Isabelle's POV
The music room at midnight was no longer a sanctuary. It was a charged cell. Moonlight, cold and surgical, cut through the high windows, painting the grand piano a dull silver. It felt less like an instrument and more like an altar.
Dmitri was already there, a darker shadow against the gloom. He didn't speak. A sharp tilt of his chin toward the music stand was my only instruction. This had become our clandestine ritual since the cafeteria: stolen hours where he honed my defiance into a weapon, and I tried to ignore the way his gaze felt like a physical claim.
But tonight, the silence had teeth. He'd discarded his blazer. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, baring forearms marked with faint, pale scars I'd never noticed. The top button of his shirt was undone. He looked less like a prince and more like a soldier waiting for a battle he knew would break him.
I lifted my violin, the wood a familiar chill against my skin. I played a passage from Zigeunerweisen, the notes meant to be wild and free. They came out strained, a jagged lament. My mind was a riot of ghosts: my mother's stolen name, Viktor's petrified face, the treacherous heat that coiled in my stomach whenever Dmitri stood too close.
The bow slipped. A raw, dissonant shriek tore the air.
"Focus," he commanded, his voice a low vibration in the hollow room.
"I can't!" The words erupted from me. I lowered the violin, my hand trembling. "How can I focus when I know your father is out there right now, looking for a clean way to make me disappear? I don't know who I am anymore. I'm wearing a dead woman's life. And you… you just watch. Am I your project? Your fascinating, broken doll?"
He pushed off the piano. His movement was fluid, predatory, closing the distance between us. "I watch you because you're the only real thing in this museum of lies. My father is a relic. Don't let his shadow live in your head rent-free."
A bitter laugh escaped me. "Easy for you to say. You have his name. His power. Is that why you're here? Volkov guilt? Or are you just like him, waiting to see what you can take from me once I'm useful?"
He stopped, a breath away. The air crackled. "You think this is about guilt?"
"I think you're bored," I hissed, stepping into his space, driven by a pain I wanted him to share. "I'm the scandalous little scholarship rat who looks like a princess. It's a diverting game. Tell me, Dmitri… when you look at me, who do you see? Or is it just my mother's ghost you're obsessed with? Maybe you're just as hollow as he is. A polished puppet playing at being a demon."
The insult landed. His icy control shattered, revealing the raw fury beneath.
"A puppet?" he repeated, the word a soft, deadly thing.
"Yes." My heart hammered, a frantic counter-rhythm to the tension. "You play at power, but you hide in the dark because you're afraid to face him in the light. You're a coward. A gilded name wrapped around nothing."
He moved.
It was not a step. It was an ambush. One hand slammed against the music stand, caging me against the solid bulk of the piano. My violin was trapped between us, its delicate wood groaning in protest.
"You want to know what I see?" His voice was a guttural whisper, his face so close I could see the storm in his eyes, the faint scar through his brow. "I see a girl who thinks she can poke a beast and not get bitten. I don't see a ghost. I see the only thing in this rotting place that makes me feel alive."
"Then prove it," I breathed, the challenge trembling on my lips.
He closed the last fraction of space until his forehead rested against mine. His breath hitched, a ragged sound. The mask of the Demon Prince was gone, stripped away, leaving a young man ravaged by a war inside his own soul.
"Please." The word was torn from him, raw and desperate. His grip on the stand was so tight the metal trembled. "Don't shut me out. Not you. I am drowning, Isabelle. You are the only air."
His vulnerability disarmed me more completely than any threat. I had braced for a fight, for cold strategy. I had no defense for this shattered honesty.
My hand, which had been fisted to push him away, unclenched. It found the crisp cotton of his shirt, clutching not to repel, but to hold on.
He didn't ask again. He claimed my mouth.
The kiss was not gentle. It was a collision, a surrender, a battle all at once. It tasted of salt and desperation and a profound, aching loneliness that mirrored my own. I stiffened, a last instinct to rebel against the Volkov heir, against the danger.
But the heat of him was a forge. The ice within me didn't just melt; it vaporized. My resistance dissolved. A small, broken sound escaped my throat, and I was kissing him back. My other hand flew to his hair, tangling in the dark silk, pulling him closer as if he were the anchor in my own storm. The violin bow fell from my limp fingers, a soft thud on the Persian rug.
The kiss deepened, transforming. The desperation softened into something terrifyingly deep, a current of raw feeling that pulled me under. He made a low, wrecked sound against my lips, his arms encircling my waist, lifting me until I was flush against the solid wall of his chest. I could feel the furious, galloping rhythm of his heart.
In that moon-drenched silence, there was no legacy, no vendetta, no school. There was only the shocking truth of his mouth on mine, his hands on my back, and the terrifying realization that in this dark, we were not two enemies, but two survivors clinging to the same wreckage. He was not claiming me. He was giving himself, and in doing so, he was claiming every broken piece of me in return.
Julien's POV
The East Wing at midnight was a cathedral of silence. I had come to the music hall to leave a note, a carefully worded plea for understanding I'd rewritten a dozen times. I acted from love. I wanted to keep you safe. Forgive me.
The heavy oak door was slightly ajar. A sliver of silver light, and a sound that was not music, stopped me dead.
A soft thud. A bow hitting the floor.
Then, a silence more intimate than any sound, the syncopated rhythm of shared, ragged breaths.
Every principle of decency I possessed screamed at me to turn away. But a colder, sharper instinct won. My hand moved, pushing the door a silent inch wider.
The world I knew cracked down in the middle.
There they were, fused in a column of moonlight. Isabelle, my Isabelle, was not pulling away. She was arching into Dmitri Volkov, her fingers speared through his hair, her body yielding to his with a trust she had never shown me. And Dmitri… the boy of ice and calculation was holding her as if she were the only thing preventing his dissolution. His face was naked, anguished, human.
A pain, sharp and cold as a shard of glass, pierced my chest. It was not the heat of anger, but the absolute zero of obliteration. The apology note crumpled in my fist, the paper tearing with a sound I didn't hear.
I watched, a ghost at my own funeral, for a heartbeat too long. They moved together with a terrible, beautiful symmetry. They looked like two halves of the same cursed whole.
The noble hurt, the urge to storm in and challenge him, died before it could spark. It was replaced by a chilling, clear certainty.
He will ruin her.
He was a wildfire; he would consume her bright, delicate spirit until nothing was left but ash and dependence. His love was a possessive frenzy. Mine was preservation.
I let the shredded note fall silently to the stone floor. No more letters. Words were Volkov's currency, used to manipulate and conceal. My proof would be action.
I backed into the shadows, my retreat soundless. The heartbreak was there, a dull, insistent ache, but it was being encased in a new, harder resolve.
He might have won the night. He might have claimed the darkness.
But I would win the war. I would save her from the demon, even if I had to save her from herself. My love was not a claiming. It was a sanctuary. And I would prove it was the only thing she truly needed.