Chapter 36
ROWAN
The closer we get to the stage, the worse it becomes, nervous energy crawling beneath my skin and making it impossible to stand still while every pair of eyes in the chapel feels fixed on me.
Beside me, Ciaran looks entirely too sure of himself.
Frankly, I don’t trust that smile. It usually means he’s up to something.
Whether it’s blowing me under a cold shower, or surprising me during my daily night swims with a splash and a kiss.
Last night he came home late from the Black Chapel, lifted me out of bed while I was still half asleep, and fucked me over the balcony railing.
The city view by night was amazing, though.
Now, as we move through the crowd, familiar faces begin appearing everywhere, making the reality of what I’m about to do feel terrifyingly real.
Damaris spots me first, his grin widening before he throws both thumbs into the air, making me groan.
Ever since he’s been with Lucan, he’s even more bossy, terrorizing the kitchen and telling everyone what to do. Even Rafe has become docile.
“Tonight’s a special night, mouse,” he purrs in my ear as we make our way through the place.
“Why’s that?” I mumble back, careful to keep the conversation private. He’s up to no good, I just haven’t decided quite yet what it is.
“Because that photo you found of your sister in the Black Chapel was taken on a night like this. Our family organizes multiple Floor Shows per year, and each and every one of them is spectacular.”
As I pass my best friend, I see how Lucan has slung one arm around his waist while a bottle of whiskey dangles from his other hand.
The argument he has with Marius and Rafe draws a lot of attention.
People are staring over their glasses, hungry for excitement.
Of course. Can’t really go anywhere with the Virels.
When Marius catches me staring, he salutes with somebody else’s drink, and I roll my eyes but can’t help chuckling. “And what do you have planned for tonight?”
“Other than your concert? You’ll see.”
We keep on walking, and aside from the guys, I also see Angela sitting in a high-backed armchair near the edge of the stage, elegant as always, her sightless gaze turned toward the music and voices surrounding her.
She must hear us approach, because she smiles and turns in our direction. "There you are, sweetheart."
Ciaran bends to kiss her cheek, smiling as she curls a hand around his nape and brushes it through his black hair.
What’s it like not to be able to see the ones you love most? I wonder. When she reaches out her arm, I take it and throw my doubts overboard, accepting her embrace as her fingers map out my cheek, forehead, my lips.
“I can’t wait to hear you play again, Rowan.”
“Thank you.”
She smiles, glancing over my shoulder. “Perhaps one day we can play together.”
“It would be my honor.” I mean every word.
“Come on now, princess. It’s time for you to hit the stage.”
With an apologetic squeeze of her hand, I steer myself back to where Ciaran is already waiting, fingers crooking when I’m not fast enough.
Sola has come, sitting with her husband a little farther back. She waves when she sees me, and I still can’t believe how quickly she feels familiar after all those years she was nothing but a hole in my heart.
I guess that’s what family is like.
We walk toward the Noctis waiting at center stage, and like always, I smile when I see the instrument, my instrument, waiting for me, and...
“What the hell is that?”
My feet stop moving.
Someone is kneeling beside my Noctis, a black cloth covering their head and shoulders while their hands remain bound behind their back.
Around us, conversations continue for another heartbeat before fading away entirely. Still, nobody looks surprised or confused. If anything, they look interested. Expectant.
My gaze jerks toward the galleries, where the families are already leaning forward in their seats while guards stand watch along the walls, the entire room fixed on the stage with a level of anticipation that makes my skin prickle.
Even Lucan, Marius, and Rafe have gone quiet, their eyes locked on the stage with the same tense anticipation filling the rest of the chapel.
A chill crawls down my spine as I slowly turn back to Ciaran. “Zoryan?”
“I told you we got rid of Vera Orlov.” Leaning close enough that only I can hear him breathe, he brushes his knuckles against my jaw before accepting a gun from one of the guards and turning toward the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this evening. I know you’re all eager for the performance. ”
A ripple of laughter moves through the room, and Ciaran chuckles like he just made the world’s funniest joke.
“I know, I know. Patience is not our strongest suit. Soon, Caervast Academy’s most famous Noctis scholarship student will surprise us with a concert.”
He turns my way, as if he can hear my turbulent thoughts. How dare he put me on the spot even more than I already am?
