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“He was angry,” I whisper.

And maybe he should’ve been. Maybe everybody else already knew who Sola was. I was the only one still standing there looking stupid while the whole room watched my life fall apart.

“Because you lied to him?” she asks.

“Because I ran.”

At least, I think. But my memories keep twisting out of my reach every time I try to hold onto them, scattering between the concert, his dark eyes, and the look on his face when he asked if I knew.

Ciaran.

Another kick lands in my midsection, and I curl protectively around myself with a half-sob, half-groan.

“Disappointing.” The woman grips my hair and pulls my head back again, waiting until I force my gaze to meet hers. “What did the Virels tell you about the sequence?”

“Nothing.”

“What did Angela say after you played?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit.”

“I swear I don’t know anything!”

The guard strikes me again, and this time I hear an audible crack. My scream echoes off the stone walls around us.

“Oh, please.” The woman stands, clearly disgusted. “How’s your poor little heart doing these days, darling? Still stumbling every time you get frightened?”

The question lands harder than the blows. My pulse stutters badly enough to make my chest tighten.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I ask, wrapping my arms around my middle.

“Because you should’ve stayed invisible.” Her expression hardens. “You should’ve stayed in Düren, protecting the Ward like some useless little dust boy, instead of dragging that sequence straight back into the Virels’ hands.”

Her eyes burn into mine. “Do you have any idea what Angela lost when that manuscript disappeared? She remembered the music. What she lost was everything hidden inside it. You can remember a melody, but you don’t remember decades of names, deals, favors, and obligations well enough to rebuild them from memory.” Her mouth twists. “And then you went and got fucked by the lion’s whelp on top of it.”

“Shut up!” The words rip out of me loud enough that even the guards look surprised. “You don’t get to talk about him like that.”

Her expression freezes before the next kick slams into me hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.

Something twists painfully in my chest, because now I can remember it too clearly—Ciaran’s hands in my hair, his mouth against my throat, the weight of him beside me in bed while rain struck the tower windows.

Mouse.

My eyes sting. “It was you?” I can barely get it out. “Those footsteps outside our apartment? Outside my dorm?”

She smiles. “You really thought you were imagining them?”

Cold slides through me as memories crash together too fast. Shadows outside windows, footsteps behind me in empty streets, waking up gasping while Sola checked my pulse and told me it was just another panic attack.

“You know, he’s not coming for you,” she croons. “The lion’s whelp isn’t going to burn down his own family for some frightened little Düren boy.”

I attempt to crawl away from her, from the guard standing nearby, but everything hurts. Every jagged breath feels like a dagger twisting in my chest. My heartbeat feels wrong now too, skipping whenever the pain spikes.

I can’t stop thinking about the way Ciaran used to pull me against his chest at night like he thought keeping me warm could somehow fix everything wrong inside me.

“What did Angela tell you?”