“One day, these wards will fall. And when they do, Miss Daphne, and I am once again free, your brother will learn how it feels to be truly powerless.” He leaned closer, his voice dripping dark promises. “And then he’d regret that the undyne didn’t get him first.”
Nobody had ever talked to me like that. Like I… mattered. “My turn to ask.” My voice was hoarse. He leaned back into the tall chair with a smile, but the furrow between his dark brows remained.
“Then ask.”
“What are you, Emrys? What is the Renegade? Are you…similar? And what does this terrible snake made of spines and the skull mean?” There it was. I said it.
He lifted his glass and emptied it in one go. His eyes landed on me again, his pupils oddly feline in the candlelight. “Those were four questions, Miss Daphne. And I’m rather tired of this game. But if you’d take my advice, listen carefully.If you see the sign of the Renegade and his followers—that snake and the skull you’re talking about—do one thing, Daphne.”
“What?”
“Run. Run as fast as you can, and don’t look back. Now, tell me, do you like music?”
He didn’t miss the way my eyes glowed up.
“Very well. Please follow me. The night is young, and we’ve dwelled in the shadows for too long. It’s time for something joyful.”
Emrys
Echo from the past
The old house, a prison for memories and lost souls like me, had been dormant in the last years, drowning me in its apathy. A couple of ghosts, the echoes of Lord Valehurst’s atrocities in his pursuit for power, and, of course, the Lady in the Lake and her unborn baby, but nothing else. Liang delivered news of a world that became more blurred and distant with every year, and even my ravens were not interested in venturing beyond these walls. The assassins and the madmen Vexley was sending to steal my secrets were the only entertainment after Camille and Orren stopped writing, and I assumed that the Renegade and I were the only ones left from the Five. When the little thief’s bright magic shook the manor awake, I was drawn to it, like a moth to the flame, like a stranded seafarer seeing a ship after a thousand years of solitude.
When we walked the howling corridors to the music room, I wondered if she sensed it, too. How shadows withdrew, candlelight burned higher, how the portraits on the walls followed her with curious eyes.
Warmth and bright light greeted us when we entered the old ballroom. The dust was gone. The piano keysshimmered like mother-of-pearl under the grand chandelier. She looked around me with wide eyes. Had she been in this hall before?
“Play something for me, Miss Daphne,” I said, leading her to the piano. Two glasses and a crystal decanter with brandy awaited us on a coffee table near the instrument. She moved like enthralled, her gaze fixed on the keys, her fingers trembling with anticipation.
“Any preferences?” she asked when sitting on the chair.
“Something that comes from your heart,” I said, distracted by the way the candle flames elongated and flickered when she passed by. Did the manor respond to the undyne’s magic? Or to something else inside her? I took a sip, blessing Liang for his thoughtfulness, and leaned on the polished ebony. She tucked a short strand of hair behind her ear—and paused, her fingers lingering there for a moment too long, as if remembering something forgotten. Warmth spread in my chest.
I remembered how I first saw her—barefoot in the snow, eyes wild, as if begging for help. And my ravens had answered.
Then her fingers struck the keys.
The wards beneath the manor stirred. A ripple of magic unfurled through the floorboards, up the stone, into my bones.
It wasn’t only the wards responding. It was me.
And it was the melody.
That melody.
I should have turned away. Should have made a joke and changed the topic. But the ghost of her song clung likedust to old velvet, dragging up a name I hadn’t dared speak aloud in centuries.
“This is impossible,” I whispered.
“That melody…” she said, soft as breath. “You played it. The night I arrived. I knew it. I heard it before.”
“You couldn’t have,” I said, my voice hollow.
I turned away sharply. No. This wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
Was this the Renegade’s refined cruelty? Some trick to manipulate me?
“I just… knew the notes. Like they were part of me.”