Looking back at the crowd, he caresses the gun like a lover instead of a mortal weapon.
“But unfortunately, unexpected business barged in as usual. I’m sure you’ve all heard of our recent trip to Düren.
A wonderful collaboration, if I may say so, between the Virel family and the Marrows, and I thank them for their cooperation. ”
Applause follows, but that feeling of unease only grows in my stomach.
Ciaran brushes his knuckles lightly against my cheek, a silent I’ve got you, before turning back to the room.
“Vera might be dead, but we did bring you a gift tonight, mouse.” He points the gun at the person kneeling in front of us, their shape disguised with black cloth, and adds, “This is the man who followed you through the academy. The man who created your nightmares.”
At those words, everything inside me goes still. The stage, the crowd, even the music fall away as my gaze locks on the gun in Ciaran’s hand and the man kneeling at his feet.
“I found him for you, Rowan. And tonight, he dies.”
With a flick of his finger, a guard steps onto the stage and yanks the black cloth away.
The man underneath blinks against the light. For a second, I don’t understand what I’m looking at, but then recognition slams into me.
That hard line of his jaw. That cold, patient stare. That face that kept appearing where it shouldn’t have, lingering at the edge of corridors and disappearing whenever I looked too closely.
He’s real.
A sharp chill races through me as weeks of fear come crashing back, dragging with them every sleepless night and every shadow outside my door.
The footsteps behind me. The feeling of being watched. The certainty that if I turned around, somebody would be standing there.
My fingers go numb, every memory rearranging itself around a truth I never wanted to face. It was never paranoia or grief. It was him.
“No,” I whisper, the sound coming out hoarse and almost feral.
“Yes.” Ciaran’s hand settles against the base of my spine, so warm and steady beneath my jacket that for a moment I want to crawl away and hide.
But then the man looks up and straight at me with that smile that speaks the truth even more heartbreaking than my thoughts ever could.
“Rowan Ashford,” he says, his voice rough from whatever they did to him before bringing him here. “Still alive.”
The sound of my name in his mouth turns my stomach.
Ciaran’s fingers flex against my back before he casually hooks the barrel of the gun beneath the man’s jaw and lifts his head. “Careful now.”
The man’s smile falters, and he obeys just enough to glance at Ciaran before turning his attention back to me. “You were a hiding place to her, kid. And to me and my men, you became entertainment. Sorry to break it to you, but that’s all you were.”
I swallow. “Why?”
He shrugs, seemingly unaffected by his position.
Perhaps he knows he’s going to die anyway.
“Düren’s a tough place, but I don’t have to tell you that.
There was never going to be a future for me out there.
Protecting the Ward, and for what? Evil finds its way through every crack.
So when Vera Orlov recruited me, I didn’t think twice. ”
He spits blood onto the stage. “Spent years going on about that bloody Noctis. Said the answers were in the music, but every time she played it, she got nothing. Then she’d send us back to watch you.
Follow you. Frighten you. Said if you ever figured it out, she’d know.
Said if you ever started playing it the right way...
she’d finally get what she’d been chasing.
Even after you burned that page, you remembered. That’s what she believed.”
All those years, I thought the music was the thing hunting me. The truth settles quiet and final. Turns out I was never running from it. I was carrying it.
I shake my head and take one slow step closer. “You really don’t understand, do you? All those years, you thought you were hunting me. You took my sleep. You took my childhood. You took my peace. But you don’t get the rest of me.”
Ciaran presses the barrel of the gun against the man’s temple. “This one talks too much, don’t you think, mouse?”
Then he grabs a fistful of the man’s hair, forcing his head back to expose his throat to the entire chapel.
The crowd erupts, hungry for action.
“And judging by where you’re kneeling,” Ciaran says, a grin tugging at his mouth, “I’d say that war is going remarkably badly for you.”
The man spits curses while Ciaran’s grip only tightens, blood dripping onto the stage between them as the cheers grow louder.
Run.
The memory hits hard enough to steal my breath, but for the first time I don’t want to.
Ciaran drags the man’s head back by the hair, smiling as another curse tears from him and the crowd answers with cheers. The entire thing looks disturbingly easy for the prince standing over him.
Run.
