The Villain’s Melody

Prologue

Colors.

They’re bright yellow and orange, blurring into deep gold. I want to breathe it in. Cinnamon is so rare, and there’s something sweet underneath it. Is that honey?

I know this place.

The market is flooded with visitors. Merchants call from their stalls. Children dart around us, laughing too loud, running too fast, their shoes slapping over the stone.

I want to play too.

But Ma holds my hand, tucking me close. “Stay here, Rowan. It’s not safe.”

Not safe. Not safe.

Why not? I want to ask, but I don’t. Ma never likes answering me.

"You ask too many questions," she always says. Her fingers tighten around mine.

Still, the market doesn’t look dangerous, and the sky is clear, blue stretched wide above Düren.

My older sister Sola walks on my other side, sulking. She didn’t want to come out with us. Ever since she got a boyfriend, she acts like other people are more important than we are.

But Dad made her come with us, and I’m glad he did. It’s nice with her, even if she’s scowling and complaining there’s nothing to do here.

Perhaps she’s right. But here is all we’ve got. Sometimes I wonder what life could be like on any of those other planets that hang low on the horizon. One of them is bright red, and the other has a pink glow to it.

Do people there also have a Ward that protects them from evil and darkness?

On market days, Düren always feels lighter. For a little while, everyone forgets to be afraid.

Somewhere farther off, a small brass bell rings through the noise, thin and clear enough to find me anyway. Again and again. I hear it better than the voices. Better than anything else. It cuts through everything, bright as glass, and every time it sounds, something in me goes tight.

It’s the sound of danger.

But no one seems to hear it the way I do. Everybody just continues their shopping, their laughter, their chattering.

Wake up.

“Look at that!”

Sola pulls on my arm, but I can’t move. For a brief second, my vision flickers and the market fractures, black light caught in its creases.

Then I blink, and everything falls back into place.

I know the slope of this street. I know the stalls that come first and the ones that come after.

Even when I can’t see him, I know where Pa is because he’s behind us, stopping every few paces to inspect things Ma has no patience for, then pretending he wasn’t looking at them too long.

I know the Ward will be visible if I lift my head.

When I do, it’s there. On the horizon, beyond the rooftops and bright cloth canopies, the wall shimmers. Pale as mist. Stronger than stone. Holding the line beyond the city.

I always look for it. What is behind it? What does evil truly look like? No one knows. Sometimes I wonder if it’s all just a tale.

“Rowan. Come check this out.” Sola points toward a merchant’s table.

Ma takes another two steps before realizing I’m no longer beside her. Her hand tugs at empty air, then stills. “Rowan?”

But my feet are already carrying me toward a stall half-hidden between two stone buildings, shadow cutting across sunlight in one long dark slice. It doesn’t look like the other market stalls. It looks older. Quieter. Like it was there first.

It looks like a secret.

Ma follows my gaze. "Don’t wander," she says, though her attention is already elsewhere. "If you’re looking, stay where I can see you. Sola, don’t let your brother out of sight."

“Never, Ma.” Sola winks at me. “Come on.”

And I happen to love secrets.

A table waits beneath the shade, crowded with things that don’t belong together. Books with split spines. Rolled maps tied in ribbon gone dark with age. Ink boxes. Metal pieces I can’t name. Loose sheets spread over one end of the table, their corners lifting in the breeze.

Then I see the music paper, and my breath catches.

Sola spots it a second later, grinning as she nudges my arm. “Pretty cool, huh?”

Up close, I barely see anything except the music. Torn edges. Water stains. Faded ink. Hand-ruled staves. Strange little marks in the margins that don’t look like lesson notes at all, but something older.

Something that makes me reach for the page.

Then I look up, to where a woman stands behind the table, so still I don’t know how I missed her before. It’s as if she’s been there long enough for the market to move around her.

I know her.

Except I don’t. I only know the feeling that lands inside me like certainty, the same way the bell did.

She doesn’t look like anyone from Düren. Her coat is dark, fitted close through the shoulders and falling nearly to her boots. The cuffs are threaded with a pattern I don’t recognize. Her hair is pinned back, a little loose around her face. She’s already looking at me.

The bell finds me again. And suddenly, I don’t want to be here anymore. We should go. Find Ma. Find Pa. Soon, the horns might blare and then Pa will be called to the Ward, and—

“Are these scores?” Sola asks beside me.

Does she not hear the bells?

The woman glances at her, then back at me. “Some of them,” she murmurs.

“It’s beautiful.” My fingers hover over the sheets, but I don’t touch. Ma says we can’t touch what isn’t ours. Ma also says we need to get inside when the bells ring. “It looks like Noctis notation.”

Sola cuts me a surprised look, but the woman keeps looking at me, as if that was the answer she was waiting for. “Does it now?”

“Master Coren showed me once,” I blurt, my fingers tightening against my own palm. “Just a little. Not a real score. But I know what it looks like. I want to play it one day. We don’t really get the real ones here. Not like the conservatories or the old houses do. Ours is…it’s not the same.”

