It is a piece that drips with tragedy. It starts slow, a weeping melody that feels like rain sliding down glass. I shouldn't play it. It’s emotional. It’s heavy. But I can't stop.
The music takes me. I close my eyes. I am not in Ward 13 anymore. I am nowhere. I am the music. I press harder. The chords swell. TheLentosection gives way to theAppassionato. I pour everything into the keys. The betrayal of my parents. The terror of the woods. The humiliation of the exam table. The confusing, twisting heat of Alaric’s body in the bed.
I play the confusion. I play the rage. My fingers fly across the keys, faster, harder. I am attacking the instrument. I am punishing it. The climax of the piece approaches—the scales that run up and down the keyboard like a scream.
I hit the keys with violence.Crash.Boom.I am panting. Sweat trickles down my spine. I am lost in the chaos. I am spiraling, just like I did at the Gala. I am destroying the structure. And it feelsglorious.
I raise my hands for the final, thunderous chord—
"I said structure."
The voice is right beside my ear. I didn't hear the door open. I didn't hear footsteps. The music drowned out the predator.
I gasp, my hands freezing in mid-air, inches above the keys. I snap my eyes open. Alaric is standing next to the bench. He is not looking at the camera. He is looking at my hands. His face is a mask of terrifying calm, but his eyes... his eyes are burning with a silver fire that makes the air in the room feel thin.
"You disobeyed," he whispers.
My heart hammers against my ribs like a trapped bird. "I... I got lost. I didn't mean to."
"You played chaos," he says, his voice dropping to a low growl. "You played emotion. You poured your bleeding heart all over my floor."
He reaches out. I flinch, pulling my hands back to my chest to protect them.He's going to crush them. He promised.But he doesn't grab my hands. He grabs my throat.
It’s not a choke. It’s a grip. His large hand wraps around the column of my neck, his thumb pressing against my windpipe, tilting my head back. He pushes me. I slide backward on the leather bench until my back hits the edge of the keyboard.Disharmony.My back presses down on the keys, creating a jarring, ugly sound—a discordant crash of notes that echoes through the room.
"You want to play?" Alaric hisses, leaning over me, his body caging mine against the piano. "You want to make noise?"
"Alaric, please," I beg, my hands clutching at his wrist. "I'm sorry. I won't do it again."
"No," he agrees. "You won't."
He steps between my legs. The grey wool dress is hiked up to my thighs. His knees press against the inside of mine, forcing them apart. "You used this instrument to scream," he murmurs, hiseyes tracking the movement of my pulse under his thumb. "But you are the instrument, Elodie. And I am the only one who gets to play you."
He releases my throat and grabs my wrists. He pins them behind me, forcing them down onto the keys.Clang. Clang.The piano screams under the abuse. My chest is heaved upward, offering myself to him.
"You like the adrenaline," he accuses. "I saw you. I watched you on the monitor. You were flushing. You were sweating. You were getting high on your own tragedy."
"No..."
"Yes." He leans down and bites the sensitive cord of muscle where my neck meets my shoulder. I cry out—a sound that is half-pain, half-shock. "You want to feel something?" he murmurs against my skin. "Fine. Let's see if you can keep the rhythm now."
His right hand—the surgeon's hand, the hand that can dissect a life—slides up my leg. He doesn't hesitate. He doesn't ask. His hand goes under the heavy wool of the dress. His palm is hot, rough against the sensitive skin of my inner thigh.
I gasp, trying to close my legs, but he is solid rock between them. "Don't," I whimper. "Alaric, stop. The camera..."
"I turned it off," he says, biting my earlobe. "This performance is private."
His hand moves higher. Over the cotton of my panties. He cups me. My body jolts. The shock is absolute. I am wet. The realization humiliates me more than the act itself. Despite the fear, despite the anger, despite the fact that he is threatening me... my body has responded to the violence of his music.
"So wet," he whispers, his fingers tracing the seam of the cotton. "For a girl who hates me, you certainly know how to welcome me."
"It's a reaction," I sob, twisting my wrists against the keys behind me. "It's biology. It's not..."
"It’s truth," he cuts me off.
He pushes the fabric aside. His fingers find me. He doesn't stroke. He doesn't tease. He enters me. One finger. Deep. Sudden.
I scream. The sound tears out of me, echoing off the high ceilings, mixing with the dying resonance of the piano strings. My head falls back. My hips buck—not away from him, butintohim. It’s instinct. It’s madness.