The word echoes through me like a memory as Ciaran finally looks up.
“What’s it going to be, mouse? Are you done letting him haunt you?”
My pulse stumbles, and for a moment the stage and chapel disappear, leaving only a corridor stretching endlessly ahead of me.
Footsteps behind me. The certainty that if I turn around, someone will be there.
Faster, faster, until I can’t tell whether I’m escaping something or carrying it with me.
The memory swells until it feels like it might split me open, but then I look at the man kneeling at Ciaran’s feet, and I realize I’m done running.
“Kill him.”
Everything stops. The man, the chapel, even the air seems to hold its breath.
“That’s my good boy,” is all Ciaran says.
Bang.
The shot echoes through the Black Chapel. The man’s body jerks before collapsing onto the stage, and blood spreads slowly beneath him, staining the wood dark red.
I can’t stop staring. I can’t believe he’s dead.
And in that moment, watching his blood spill across the stage, I realize the face from the corridors is finally gone. Vera may have started it, but he was the one who lived inside my fear.
He’ll never be waiting outside my door again. Never be standing at the end of a corridor. Never be following me through the dark.
Never again.
For the first time in months, I feel something that might be peace.
The chapel erupts into cheers, glasses slamming against tables. Somebody whistles and a cork pops somewhere below. The entire room reacts like they just watched the final round of a fight instead of a man dying on stage.
Ciaran glances down at the body, taps it dismissively with the toe of his shoe, and sighs. “Clean this up.”
The guards move at once, and I find myself watching how quickly it all disappears instead of the body.
An elderly woman shuffles onto the stage with a bucket and rag, scrubbing away the blood as though she’s cleaning up after another ordinary evening.
“Come on.” Ciaran clicks his tongue. “My boyfriend’s concert is running late.”
Then he catches my wrist and lifts our joined hands high enough for the entire chapel to see, the matching stones in our bands flashing beneath the stained-glass light.
“For the slow ones in the room,” he says, glancing around the chapel, “this is Rowan Ashford. My musician, my choice, and the man who’ll stand beside me when I inherit everything my family built.
He’s mine. And if anybody decides to follow him, threaten him, stalk him, or otherwise make the mistake our late guest just did, I suggest you take a very good look at how tonight ended. ”
His fingers tighten around mine as he lifts my medical band to his mouth, pressing a kiss against the metal before brushing another across my knuckles, my cheek, and finally my forehead.
“I hope you enjoyed your show, mouse,” he murmurs against my lips. “I know I will enjoy mine.”
Then he leaves me standing there.
The older woman finishes scrubbing the last of the blood from the stage, hauls herself back to her feet with her bucket tucked against one hip, and gives me a brisk nod. “There. You’re good to go, darling.”
I stare at the spotless floorboards before making my way toward the chair waiting beneath the lights.
Before I can fully process it, another attendant hurries onto the stage carrying the Noctis with careful, almost reverent hands. They place it in front of me, the black lacquer gleaming beneath the stained glass.
For a long moment, I simply look at it. At the place where a man died only minutes ago. Then I realize this is my life now. Dark and complicated. Beautiful and terrifying.
And somehow, I don’t want anything else.
I sit, settle the Noctis against my body, raise the bow, and draw the first note into the silence.
Conversation fades and glasses lower as the music fills the room. Between phrases, I catch glimpses of my sister crying beside Cassian, Angela smiling toward the sound, Damaris leaning against Lucan, and Ciaran watching me like nothing else exists.
The music carries me after that, past the fear, past the blood, until the final note fades into the air. A heartbeat later, applause crashes through the chapel, glasses striking tables and whistles rolling through the crowd.
Through it all, Ciaran swaggers onto the stage, applauding loudly as he makes his way toward me.
My breath catches when he reaches me, catches my hand, and pulls me to my feet. "I knew you’d steal the show, mouse," he murmurs. “Told you they’d all fall in love with you.”
Then he kisses me, one hand cupping my jaw, the kiss carrying the same promise and certainty as everything else about him. Like he doesn’t care that every family in the Reach is watching. Then again, maybe he doesn’t.
The chapel fades around us until all I can feel is Ciaran’s mouth on mine.
And for the first time in my life, I don’t flinch from being seen.