Perviously from the last chapter...
My fingers ached for my violin.
Not from longing but from something deeper. It was as if the bones beneath my skin remembered what it felt like to hold it, to lose myself in sound, to wield the only language I'd ever truly spoken.
Maestro circled me like a vulture dressed for the opera, their porcelain mask catching the purple light in eerie flashes. "You're stronger than the others," they mused, voice silked with menace. "Your music doesn't just take—it transforms."
My throat tightened, the question clawing out of me before I could stop it. "What did I do to Lucien?"
They laughed. Gods, that laugh. It wasn't a sound meant for ears. It was glass breaking underwater, sharp, distant, drowning. "You fed, little weaver," they purred. "Your gift is hungry. And we—" they swept a hand toward the Orchestra, rows of hollow-eyed musicians in tattered elegance—"we can teach you to control it."
A violin was pressed into my hands. Not mine.
This one was... wrong.
The wood was dark, porous, as if it had been carved from something that had once lived and died in agony. The strings glistened like wet sinew. It thrummed in my grip, eager.
"Play," Maestro whispered, their voice brushing the back of my neck like cold breath.
I lifted the bow.
The first note was a scream.
Not figuratively, a scream, torn from the throat of the violin itself, ragged and full of pain. The crowd gasped in unison, clutching their chests like a wave of grief had struck them all at once. A man near the stage crumpled, convulsing, his breath shuddering like a torn bellows.
I tried to stop. I tried.
But the music pulled. It coiled around my wrist, guided my fingers. Something warm and golden rose from the man's mouth, a thread, a shimmer, a memory. It hovered in the air like candlelight.
Love, maybe. Or joy.
Maestro stepped forward and caught it in a glass vial, sealing it with a contented sigh. "Exquisite."
I stumbled back, bile rising in my throat. "No—"
And then the doors exploded.
Wood, metal, and velvet flew inward in a storm of splinters. Julian stood in the wreckage like a nightmare made flesh—fangs bared, coat snapping in the wind, his eyes lit from within with fury that bordered on divine.
The crowd didn't hesitate. They scattered like rats at dawn.
Maestro didn't flinch. "Lord Vire," they cooed, voice like poison in honey. "How predictable."
Julian didn't blink. "Ari. Now."
But my legs refused to move. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. My eyes snagged on the mural behind the stage, illuminated now in the chaos. A towering figure wreathed in fire, arms outstretched, their face unmistakably Julian's.
The Blood Saint.
Maestro's gloved fingers brushed my cheek. Gentle. Final. "He's ours when you fail him," they whispered.
Then Julian was there. His hand clamped around my wrist like a lifeline. He pulled me—no, ripped me—backward.
The world collapsed into motion.
We burst into the alley behind the theater, the cold air hitting my face like a slap. I doubled over, chest heaving, lungs burning.
And I coughed.
Petals spilled from my lips, blackened rose petals, soft and broken. They scattered across the cobblestone, their edges curling into ash. My stomach twisted.
Julian froze beside me. "Ari—"
I stared at the petals, horror rising like floodwater in my chest. My breath came too fast, too shallow.
The violin in my hands pulsed once, deep and low.
Its strings vibrated with a sound that wasn't music.
It was laughter.
***
The petals were worse this time.
I clung to the Spire's marble sink, doubled over, coughing so hard I thought something inside me might split. My ribs burned with every convulsion. The rose petals spilled out in dark clumps—withered, blackened things that looked more like funeral offerings than anything a body should produce. They clogged the drain, their brittle edges crumbling like burnt paper under the stream of water. The basin swirled pink, tinged with the memory of beauty and blood.
Behind me, I heard the floor creak.
Julian stood in the doorway like a statue half-formed from rage. His fingers gripped the frame so tightly the wood groaned beneath them, splintering in protest.
"You're dying," he said, voice flat.
I spat out the last petal, my throat scraped raw. "Yeah. Noticed."
He crossed the room in three long strides, and before I could flinch, his hand was under my chin, lifting my face toward the light. His grip was firm, unyielding. I tried to twist away, but it was like being caught in a vice.
"Julian—"
His thumb brushed the skin just beneath my eyes. I saw his expression shift—the flicker of worry, quickly buried under something colder. His touch lingered over the dark veins threading out from my temples—delicate, branching lines like cracks spreading across fine porcelain.
"Your soul is unraveling," he murmured.
The words dropped into the room like stones into water. No urgency. Just quiet devastation. And somehow, that scared me more than if he'd screamed.
I jerked back, shoving him with both hands. "Thanks for the diagnosis, doc. Got a cure to go with it?"
He didn't answer right away.
His jaw tightened, his mouth a grim line. For a moment, I thought he might snap, shout, do something.