Still, I can almost feel the weight of the bow in my hand, drawing the first note from the strings. The feeling it gives me when the sound fills my heart.

The woman’s gaze doesn’t leave mine. “But you want the same.”

“Yes,” I admit. “That’s why I practice every day. And when Master Coren lets me stay after, I practice more. One day I’m going to play a real Noctis. I’ll be the best in the entire Reach.”

Next to me, Sola rolls her eyes. “If it were up to him, he’d play all day, every day.”

The woman ignores her. She keeps looking at me for so long that I start wishing I could prove it.

Then she reaches across the spread of pages and chooses one from the middle.

A corner is missing. Small pencil marks run along the margin, finer than the rest of the notation.

I can’t make sense of them. I only know they catch somewhere beneath my ribs.

She holds the page out to me, and I find myself staring first at the paper, then at her hand. “I don’t have any money.”

“I know.” Something shutters behind her eyes. “Dream carefully, little musician, for not every dream survives.”

I frown. “What?”

But she only waits, the page still resting between us.

Then the horn blares, and everything changes. Somewhere behind us, a voice calls out, and Sola grabs my sleeve.

“Rowan,” she hisses. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”

But I’m frozen.

The woman’s eyes never leave mine. “Take it. Keep it safe.”

“Rowan!” Sola yanks me backward.

Without thinking, I snatch the page from her hand. The moment my fingers close around it, the whole market starts to ripple.

More horn blasts tear through the warm air, through the crowd, through the chaos.

“Come on! Now!” Sola shouts.

My heart is beating so fast I feel like it could burst out of my chest. It’s never been this bad, this fast, and I open my mouth and gasp for air, but it still doesn’t feel like enough.

The woman’s still looking at me, even as everything trembles and pulls farther away. The paper is colder than it should be, cold enough that my fingers almost let go.

Keep it safe.

The words echo through my head.

I gasp again, but the world still won’t stop tilting. We’re already running, and I didn’t even notice when it started. People run into us, shoving us to the side.

“Rowan. Sola!” Ma’s voice cuts across the market.

I’ve seen this before.

Pa catches hold of Sola first, then me, keeping one hand on my shoulder and the other on Sola’s arm as he steers us through the market. “Come on. We’re going home.”

Around us, voices rise, stalls are hurriedly covered, and soldiers are already making their way toward the Ward.

Soon they’ll be calling for every man to report there too. They’ll call for Pa.

I should be thinking about the Ward. Instead, my thoughts keep drifting back to the page tucked inside my jacket. What would Master Coren say if he saw it?

We run into our street, when Ma stumbles to a stop and sucks in a sharp breath.

What’s wrong? I want to ask, but I already see what it is. The front door is open.

“Stay here.” Pa takes the path in three long strides, stopping at the half-open front door. The wood around the lock is splintered.

Sola grabs for me, one arm across my chest, pulling me back before I can follow. “Pa—”

He shoves the door wider.

“Milo, don’t.” Ma’s voice sounds sharp, fear threading through every word.

But Pa doesn’t even look back. “I have to.”

Then he disappears inside, and for one stretched, awful second there is nothing at all. No sound from the house, no movement, no proof that anyone is there.

Then a curse breaks loose from somewhere deeper in the dark.

“Light damn it.”

Ma sucks in a sharp breath and hurries after him.

“No!” I shout, and before Sola can pull me back, I wrench myself out of her hold and run down the path to the front door.

Inside, the brass dish from the hall table is on the floor. A drawer is hanging half out of the cabinet, cracked at one corner, with keys and ribbon and sealing wax scattered across the tiles. Beyond that, chairs sit crooked and drawers gape open where they should be shut.

Nothing is where it belongs. It’s like the house isn’t ours anymore.

Pa stands in the middle of the hallway, breathing hard and looking around the wreckage as if he’s trying to make sense of what happened.

His eyes keep returning to the drawers hanging open along the wall before he crouches beside the cabinet, staring at the papers scattered across the floor with a frown that doesn’t look anything like relief. “They went through everything.”

“What did they take?” Ma asks.

He studies the papers a moment longer before shaking his head. “Nothing.”

Sola turns and catches me before I even know I’m shaking. She pulls me hard against her side. One arm wraps around my shoulders, and she presses a hand over the back of my head. “Hey. Hey. I’m here.”

Wake up.

Somewhere deeper in the house, something crashes to the floor as Ma and Pa continue searching through the mess. The sound makes my eyes sting, and suddenly I’m crying.

“Don’t let go,” I whisper, and my fingers knot in Sola’s sleeve.

“Never.” She pulls me closer and lets me bury my face against her shoulder.

Through the blur of tears, I look across the road, to where everyone else is hurrying and shouting around us. One figure stands perfectly still, watching.

I shiver and hug Sola a little tighter. “I love you,” I sob.

“I love you too, silly.” But she squeezes me just that little more.

And I believe her.

At twelve years old, wrapped in my sister’s arms while strangers had turned our home inside out, I can’t imagine a future where Sola isn’t there.

Wake up.