Chapter 30 #2
A guard’s fist latches onto my hair, dragging my head back. “Answer her.”
Pain lances through my scalp, and I bite back a scream. All I can see is Ciaran standing beneath the pavilion lights, looking at me like something inside him had cracked open. Like he didn’t know me anymore. Like maybe he wished he never had.
“He was angry,” I whisper.
And maybe he should’ve been. Maybe everybody else already knew who Sola was. I was the only one still standing there looking stupid while the whole room watched my life fall apart.
“Because you lied to him?” she asks.
“Because I ran.”
At least, I think. But my memories keep twisting out of my reach every time I try to hold onto them, scattering between the concert, his dark eyes, and the look on his face when he asked if I knew.
Ciaran.
Another kick lands in my midsection, and I curl protectively around myself with a half-sob, half-groan.
“Disappointing.” The woman grips my hair and pulls my head back again, waiting until I force my gaze to meet hers. “What did the Virels tell you about the sequence?”
“Nothing.”
“What did Angela say after you played?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
“I swear I don’t know anything!”
The guard strikes me again, and this time I hear an audible crack. My scream echoes off the stone walls around us.
“Oh, please.” The woman stands, clearly disgusted. “How’s your poor little heart doing these days, darling? Still stumbling every time you get frightened?”
The question lands harder than the blows. My pulse stutters badly enough to make my chest tighten.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I ask, wrapping my arms around my middle.
“Because you should’ve stayed invisible.” Her expression hardens. “You should’ve stayed in Düren, protecting the Ward like some useless little dust boy, instead of dragging that sequence straight back into the Virels’ hands.”
Her eyes burn into mine. “Do you have any idea what Angela lost when that manuscript disappeared? She remembered the music. What she lost was everything hidden inside it. You can remember a melody, but you don’t remember decades of names, deals, favors, and obligations well enough to rebuild them from memory.
” Her mouth twists. “And then you went and got fucked by the lion’s whelp on top of it. ”
“Shut up!” The words rip out of me loud enough that even the guards look surprised. “You don’t get to talk about him like that.”
Her expression freezes before the next kick slams into me hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
Something twists painfully in my chest, because now I can remember it too clearly—Ciaran’s hands in my hair, his mouth against my throat, the weight of him beside me in bed while rain struck the tower windows.
Mouse.
My eyes sting. “It was you?” I can barely get it out. “Those footsteps outside our apartment? Outside my dorm?”
She smiles. “You really thought you were imagining them?”
Cold slides through me as memories crash together too fast. Shadows outside windows, footsteps behind me in empty streets, waking up gasping while Sola checked my pulse and told me it was just another panic attack.
“You know, he’s not coming for you,” she croons. “The lion’s whelp isn’t going to burn down his own family for some frightened little Düren boy.”
I attempt to crawl away from her, from the guard standing nearby, but everything hurts. Every jagged breath feels like a dagger twisting in my chest. My heartbeat feels wrong now too, skipping whenever the pain spikes.
I can’t stop thinking about the way Ciaran used to pull me against his chest at night like he thought keeping me warm could somehow fix everything wrong inside me.
“What did Angela tell you?”
“Nothing.”
Another kick sends me rolling across the floor.
“What did the Virels want from you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar.”
The next blow catches my mouth, and more blood floods across my tongue. One of my teeth feels loose when I swallow, and panic flashes through me before the next blow arrives. Tears sting my face, drying in cold tracks down my cheeks.
The woman crouches in front of me, studying me like something pathetic beneath her shoe. “A poor little musician from Düren sleeping in a Virel heir’s bed,” she murmurs. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”
I shut my eyes because all I can see is Ciaran looking at me beneath the pavilion lights like something between us had shattered before I could explain anything at all.
“You still hear it, don’t you?” Her voice sharpens. “All these years later and you still can’t get rid of it. You know the melody.”
Angela…
The music. She didn’t ask me to play that warm-up song for no reason. She asked because she knew it. She recognized it.
For the first time, something flashes across the woman’s face that looks almost like satisfaction, the expression of someone finally hearing the answer she’d spent years searching for.
“You think Angela was the only one who could play?” Her laugh turns bitter as her gaze lands on the Noctis beside the wall. “I used to play that instrument, long before Angela took everything from me.”
She rises and starts pacing again. “She spent fucking years hiding things in music. Thought she was so clever. Thought I didn’t know.” She laughs softly. “I spent those years sitting across from her, trying to work out what she wasn’t saying.”
The words settle heavily between us.
Years. Whatever happened between them started long before I was ever born.
My fingers tighten involuntarily against the fabric of my shirt, as if I can repair my broken bones by sheer willpower alone.
There’s a sudden clatter, and I yank my head up to see the guard righting the chair I was tied to. He sets it in front of the Noctis. At a nod from the woman, he hauls me to my feet, ignoring my whimper of pain, and shoves me into the chair.
“Play it.”
The bow is shoved violently into my hand, and my stomach twists. My fingers barely work anymore, shaking from pain and terror.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
The guard grips my hair and shoves my head forward. “Play.”
Breath stuttering, I place the bow against the strings.
The first note breaks apart. My vision blurs so badly I nearly miss the next string completely, and when I force my fingers down harder, nausea surges hot into my throat. I worry I might actually throw up right there over the Noctis.
The second sounds worse. Blood smears slowly across the strings, and pain shoots up my arm every time I force my fingers down to hold the shape of the melody together.
Still, I play, forcing the bow across the strings again and again while my body keeps sagging forward beneath the weight of exhaustion and debilitating pain.
The room tilts every few seconds, forcing me to blink hard just to keep the strings in focus while dark spots drift through my vision.
Nothing happens. No hidden door opens beneath the stone, and no mechanism answers the melody. There’s only the sound of a damaged Noctis crying through the freezing room while the woman beside me starts breathing faster and faster.
The realization spreads through me.
Whatever she expected, it wasn’t this.
“No,” she whispers. “No, that’s not possible.
You were supposed to be…” She starts pacing again, breathing too fast now.
“A hiding place. A frightened little nobody carrying music too dangerous for anyone important to touch.” Her gaze flies back toward me.
“You were never supposed to take it back to Caervast.”
I keep playing, because the guard won’t let me stop and because somewhere beneath the pain, I can still hear Ciaran’s voice in my head, low and rough against my throat.
Stay, Mouse.
The memory hurts worse than the blows, and for one stupid second I almost turn my head, expecting to find him standing behind me.
“Again,” the woman snaps.
For one horrible second, the voice stops sounding like hers. All I hear is Ciaran behind me saying my name low against my throat while warm hands guide mine across the strings.
The bow slips from my hand.
I don’t even try to catch it. Instead, it clatters against the floor while blood drips from my fingers onto the strings.
I don’t know how long I’ve been playing, but my fingers are swollen and bloodied. They hardly move at my brain’s command anymore.
“I can’t.”
The woman stares at me, and for the first time since I woke up, she looks more terrified than furious.
Then her hand closes around my throat, and she squeezes. “You useless little thing.”
I barely hear the rest. The room dims and swims out of focus as I struggle to drag in air. I almost welcome the darkness, silently begging it to take me away from this nightmare.
Somewhere far away, the woman is still shouting. Her hand isn’t even on my neck anymore, and I think I fell out of the chair. Is that hard stone pressed against my cheek?
Somewhere even farther away, I can almost feel Ciaran’s hand at the back of my neck, warm and steady like he’s still holding me together somehow even now.
Please.
Please come for me.
The thought barely feels real by the time darkness finally drags me under.