Chapter 30
ROWAN
Iwake tied to a chair, rope sawing into my wrists.
Nausea rolls through me until I can’t tell which way is up.
Light, I’m freezing.
Struggling against the restraints only sends pain shooting up my arms. My hands are already numb behind the chair, and a second length of rope cuts across my chest, pinning me upright despite my body trying to curl forward.
Swallowing feels like my throat is full of sandpaper, and every breath tastes stale. The longer I stay conscious, the more my stomach twists.
I force my eyes open again and finally take in my surroundings.
Stone presses in from every side beneath a low ceiling.
A single lamp swings overhead, throwing weak yellow light across rough walls and a floor stained by years of use.
There are no windows, no obvious exit, and no sound except the faint hum of machinery somewhere beyond the walls.
The place feels less like a prison and more like a basement somebody was never meant to find. Something about the damp stone, old metal, and cold dust crawling through the air makes my skin prickle with ugly familiarity.
I’ve smelled air like this before. Damp concrete, rust, old machinery. For one disorienting second, I almost think I’m back in Düren.
A memory flickers and vanishes, leaving behind only fragments of trees rushing past, somebody grabbing my arm, and the distant roar of engines cutting through the dark.
Did they put me on a shuttle, or did I dream that?
The memory slips away before I can grab hold of it.
I clench my fingers and roll my wrist, looking for the comforting weight of my medical band, and panic surges through me and my stomach drops.
It’s gone. My multi-slate too.
Dread spreads through me as the realization clicks into place, my pulse climbing higher with every passing second.
Ciaran can’t find me. He has no idea where I am. He doesn’t even know if I’m alive.
The thought lodges somewhere deep inside my chest and refuses to move.
Please be looking for me. Please.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but all I see is him standing in the pavilion with betrayal burning in his eyes.
What did I do wrong? Does he really think I lied to him?
The door opens, and I jerk so hard the chair scrapes across the floor.
The woman from the forest walks in with two guards behind her.
I only stare at her face, certain I’ve seen her somewhere before. My exhausted brain struggles to connect the pieces. The room keeps shifting every time I try to focus on her properly, her features blurring together before I can pin them down. Whatever they pumped into me drags at my thoughts.
The sharp tip of her shoe slams into my ankle hard enough to send pain shooting up my leg. “Well. Finally awake, are we?”
“Wh-where are we?” My throat burns, but I force the words out. “Who— you… I remember you?”
But I can’t be sure. Her face keeps blurring in front of me. Pale eyes, a straight nose and lips pursed in a disapproving line…
She smiles maliciously. "Do you? Still confused, I see. That’s disappointing. But you know exactly who I am, Rowan. I’m the lovely woman who gave you music all those years ago so you could play your precious Noctis.”
I stare at her face, trying to force the pieces together through the fog clawing at my thoughts.
Wake up.
My mind goes all those years back, to the market and the blaring horns, to the Ward and the warnings and that merchant.
To the music that destroyed my youth. The music Angela Virel somehow knew.
"How do I know you?" I manage.
A sharp slap cracks across my face, and my vision blurs.
"Wrong answer."
Cold crawls through me as the memory finally crashes back properly—the market in Düren, the damaged music sheet, the woman standing beside the stalls watching me far too closely before disappearing back into the crowd.
And Light, now that the fog is finally lifting, I can see her exactly as she stood in that market all those years ago.
She smiles like recognition is exactly what she was waiting for.
An old Noctis stands near the wall with cracked varnish and newly replaced strings, familiar enough to make something ugly twist through me the second I see it.
Pain rings through my skull as the woman crouches in front of me again, pale eyes fixed on my face like she’s trying to carve the answer straight out of my head.
"You burned the page," she says. "Stupid little boy."
My throat tightens. I still remember the fire swallowing the paper while I stood there convincing myself it was the only way to keep everyone safe.
“Do you have any idea how many years I wasted trying to make that cursed music give up its secrets?” Her voice sharpens. “And talented little Noctis players don’t forget melodies like that, do they?”
Cold slides through me. “I don’t remember anything.”
The guard’s fist crashes into my ribs.
I release a broken sound and try to curl forward, but the rope at my chest keeps me upright.
“Liar.” She grips my jaw and forces my head back. “I know you still hear it in your head. Play it.”
