Adjusts the bench.Finds the pedals.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then she presses a single key.
The note rings out, pure and unafraid.
Another.Then another.
The melody forms hesitantly, exploratory, as if feeling its way through unfamiliar territory.Isla lets it wander.Lets it stumble.Lets dissonance exist without apology.
She plays angry first.Sharp-edged and relentless.Emptying her soul of the dire emotion onto the keys of the piano, in the music she’s creating.
Then sorrow underneath it.
Then something quieter.Curious.
She doesn’t realize she’s humming until she hears herself.
Not words.Just breath on pitch.
Tears slip silently down her cheeks, but her hands don’t falter.
She plays until her wrists ache.
Until the music resolves into something steady and determined.
The final chord lingers.
Silence settles, not hollow this time, but alive.
Isla lifts her hands from the keys.
She is not alone.
She doesn’t turn.Doesn’t need to.
Let them hear, she thinks.Let them feel her emotions and absorb her pain.
She sets her fingers back on the keys, not to perform, not to impress, but to claim the one thing in this castle that is hers.
And she begins to play again.
Chapter8
Callum knows better than to linger outside the music room.
He tells himself that as he stands in the corridor, one hand braced against the cold stone wall, the sound of the piano spilling through the thick oak door like a confession he was never meant to hear.
He should leave.
That’s the rule he’s lived by his entire adult life, knowing when to step back, knowing when something isn’t yours to touch.Keir taught him that much, if nothing else.Some things belonged to the music.Some things belonged to the moment.And some things, no matter how badly you wanted them, were never meant to be claimed.
But Callum doesn’t move.
Not the polished, pristine kind of playing he’s heard at galas and fundraisers.Not the flawless execution meant to impress donors and critics.This is something else entirely, raw and unguarded, the sound of someone bleeding through their hands and daring the room to hold it.
The first notes are tentative.Searching.
