The relocation to the Emperor's private bedchamber was a journey of a thousand agonizing vibrations. For Aria, being carried by four silent guards felt like being a corpse transported in a golden coffin. Every tilt of her frame, every slight bump against the marble walls of the palace, sent a shiver through her strings that felt like a physical bruise. She was placed in the center of a room that breathed power and isolation. The bedchamber of Killian von Astra was not a place of comfort; it was a cathedral of stone, shadows, and the scent of cold iron.
High above, a single circular window allowed the silver light of the moon to bleed onto the floor, hitting Aria's frame and making her glow like a ghost.
I am his trophy now, Aria thought, the resonance of her mind humming against the silence. A beautiful ornament in his sanctuary of grief.
Hours passed. The silence was so thick she could almost hear the molecules of air dancing around her. Then, the heavy latch of the door turned. Killian entered alone. He had stripped off his heavy military coat, wearing only a white silk shirt that was unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the sharp lines of his throat. He looked exhausted, his eyes shadowed by the weight of an empire that he ruled with an iron fist but a hollow heart.
He didn't go to his bed. He didn't look at the maps on his desk. He walked straight to Aria.
"They say," he began, his voice barely a whisper in the vast room, "that my father died talking to you. He called you 'The Muse of the Lost.' He thought you held the souls of everyone he had ever killed."
Killian pulled a chair close to the harp and sat down, not as a king, but as a confession seeker. He reached out, his long fingers hovering just inches away from the golden strings. Aria felt the heat of his skin, a magnetic pull that made her soul ache with a mixture of fear and a strange, new yearning.
"Do you have them in there?" he asked, his violet eyes searching the rosewood grain as if looking for a face. "The souls of the dead? Or are you just a mirror for the madness of those who touch you?"
Aria wanted to answer. She wanted to tell him that she wasn't a vessel for ghosts, but a woman who had lost everything—her flesh, her voice, her world. But all she could do was vibrate. She focused all her energy, trying to send a pulse through the air.
I am here, Killian. I am not a relic. I am a witness.
Killian's hand finally closed the distance. He didn't pluck a string this time. He laid his entire palm across the middle section of the harp, a gesture that was both a caress and a restraint. Aria felt a jolt of his consciousness. For a brief, flickering second, her mind touched his, and she saw a flash of a memory: a young boy hiding under a piano while a woman screamed—a woman whose voice was a melody, until it was silenced by a blade.
The psychological horror shifted from her own predicament to his. He didn't hate music because it was noise; he hated it because it was a reminder of a harmony that had been brutally shattered.
"My mother was the conductor of this empire's heart," Killian murmured, his eyes glazing over as the memory took hold. "When she died, the music didn't just stop. It became a mockery. Every flute sounded like a funeral dirge. Every violin sounded like a scream. So, I silenced them. I gave this kingdom the gift of silence, because silence doesn't lie."
He looked up at Aria, his grip tightening on her frame. "But you... you made a sound that wasn't a lie. That note you struck when I held the dagger... it was pure. It was filled with the same rage that I carry every time I wake up."
Aria felt a strange, dark warmth blooming in her wooden chest. For the first time, she felt a flicker of empathy for her captor. They were both survivors of a kind of death. She had lost her body; he had lost his soul.
"Talk to me again," Killian commanded, his voice growing desperate. "Not like that fool Elian. Don't play a song. Just... answer me."
He plucked the lowest string—the G-string. It was a deep, guttural sound.
Aria didn't hesitate. She knew that to survive this man, she had to become his obsession, not just his property. She used the resonance of the room, the way the stone walls echoed, and she answered him. She didn't play a melody. She echoed his note, but she added a slight, sharp vibration at the end—a musical 'question.'
Killian's breath hitched. He plucked another string, higher this time. Aria answered again, matching his rhythm but changing the tone.
It was a conversation without words. A gospel of two broken beings finding a language in the vibrations of gold and bone.
As the "dialogue" continued, the tension in the room changed. The air felt heavy, charged with an intimacy that was almost suffocating. Aria could feel Killian's pulse through her frame; it was slowing down, finding a rhythm that synced with her own vibrations. The tyrant was being tamed, not by a song, but by the recognition of his own pain in another.
But then, the darkness returned. Killian suddenly pulled his hand away, his face twisting into a mask of self-loathing. He stood up abruptly, knocking the chair over.
"What am I doing?" he hissed at the shadows. "I am talking to a piece of wood. I am losing my mind to a ghost."
He looked at Aria with a sudden, renewed hatred. "You are dangerous. You make me feel like there is something left in me to break. My father was a fool to keep you, and I am a fool for not burning you the moment you screamed."
He walked to the door, but before he left, he turned back. The moon was behind him, casting his face in total shadow, but Aria could feel his eyes burning into her.
"I will find out what you are, Aria Thorne—if that is truly your name. I will tear this palace apart to find the secret of your 'soul.' And if I find that you are just a trick of the light... I will make sure your last note is a plea for mercy."
The door slammed shut, and the lock clicked with a finality that felt like a sentence.
Aria was left alone in the moonlight. Her strings were still vibrating from the intensity of their "conversation." She felt a terrifying mixture of dread and exhilaration. She was no longer just a prisoner; she was an antagonist in the Emperor's internal war.
She realized then that the "Gospel of the Conductor" was not about leading an orchestra. It was about who would lead the other's heart. Killian wanted to be the conductor of her silence, but Aria was beginning to realize that she held the baton.
The psychological horror of her isolation was being replaced by a much more dangerous game: the romance of the hunter and the hunted. And in this dark, silent room, it was becoming harder and harder to tell which one was which.
Aria closed her "eyes" in the moonlight, her golden strings shimmering. She would wait. She would listen. And the next time he came to her, she wouldn't just echo his pain.
She would make him feel her own.