One of the guards cuts the ropes binding my wrists and shoves me toward the waiting Noctis. I wince as pain shoots through my hands the second the tension releases, blood rushing back into fingers that likely went numb hours ago.
I can’t stop shaking long enough to hold the bow properly.
“Angela hid everything inside those compositions,” she continues, pacing in front of me and the Noctis. “Routes. Money. Leverage. Enough power to bury families if the wrong people ever learned how to read what was hidden between the notes.”
I stare at her through the blur in my vision. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“No. You just carried it around half your life without realizing what you had.” Her laugh sounds tired. “While I spent years burying people, buying silence, burning records, and tearing apart half of Sero trying to keep it away from the people who wrote it in the first place.”
“I swear I don’t know anything.”
Something furious flashes across her face. “You were never supposed to leave Düren.”
“And that’s why you brought me back?”
I’m certain now that’s where we are, back in the place I spent my whole life trying to escape.
She snorts. "Light knows this forsaken planet survives because people like me keep it running. When the Orlovs were banned from Sero, Düren was what we had left.” Her laugh turns bitter.
“As if the Virels built their empire with cleaner hands.
Meanwhile, boys like you spent your whole lives dreaming of escape. "
I’m still trying to work out what that means, who she really is, and why we’re back here at all when she leans closer.
“You know why I gave you the music sheet?” she hisses. “Because you were so eager. Little dust boys hiding in the Ward. Such big dreams. You reminded me of her, you know.”
“Of who?” I ask, wincing as another pulse of pain throbs through my ribs. I struggle to make sense of anything she’s saying.
“Of Angela Virel, of course,” she spits. “The reason why my family never got what it deserved. Why I never got what was supposed to be mine.” Her laugh turns sharp. “Halvern never looked at me the way he looked at her.”
For a second, her gaze goes distant before the bitterness comes rushing back.
“So I wanted her to hurt. There.” She presses a finger into my chest, and I don’t miss the way her gaze slips to my bare wrist. “After I gave you the sheet, I had you shadowed in case you did something stupid, like playing the damn music.”
Her hand cracks across my face.
My head snaps sideways, and I hit the ground hard. The impact sends the room spinning out of focus.
“You were supposed to stay invisible, forgettable, and alive.”
She continues pacing after that, one hand dragging sharply through her hair before frustration twists across her face and she kicks the chair I was tied to. It skids across the floor and tumbles end over end, slamming into the stone wall.
“Everything was always Angela Virel.” Her mouth twists.
“The Noctis. Christian. Every room I ever walked into. Then there’s a Noctis scholarship.
Then Caervast. Then the Virels. Then half the planet starts asking why a nobody from Düren matters.
” Her laugh turns bitter as she points at me. “And now look at you.”
For the first time since waking up, I realize she doesn’t look triumphant. She looks exhausted. Like everything she spent years trying to prevent is already happening right in front of her.
I struggle to my hands and knees. “I don’t know what sequence you keep talking about.”
The next blow cracks into my ribs and sends me back to the ground, gasping. Blood coats the inside of my mouth.
“You played it tonight in front of Angela Virel, in front of half the old families, and in front of Ciaran Virel, who apparently couldn’t stop touching you long enough to realize what you were.”
My breath hitches before I can stop it.
“Oh.” Her mouth twists. “That part is real, then.”
“Don’t talk about him.”
“Why not?” She tilts her head. “Did you really think he was going to come for you?”
“He doesn’t know where I went.”
“He watched you run.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. Will he come for me? Or am I only holding onto the idea of him because I don’t have anything else left?
Still, the words land, and my stomach turns.
Part of me still wants to believe he would come after me anyway, because that’s who he is. My Zoryan. The man who made me believe I could belong somewhere.
The rest of me remembers the way he looked in the pavilion and wonders if I ruined everything before I ever started running.
“That’s not true,” I whisper, half to myself and half to the woman standing above me.
“A Virel prince stood inside a room full of armed men, and somehow the frightened little boy from Düren still ended up alone in the forest.” She crouches beside me, close enough that I can’t look away. “Tell me, Rowan. Did he look at you differently after learning who your sister really was?”
I stay silent, because the last time Ciaran stared at me, I felt and saw his disappointment.