Prologue

"You want to be ballet dancer? Get used to psychological terror."

Trixie Mattel had been at the academy since the age of eleven. But by the age of sixteen every teacher who had ever believed in her had told her she should quit. She didn't have the body of a dancer, they said.

And now, at the age of twenty, when her academy education had ended and all her classmates had gained apprenticeships with ballet companies, Trixie was left with no job and nowhere to train.

And so she went to the one person who could make her into a ballerina;

Katya Zamolodchikova