Stella Monroe - POV
Blood on piano keys sounds like a secret the universe is dying to tell.
Callum's chord still echoes in my ears. The vision he forced into my mind, my mother screaming during her binding, fades to nothing. I'm back in the Old Concert Hall. On my knees on cold marble. Shaking.
"Up." Callum's voice cuts through the ringing in my head. "Death song is completing. We have maybe ninety seconds."
The melody playing in my skull confirms it. My own death song, louder now. Closer.
Hands grip my arms. Asher on one side, Maverick on the other. They pull me to my feet. I try to shake them off.
"Don't touch me."
"Would you prefer to collapse?" Asher doesn't let go. "Because you look about two seconds from passing out."
He's not wrong. My legs feel like water.
They guide me to the stage. To the piano where Callum still sits, hands resting on keys like nothing happened. Like he didn't just shatter my mind with a vision of my mother's torture.
Elijah stands beside the piano, cello already positioned. Maverick moves to a conductor's podium that wasn't there before. When did he set that up?
"Your left hand." Callum doesn't look at me. "Palm up."
I pull my hand back. "What if I refuse?"
"Then you die." He glances at an antique watch on his wrist. "Seventy seconds."
The death song crescendos. Screaming now. My heart hammers against my ribs.
I hold out my left hand. It shakes.
Asher opens the wooden box. Pulls out the knife. The blade catches the stage lights, and I see the stains clearly now. Dark. Permanent. Decades of blood that never washed clean.
"How many people have you done this to?" My voice sounds far away.
"Including your mother?" He weighs the knife in his hand. "Twelve Conduits since 1924."
"How many are still alive?"
No one answers.
"Right. That's what I thought."
Asher cuts his palm first. Fast. Efficient. Blood wells up immediately, dripping onto the stage floor. He doesn't flinch. Just watches the red pool in his hand.
Elijah takes the knife next. Cuts his own palm with steady hands. His expression stays calm. Almost serene. Like bloodletting is meditation.
Maverick is third. He cuts deep. No hesitation. Sets the knife down and wipes the blade with a white cloth. The cloth turns crimson.
Callum stands. Takes the knife. Slices his palm while staring directly at me. His face shows nothing. Not pain. Not fear. Nothing.
He walks around the piano. Stands in front of me.
"The Conduit cut is deeper." He reaches for my wrist. "Your blood is the anchor. It requires more."
I try to pull away. His grip tightens. Not painful, but inescapable.
"My mother." The words tumble out desperate. "When you bound her. Did she choose this?"
His eyes meet mine. Cold. Honest.
"She volunteered. Wanted to save people." A pause. "She learned the hard way that you can't save everyone. Some deaths are fixed. Unchangeable."
The knife cuts before I can process his words.
Fire explodes through my palm. White hot. So deep I feel it in my bones. Blood gushes, running down my wrist, dripping onto marble.
I bite my tongue to keep from screaming. Taste copper.
"To the piano. Now." Callum pulls me forward.
Maverick and Asher materialize on either side. They guide me to the bench. My legs barely hold me. Callum sits, pulls me down beside him.
"Palm on middle C." He positions his bleeding hand over the key. Blood drips onto ivory. Spreads. "Press down."
I place my shaking palm on the keys. The blood is hot. Sticky. The ivory stains red instantly.
Elijah presses his bleeding hand over mine. Then Maverick. Then Asher. Five palms stacked. Five sources of blood mixing on white keys turning crimson.
"Four minutes." Callum's free hand hovers over higher keys. "If you break contact before the composition ends, the binding fails. The backlash kills everyone."
"Good to know."
"Truth usually isn't comforting."
He starts playing.
One hand pinned under ours, one hand dancing across keys. The melody is haunting. Beautiful in a way that makes my chest ache. The notes fill the hall, echo off vaulted ceilings, wrap around the pipe organ pipes.
Elijah's cello joins. Deep. Rich. Impossibly sad. He plays with his body, the instrument between his knees, one hand pressed to mine, the other somehow coaxing sound from strings.
Maverick conducts one-handed. His baton moves in sharp, precise patterns. The music responds like it's alive. Swells. Softens. Bends to his silent commands.
Asher's violin screams last. Wild. Chaotic. The sound tears through the other instruments like lightning through clouds.
