The Fall of the Blue Swan

Anya Beaufort, the second daughter of the prestigious Beaufort family, had been treated as a substitute for her elder sister Carlyle—who drowned in the Seine twenty years ago—since the day she was born. Trapped in red ballet dresses and endless imitation, she was forced to live a life that was never her own. At eighteen, Anya won the gold medal at the Paris International Ballet Competition on her own merit, only to have her recommendation letter torn up by her mother and be shipped off to a second-rate theater in Corsica. After being falsely accused of doping, whipped, and locked in isolation, the only thing that kept her going was a modern dance manuscript and a sky-blue dress gifted by her cousin Rayan. But her mother, in a fit of madness, burned them both to ashes. In utter despair, Anya tied the scorched blue skirt around her waist, danced her final Swan atop the Gothic clock tower of the family château, and leaped to her death. After she died, her soul broke free from her body. She watched coldly as her aunt Grace and cousin Rayan screamed at her parents, exposing their heartless cruelty. When the police footage arrived—showing Anya's broken body lying in a pool of blood—the Beauforts' self-deceived, fragile peace was shattered completely. The long-overdue remorse had finally begun.