Chapter 32 #3
Angela reaches across the table. “I’m sorry, darling.
I didn’t mean to bring such pain back up.
It’s just... Light, it took me ages to compose that melody.
Ciaran was only young then, but he called it the Villain’s Melody.
He could listen to me playing for hours.
I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. Ironically, it seems the name stuck.”
“It is a lovely melody. Perhaps that’s why it was so easy to memorize.”
Angela smiles, unseeing eyes glittering. “I wrote it for Christian. Initially, it was a love song, but then my father died and he left me with the responsibility of leading the Virels into the future, so I used it to weave in information.”
“Information?” I ask.
“Information?” Ciaran blurts at the same time.
“Yes, my darling. It wasn’t just a love song. It was also code for important family details. Trade, alliances... the piece had become the key to it all. Until Vera stole it from me.”
“She made me play it again and again.” I shiver at the memory, my hand finding Ciaran’s, still resting on my leg. “If Vera was such a gifted Noctis player, why didn’t she just use it herself?”
A faint smile touches Angela’s lips. “I’ve wondered that myself.
If she stole the music, yet still chose to leave it with you, then she must have realized it held something she couldn’t reach herself.
" Her fingers curl lightly around the stem of her glass.
“I imagine that frustrated her more than she ever cared to admit.”
“Why would she keep chasing it after all this time?” I ask.
Angela nods. “We were both from influential families, but she just couldn’t let the competition go.
She was always looking for ways to get back at me, even after all those years.
I often wondered why she didn’t simply destroy the piece.
Why carry it all the way to Düren and hand it to a child?
Now I think she wanted the music to survive but never find its way back into my hands.
By then, hurting me had become more important to Vera than anything else.
She stopped caring who else got hurt along the way.
And in the end, she nearly destroyed my family, leaving me blind. ”
“That’s awful.”
“Yes. Especially because I will never be able to look my loved ones in the eye again. But they stay here”—she points a perfectly manicured finger to her temple—“in my mind. Until eternity.”
I think of all the years of being hunted. Of the nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. Ciaran’s mother understands, having survived the same kind of hatred. This woman who paid for somebody else’s vengeance with her eyes.
For the first time, I don’t feel entirely alone with it.
“Everything started when she gave me that music,” I admit. My hand squeezes the stem of my glass. “They never left me alone. Always there, always hunting me down. I didn’t know why, but I was too scared to stop and turn around. To face them.”
Footsteps outside the apartment. People watching the building. I felt guilty for years, convinced we’d somehow brought the danger on ourselves. Now I understand why Sola left. She thought she was protecting me. She sacrificed herself because she thought she could draw the danger away from me.
“Sola did it for me. She left for me.” The words leave my mouth on a broken whisper, and I don’t know what aches more. The fact that she left me, or the fact that she never gave up on me. That she secured me a scholarship that shouldn’t have existed anymore because she wanted me back in her life.
Angela reaches out, and I grab her hand with my free one. She squeezes it. “Vera’s war ended on Düren.”
“Do you mean—”
“Yes.” She smiles, and I realize we’re both crying. “Nobody will hunt you anymore. Ever.”
Silence stretches across the table as servants move between us, replacing glasses and setting down the next course.
Vera. The music. The footsteps outside our apartment.
All of it was real.
Across from me, Angela turns her wine glass between her fingers. “We’re survivors, Rowan. She took things from both of us. My sight. Your childhood.”
For once, nobody interrupts, not even Lucan.
“But we’re still here.”
The words sink deeper than they should, settling into places I didn’t realize were still carrying all those years of fear.
“And now they’ll have to live with that.”
For a second, I don’t understand. Then I remember the people who followed us, used us, and spent years believing they’d won. They’re gone, and we’re still here.
A servant places another plate in front of me as conversation gradually returns around the table. Rafe argues with one of the aunts while Damaris steals food from Lucan’s plate and Marius finally puts away his multi-slate.
Ciaran’s fingers find mine beneath the table, the conversation continuing around us as though it is the most natural thing in the world.
Sitting there with his hand wrapped around mine while laughter drifts through the room, I realize nobody is waiting for me to leave.
Maybe this is what staying looks like.