Instead, he turned on his heel, his coat flaring behind him like a curtain of night.
The silence he left behind was worse than shouting.
Then came the slam of the Spire's front doors, sharp, final.
I sagged against the sink, breath coming in short, uneven bursts. My reflection stared back at me, warped in the cracked mirror above the basin.
The veins beneath my skin pulsed faintly, like something alive was trying to crawl out.
And in the bowl of the sink, the petals continued to dissolve, delicate, cursed things that used to mean love, now just the remnants of something I couldn't name.
***
Julian's POV:
The Clockwork Abbey was cloaked in silence at this hour. An eerie, reverent hush broken only by the faint ticking of the brass bones that lined its walls. The cogs turned in rhythm, like a mechanical heartbeat echoing through the sanctified gloom.
Julian didn't knock.
He kicked open the sanctum door, and it slammed against the wall with a metallic groan. Gears scattered across the floor like startled beetles, skittering into the shadows. The sharp tang of oil and old incense stung his nose.
At the center of the dimly lit room, Veradine sat hunched at her workbench, sleeves rolled to the elbow, her fingers moving with delicate precision. She didn't look up. Her needle threaded through something pale and glistening—a heart, perhaps, or something like it—suspended in a gently pulsing glass jar. Whatever it was, it was alive. Barely.
"You're late," she said, voice flat as iron.
Julian strode forward, boots crunching over scattered bits of brass and wire, and slammed his palms onto the workbench. The force rattled a tray of tiny screwdrivers and sent a vial rolling to the floor.
"Fix him."
Veradine finally stilled.
She exhaled slowly, the breath whistling through her teeth as if it pained her to take it in. Then she set the needle aside, wiped her fingers on a dark cloth, and reached up to loosen the silk blindfold wrapped around her eyes.
Just enough.
Beneath it, her eyes were pale and pupil-less; milky orbs that caught the lamplight and refracted it like glass. Eyes that had not seen in the conventional sense for decades, yet saw deeper than most ever would.
"You know the rules, Lord Vire," she murmured. "Everything has a price."
Julian's jaw clenched. His fangs ached behind his teeth, a low throb echoing the anger swelling in his chest. He leaned closer, his voice a growl scraped raw.
"Name it."
For the first time, Veradine smiled. It was not a kind smile.
"I want his dreams," she said softly.
Julian stared at her, something ancient and furious flickering behind his gaze.
She reached out, brushing her fingers across the tabletop, as if smoothing the invisible threads of a web only she could see.
"The raw ones. The unfiltered kind. I want to feel what he feels when he's too asleep to lie. The places he fears. The moments he forgets on purpose. I want the truth of him."
Julian's fists curled.
A pause stretched between them like a string pulled taut, waiting to snap.
And then—very quietly, very coldly—he said, "Take them."
***
I was dreaming of fireflies.
They hovered just beyond reach, flickering in and out of the darkness, each glow pulsing to the rhythm of a lullaby I couldn't place. The violin lay warm against my chest, its curves familiar, its weight a comfort I clung to without thought. My arms curled tighter around it, as if the world outside might try to take it from me again.
But even in sleep, I felt the pain blooming under my skin.
It whispered through my veins, sharp, black tendrils of fire that crept along my throat and burrowed beneath my collarbone. Each breath came with effort. Wet. Shaky. I knew I was dying, but dreams are generous things; they let you forget for a while.
Then I felt it.
A presence. Two, maybe. One hovered like a stormcloud, tense and trembling with restrained rage. The other moved like a breeze through a crypt, quiet, invasive, cold. I didn't wake, not fully, but the dream began to decay at the edges.
"Be gentle," a voice said.
Julian. His voice was rougher than I remembered it, splintered with fear he didn't know how to hide. I wanted to reach for him, but my limbs wouldn't obey. The violin was heavy now, almost sinking into me.
A soft chuckle answered him, too soft to be warm. "When am I not?"
That was Veradine.
Even in my half-conscious haze, I flinched.
Then everything unraveled.
The room collapsed into darkness, not shadow, not night, but a void so complete it felt alive. The kind of darkness that didn't just swallow light, but drank sound, breath, and thought. My body went still. Cold fingers pressed against my temples, their touch light, but beneath it... something opened.
It wasn't pain I felt, not exactly. It was exposure.
Like pages being torn from a journal I'd locked away and set on fire. My memories unfolded without my permission—raw, aching things laid bare beneath her hands. My mother's song. Lucien's last note. Julian, standing in the rain with blood on his sleeve. The first time I played the violin and felt the world pause to listen.
All of it stripped down to its bones.
I wanted to scream, but the darkness swallowed that too.