...

And when Roux was fifteen years old, sequestered in the classes of the best school of the arts AU01 had to offer, her mother stepped out onto the street in front of the Arcadian Union's capitol building, standing in the middle of the crosswalk painted red and wearing nothing but a trenchcoat, which fell to her feet, before she laid on the ground.

Four police officers came to arrest the dancer, the angel of the great D'aubigne, and remove her from the premises; she gripped one of their guns and wounded her first captor.

They fired twelve shots, and the fairytale wedding of the dancer and the painter came to an end in front of sixteen shocked onlookers sworn later to secrecy in dark interrogation rooms in buildings which don't exist.

The roads in front of the capitol building were shut down for six hours while workers bleached out the stain. Six hours and seven minutes later, life went on.

The next day the Union announced the commission of a new painting for the Ballet House, one representative of newer and greater art styles, of the true glory of the utopian system.

Luc D'aubigne's greatest work of art was whitewashed overnight.

Roux's uncle, Gabriel, picked her up from school early and removed the canvas original from the D'aubigne apartment at once. It has disappeared, for its disappearance, he lost custody rights to his sister's child. She was sent, instead, to foster parents, who knew nothing about light or of love, taking on orphaned children in the interest of tax breaks. Roux lost her standing in the academy and was sent to Alternative School, where she spoke only in the rough language of the Union and sang no songs at all, until she met a rather remarkable young man on her way home from classes: one who knew the songs and reminded her of the steps, who would not let her forget what it meant to be the daughter of a star and an artist.

At eighteen, released from the custody of her foster care, she left her education entirely and moved into his. She doesn't believe in fairy tales, but she believes in the remarkable man.

If one were to search his home they would not find the greatest painting of Luc D'aubigne, although he has seen where it lives, sheltered from those who would destroy such a thing.

They would find instead, the greatest masterpiece of a painter and a dancer, a woman who sings songs and floats on the stage; who sleeps in his sheets.