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“Vera might be dead, but we did bring you a gift tonight, mouse.” He points the gun at the person kneeling in front of us, their shape disguised with black cloth, and adds, “This is the man who followed you through the academy. The man who created your nightmares.”

At those words, everything inside me goes still. The stage, the crowd, even the music fall away as my gaze locks on the gun in Ciaran’s hand and the man kneeling at his feet.

“I found him for you, Rowan. And tonight, he dies.”

With a flick of his finger, a guard steps onto the stage and yanks the black cloth away.

The man underneath blinks against the light. For a second, I don’t understand what I’m looking at, but then recognition slams into me.

That hard line of his jaw. That cold, patient stare. That face that kept appearing where it shouldn’t have, lingering at the edge of corridors and disappearing whenever I looked too closely.

He’s real.

A sharp chill races through me as weeks of fear come crashing back, dragging with them every sleepless night and every shadow outside my door.

The footsteps behind me. The feeling of being watched. The certainty that if I turned around, somebody would be standing there.

My fingers go numb, every memory rearranging itself around a truth I never wanted to face. It was never paranoia or grief. It was him.

“No,” I whisper, the sound coming out hoarse and almost feral.

“Yes.” Ciaran’s hand settles against the base of my spine, so warm and steady beneath my jacket that for a moment I want to crawl away and hide.

But then the man looks up and straight at me with that smile that speaks the truth even more heartbreaking than my thoughts ever could.

“Rowan Ashford,” he says, his voice rough from whatever they did to him before bringing him here. “Still alive.”

The sound of my name in his mouth turns my stomach.

Ciaran’s fingers flex against my back before he casually hooks the barrel of the gun beneath the man’s jaw and lifts his head. “Careful now.”

The man’s smile falters, and he obeys just enough to glance at Ciaran before turning his attention back to me. “You were a hiding place to her, kid. And to me and my men, you became entertainment. Sorry to break it to you, but that’s all you were.”

I swallow. “Why?”

He shrugs, seemingly unaffected by his position. Perhaps he knows he’s going to die anyway. “Düren’s a tough place, but I don’t have to tell you that. There was never going to be a future for me out there. Protecting the Ward, and for what? Evil finds its way through every crack. So when Vera Orlov recruited me, I didn’t think twice.”

He spits blood onto the stage. “Spent years going on about that bloody Noctis. Said the answers were in the music, but every time she played it, she got nothing. Then she’d send us back to watch you. Follow you. Frighten you. Said if you ever figured it out, she’d know. Said if you ever started playing it the right way... she’d finally get what she’d been chasing. Even after you burned that page, you remembered. That’s what she believed.”

All those years, I thought the music was the thing hunting me. The truth settles quiet and final. Turns out I was never running from it. I was carrying it.

I shake my head and take one slow step closer. “You really don’t understand, do you? All those years, you thought you were hunting me. You took my sleep. You took my childhood. You took my peace. But you don’t get the rest of me.”

Ciaran presses the barrel of the gun against the man’s temple. “This one talks too much, don’t you think, mouse?”

Then he grabs a fistful of the man’s hair, forcing his head back to expose his throat to the entire chapel.

The crowd erupts, hungry for action.

“And judging by where you’re kneeling,” Ciaran says, a grin tugging at his mouth, “I’d say that war is going remarkably badly for you.”

The man spits curses while Ciaran’s grip only tightens, blood dripping onto the stage between them as the cheers grow louder.

Run.

The memory hits hard enough to steal my breath, but for the first time I don’t want to.

Ciaran drags the man’s head back by the hair, smiling as another curse tears from him and the crowd answers with cheers. The entire thing looks disturbingly easy for the prince standing over him.