Chapter 2
Chapter two
Erik
I step into the theater and take in the faded opulence. I scan it and my breath hitches. It’s made to replicate the Opéra Palais Garnier, and with cleaning and detailing, it can be brought back.
I allow myself to be funneled down the aisle and move to the orchestra pit, then up onto the deck.
I am not seeing the dust. I am seeing what it will be.
Closing my eyes, I tilt my head back and sing.
My voice washes through the house, filling it. When I stop, there is no decay. The sound lingers, searching for somewhere to settle.
Something in me does.
I look out and see what it will be. Seats filled. Captive audiences.
The moment fractures with uneven clapping and an ill-placed “Brava” from the woman who let us in, as if she could keep me from this place.
“I prefer to be alone,” I say, clipped, already turning away.
She’s dismissed from my thoughts as easily as she’s dismissed from the room. Remy will deal with her.
I take two steps before I stop.
My head tilts.
There it is.
Violin.
The sound reaches me from somewhere above, threaded with a despair so precise it hurts. Clean and raw and devastating. It pulls at something low in my chest and doesn’t let go.
I hum without realizing I’m doing it, my fingers flexing, searching for a keyboard that isn’t there. The notes slide into me, sharp and urgent, and I know I won’t forgive myself if I lose them.
I pull my phone from my pocket, opening the recording app just as the sound slips away.
Gone. As if it had never been. An ode to what was? Or a foreshadowing of what will come?
My breath catches. I hum louder, clinging to the shape of it, afraid the memory will evaporate if I stop. I start moving, slow and deliberate, tracking where I think the sound came from.
I will find it.