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Run.

The word echoes through me like a memory as Ciaran finally looks up.

“What’s it going to be, mouse? Are you done letting him haunt you?”

My pulse stumbles, and for a moment the stage and chapel disappear, leaving only a corridor stretching endlessly ahead of me.

Footsteps behind me. The certainty that if I turn around, someone will be there.

Faster, faster, until I can’t tell whether I’m escaping something or carrying it with me.

The memory swells until it feels like it might split me open, but then I look at the man kneeling at Ciaran’s feet, and I realize I’m done running.

“Kill him.”

Everything stops. The man, the chapel, even the air seems to hold its breath.

“That’s my good boy,” is all Ciaran says.

Bang.

The shot echoes through the Black Chapel. The man’s body jerks before collapsing onto the stage, and blood spreads slowly beneath him, staining the wood dark red.

I can’t stop staring. I can’t believe he’s dead.

And in that moment, watching his blood spill across the stage, I realize the face from the corridors is finally gone. Vera may have started it, but he was the one who lived inside my fear.

He’ll never be waiting outside my door again. Never be standing at the end of a corridor. Never be following me through the dark.

Never again.

For the first time in months, I feel something that might be peace.

The chapel erupts into cheers, glasses slamming against tables. Somebody whistles and a cork pops somewhere below. The entire room reacts like they just watched the final round of a fight instead of a man dying on stage.

Ciaran glances down at the body, taps it dismissively with the toe of his shoe, and sighs. “Clean this up.”

The guards move at once, and I find myself watching how quickly it all disappears instead of the body.

An elderly woman shuffles onto the stage with a bucket and rag, scrubbing away the blood as though she’s cleaning up after another ordinary evening.

“Come on.” Ciaran clicks his tongue. “My boyfriend’s concert is running late.”

Then he catches my wrist and lifts our joined hands high enough for the entire chapel to see, the matching stones in our bands flashing beneath the stained-glass light.

“For the slow ones in the room,” he says, glancing around the chapel, “this is Rowan Ashford. My musician, my choice, and the man who’ll stand beside me when I inherit everything my family built. He’s mine. And if anybody decides to follow him, threaten him, stalk him, or otherwise make the mistake our late guest just did, I suggest you take a very good look at how tonight ended.”

His fingers tighten around mine as he lifts my medical band to his mouth, pressing a kiss against the metal before brushing another across my knuckles, my cheek, and finally my forehead.

“I hope you enjoyed your show, mouse,” he murmurs against my lips. “I know I will enjoy mine.”

Then he leaves me standing there.

The older woman finishes scrubbing the last of the blood from the stage, hauls herself back to her feet with her bucket tucked against one hip, and gives me a brisk nod. “There. You’re good to go, darling.”

I stare at the spotless floorboards before making my way toward the chair waiting beneath the lights.

Before I can fully process it, another attendant hurries onto the stage carrying the Noctis with careful, almost reverent hands. They place it in front of me, the black lacquer gleaming beneath the stained glass.