Chapter 2
ROWAN
The sound of the Noctis reaches me before the street does.
A long, low note rolls through the air, deep enough to settle in my ribs instead of my ears. It hums through my chest, climbs the back of my throat, and leaves nowhere for another thought to go.
Another note follows, thinner this time, trembling through the dark, and suddenly I’m small again, my shoes slamming against uneven stone as I tear through narrow streets that smell of rain, smoke, and market dust.
I know these streets.
I know what happens here.
So I run harder, but the music keeps following me.
It should be beautiful. It is beautiful. That’s what makes it worse. Because the bow keeps pulling across the strings in long, mournful strokes, each note catching inside my ribs while panic claws higher and higher through my body.
But they’re here.
They’re behind me.
Always behind me.
I don’t look back at first, because I already know what I’ll see if I do. Shadows moving too fast, chasing me down, searching, always searching, never finding.
What are they looking for?
I’m twelve. Maybe thirteen. Old enough to understand danger, but young enough to still believe I can outrun it.
The Noctis cries out again, louder now, the sound so full it blurs my vision. I try to scream, but my mouth is full of grit, thick and dry and impossible, the whole street turned to sand. I can’t breathe right. I can’t get the sound out.
No.
The word never makes it past my teeth, because a hand catches the back of my coat.
I lurch forward, choking on air that won’t come, and the music breaks apart into splinters of sound, bow against string, wood against stone, footsteps closing in, someone shouting, someone grabbing for me—
No—
Wake up.
I come awake hard, dragging in air as if I’ve surfaced too fast, my heart pounding against my ribs as the dark room around me comes back into focus.
The dream tears away the way it always does, leaving only splintered wood, a bell ringing somewhere too far away, and the sense that something is already gone. Even so, it stays with me, tightening my chest.
For one second, I stay motionless on the mattress, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, disoriented enough that I almost expect to find home around me instead of stone walls, narrow windows, and the strange, expensive quiet of a place that still doesn’t feel real.
Back home, we all sleep in one room. For years, I used to dream about having a bedroom of my own. A door I could close. Silence when I wanted it. I never imagined how lonely it could feel. How big and dark a room can seem when it still doesn’t feel like yours.
Across from me, Damaris is still asleep, one arm thrown over his face, blankets half-kicked down around his waist, abandoned by someone who passed out too fast to care where they landed.
The sight of him takes the edge off for half a breath.
For the first time since arriving on Sero, I don’t feel completely alone.
Registration, dorm assignments, and my brief meeting with Professor Halvern the night before already feel blurred together, as though they happened to somebody else and I merely watched.
I shouldn’t have left him last night, shouldn’t have gone to Black Chapel. Shouldn’t have bumped into—
Him.
The thought hits hard enough to make me freeze. His hand at my wrist. His thigh forcing mine apart. His mouth hovering over my skin. The low, terrible calm in his voice.
And worst of all, the way he held me down and somehow made the panic go quiet. The band should have been screaming warnings at me, and instead there was only him.
What I hate most is that he gets there first now, before the academy, before the hall, before the instrument in my hands, as though my body filed him somewhere it shouldn’t have and keeps reaching back.
With a curse, I throw back the covers and reach for the navy academy uniform draped over the chair beside my bed. The jacket still feels borrowed. By the time I’m dressed, my score folder is tucked tight against my ribs. I check for it twice anyway.
Only when I’m sure there’s nothing visibly wrong with me do I open the door, as though looking normal could undo the fact that some stranger now knows exactly how panic looks on me, exactly how my breathing sounds when it breaks.
The corridor outside is empty. Last night it was full of students and noise, but this morning the place feels abandoned, or perhaps it’s the darkness that makes it worse.
I’ve always hated the dark. Growing up on Düren taught me not to trust what moves after nightfall. People like me don’t end up on Sero with scholarships in their pockets.
And yet here I am, on my way to perform at the opening ceremony.
I’ve wanted to see a Noctis ever since I first heard one sing. Not through recordings or academy broadcasts, but a real one.
And this morning, for the first time in my life, I’m going to put my hands on one.
By the time I reach the Hall of Resonance, the doors are already open.
