeste never once felt protected by those people she had to call her family.
They thought of her as beneath them, unworthy of their family name, but she had never wanted to be acknowledged as an Alarie. They'd framed her—she knew—and she wouldn't admit a mistake she never made.
It started with the many letters Amelie begun to receive from the family that aroused suspicion, and the very moment Celeste had found her cousin lying at the foot of the stairs a professor had popped out, both seemingly waiting for her, pointing an accusatory finger.
