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“Nothing.”
Another kick sends me rolling across the floor.
“What did the Virels want from you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar.”
The next blow catches my mouth, and more blood floods across my tongue. One of my teeth feels loose when I swallow, and panic flashes through me before the next blow arrives. Tears sting my face, drying in cold tracks down my cheeks.
The woman crouches in front of me, studying me like something pathetic beneath her shoe. “A poor little musician from Düren sleeping in a Virel heir’s bed,” she murmurs. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”
I shut my eyes because all I can see is Ciaran looking at me beneath the pavilion lights like something between us had shattered before I could explain anything at all.
“You still hear it, don’t you?” Her voice sharpens. “All these years later and you still can’t get rid of it. You know the melody.”
Angela…
The music. She didn’t ask me to play that warm-up song for no reason. She asked because she knew it. She recognized it.
For the first time, something flashes across the woman’s face that looks almost like satisfaction, the expression of someone finally hearing the answer she’d spent years searching for.
“You think Angela was the only one who could play?” Her laugh turns bitter as her gaze lands on the Noctis beside the wall. “I used to play that instrument, long before Angela took everything from me.”
She rises and starts pacing again. “She spent fucking years hiding things in music. Thought she was so clever. Thought I didn’t know.” She laughs softly. “I spent those years sitting across from her, trying to work out what she wasn’t saying.”
The words settle heavily between us.
Years. Whatever happened between them started long before I was ever born.
My fingers tighten involuntarily against the fabric of my shirt, as if I can repair my broken bones by sheer willpower alone.
There’s a sudden clatter, and I yank my head up to see the guard righting the chair I was tied to. He sets it in front of the Noctis. At a nod from the woman, he hauls me to my feet, ignoring my whimper of pain, and shoves me into the chair.
“Play it.”
The bow is shoved violently into my hand, and my stomach twists. My fingers barely work anymore, shaking from pain and terror.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
The guard grips my hair and shoves my head forward. “Play.”
Breath stuttering, I place the bow against the strings.
The first note breaks apart. My vision blurs so badly I nearly miss the next string completely, and when I force my fingers down harder, nausea surges hot into my throat. I worry I might actually throw up right there over the Noctis.
The second sounds worse. Blood smears slowly across the strings, and pain shoots up my arm every time I force my fingers down to hold the shape of the melody together.
Still, I play, forcing the bow across the strings again and again while my body keeps sagging forward beneath the weight of exhaustion and debilitating pain.
The room tilts every few seconds, forcing me to blink hard just to keep the strings in focus while dark spots drift through my vision.
Nothing happens. No hidden door opens beneath the stone, and no mechanism answers the melody. There’s only the sound of a damaged Noctis crying through the freezing room while the woman beside me starts breathing faster and faster.
The realization spreads through me.
Whatever she expected, it wasn’t this.