I slow without meaning to as the hall unfolds before me, vast even in the half-light, its vaulted glass ceiling arching high overhead while the first gray of morning catches in the panes.
Ivy presses dark against the outer frame, making the whole place feel older than it is, rows of chairs sweeping around the stage in clean, curved lines, all of them empty, all of them waiting.
And there, at the center of the stage, resting on its polished black cradle, is the Noctis.
For a second, I forget to breathe. I want it so badly it almost hurts, as if I’ve been caught desiring something I was only ever meant to admire from a distance.
No screen or still had ever done it justice, every image I’d ever seen flattening it into something smaller, something I could look at without understanding what it would feel like in person.
The body runs longer than a standard cello, the lines leaner, the black finish catching the low morning light as I stare at it.
Even from here, I can tell the shape is wrong in ways that matter.
I was one of the best cellists in Düren’s youth conservatory, and even then the Noctis had never been a real possibility.
We were never trained on instruments this rare, only taught what they meant, who they belonged to, and that they weren’t meant for us.
And now I’m standing in front of one with my score folder clutched too tightly in my hand, trying not to look every inch the person who’s spent half his life wanting something he was never supposed to want.
Crossing to it slowly, I set my score folder aside and sit before I can lose my nerve.
The base settles against the floor as my left hand finds the neck and my right closes around the bow.
The first contact sends a sharp jolt through me.
The wood is cool beneath my hand, the weight different from a cello, balanced higher, finer in a way that makes my whole body pay attention.
I try not to think about the pressure against my chest, but the contact pulls up an unwanted memory from last night.
Even before I play, I know. This is what I’ve always wanted.
Not just to hear it, but to know it beneath my hands, to make something this rare answer to me.
The bow settles against the strings as I draw the phrase I always start with, four notes and the fifth held just a little longer, the way we used to begin at home before practice really started.
The sound fills the hall in one long line, and something that’s been locked tight inside me since last night finally starts to loosen.
I’m three bars into the opening movement when footsteps echo through the doors.
“I knew you’d be here.”
I stop playing and glance over my shoulder. Damaris is already crossing the hall toward me with a paper cup in one hand and something wrapped in the other, his dark curls still a mess, given up on halfway through.
“Hey.”
“You were already gone when I woke up, boo,” he says when he reaches the stage. “Which is rude, by the way.”
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“But you should.” He sets the coffee down beside me and holds out the pastry. “How bad is it?”
“How bad is what?”
“The nerves, obviously.” When I keep staring at the strings instead of answering, Damaris sighs and pushes the pastry into my hand. “Right. That bad.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I know you’re not hungry. Eat it anyway.”
I look down at my hand on the bow. It’s already shaking.
“I promised your parents.”
“Traitor,” I mutter, but I eat the pastry, because part of me knows he’s right.
Caramel hits first, then vanilla. My eyes lift to his in surprise. “You made these?”
“You like?” Damaris grins, looking far too pleased with himself.
“Obviously.”
“Good.” Dropping into the chair beside me, he glances around the hall. “Because I made a whole batch before we left. I had no idea what they’d feed us here, and I’m not trusting rich people with breakfast.”
Despite myself, I laugh. Damaris wouldn’t be Damaris if he hadn’t packed enough food for a small emergency. I still have no idea how he got half of it onto the shuttle.
He glances up at the Noctis, and when he looks back at me there’s something warmer in his face than teasing. “So? How is it?”
Looking down at the instrument in my hands, I honestly still feel a little overwhelmed by the feel of it against me. “Amazing.”
His grin softens. “Good. You’re going to do so well, by the way. They’re not going to know what walked into this academy.”
“You have to say that.” I shake my head. “You’re legally obligated.”
“Exactly.” Damaris reaches for his coffee with a smug grin, proving his own point before he opens his mouth to say something else, then stops.
“Mr. Ashford.”
Professor Halvern is already halfway down the aisle, silver hair combed flat, his dark academy uniform so perfectly pressed it barely looks worn.
At registration yesterday, he informed me that Caervast does not usually offer Noctis scholarships, as though he still wasn’t entirely convinced it should have happened.