Heat builds where our hands meet. Not painful yet. Just wrong. Spreading up my arm like infection.
The world fractures.
I'm seven years old in a mansion bedroom. Not my bedroom. Someone else's. A woman bends down, kisses a man goodbye. "I love you," she says. But the words sound wrong. Discordant. Like notes played a half-step flat. The child watching them, Callum, starts crying. Can't stop. Can't unhear the lie in his mother's voice.
Reality shifts.
Now I'm twelve. Playing cello for a dying woman in a hospital bed. My grandmother. She smiles. Says she feels better. The music made her happy. She dies that night. Did I lie to her with my gift? Did I manipulate her last moments? I'll never know. I'm Elijah. This is Elijah's memory. His guilt.
Another shift.
I'm ten. Speaking to a music teacher. My voice comes out normal. But I see it. Ugly, muddy brown. Discordant and hateful. The color makes me sick. I stop speaking. Never start again. Can't bear the color of my own sound. Maverick's silence. His curse.
One more.
I'm fifteen. Seeing my father clutch his chest. Fall. Die. It's so clear. So real. I run to tell him. He laughs. Says I'm being dramatic. Three days later, heart attack. Exactly like I saw. No one believes the premonitions. They never do. Asher's gift. His burden.
Their memories flood me. Drown me. I can't separate their pain from mine.
Then something changes.
Callum makes a sound. Choked. Desperate.
"What is that?" His voice cracks. Breaks. "What is that sound?"
I realize he's hearing me. My thoughts. My voice in his mind.
"It's true." He sounds awed. Destroyed. "Every word. Every thought. No lies. Just truth."
Elijah gasps. "I can't touch her. My gift. It's failing. She's immune."
His cello wavers. The melody stutters.
Maverick's conducting jerks. Stops. Starts again. His silver eyes go wide, locked on me. He mouths one word. Gold.
Asher's violin screeches. "The futures. They're clear. Solid. I can see." Wonder fills his voice. "I can actually see."
The heat in my palm turns to agony. Burning. Consuming. Spreading through my whole body.
My gift detonates.
Death songs explode into my consciousness. Hundreds. Thousands. Every person in New York City who will die in the next week. The melodies crash together, overlap, create a symphony of endings that shreds my mind.
I scream.
Can't stop. Can't breathe.
"Hold on." Callum's voice sounds miles away. "We're almost through."
But I'm not through. I'm breaking. The death songs are too many. Too loud. My skull can't contain them all.
Something inside me shatters.
The world goes white.
I'm falling through nothing. Through everything.
A voice cuts through the chaos.
"Find the First Score, Stella."
Mom.
Her voice is clear. Real. Like she's right beside me.
"It's not a binding. It's a lock. Every lock needs a key."
"Mom, I don't understand."
"You will. When you need to."
She's gone.
The white fades. Black rushes in.
I'm back at the piano. The music has stopped. My palm is still pressed to bloody keys with four other hands. The blood has dried. Crusted. Brown.
"Done." Callum pulls his hand away slowly. "The binding is complete."
I try to move. Can't. My body won't respond.
"Stella." Asher sounds worried. Actually worried. "Stay with us."
The death songs are still there. But different now. Separated. Distinct. I can identify each one. Understand them.
One rises above all the others.
A melody I know. I've heard it in nightmares since my mother died.
Four notes. Familiar. Terrible.
My eyes find Callum.
The death song is his.
"You're going to die." My voice is barely sound.
He wraps his bleeding palm with a handkerchief. Precise. Careful. "When?"
I listen to the melody. Count the rhythm.
"Four days. Maybe five."
Silence crashes down.
Elijah moves first. "The binding should protect us."
"Apparently not." Callum examines his wrapped hand. "Interesting."
"Interesting?" Asher sounds furious. "You're about to die."
"Everyone dies eventually." Callum looks at me. Cold. Analytical. "The question is whether she can prevent it."
All four stare at me.
I'm still at the piano. Blood on my hands. Hundreds of death songs screaming. And the man who just bound me is going to die.
"I don't know how." My voice breaks. "I've never saved anyone."
"Learn quickly." Callum's voice is ice. "If I die, the binding collapses. Everyone connected dies with me. Including you."