Page 52 of The Devil In Blue
I didn’t intend to give myself an excuse to stay longer, but my mouth got away from me. And perhaps part of me truly wanted to hear the end of the song.
Rune hesitated as if he was just as surprised as I was that I’d asked. But eventually, he backstepped toward the viola and picked it up. He watched me as he tucked the end under his chin and poised the bow over the strings. After his eyes had finished stripping my armor from my body and leaving me defenseless, he began to play.
I remembered the aggression and anger in the tune, but where he picked up was nothing like that. It was gentle, slow, and beautiful. The walls bounced the sound back like we were inside an opera house and I was entranced by it. I wanted to stay near the door so I felt like I could escape if I needed to, but I felt a pull leading me further into the room. I watched Rune play, his fingers dancing across the strings with grace and precision.
And the way the firelight caught every curve and dip in his sculpted body made him look like a moving statue, every part of him pure perfection. He was a dream. The melody was a dream. All of it was a dream.
Before I knew it, my foot had moved forward. I stared at his hands as he played the instrument, bending it to his will. I was inching closer and closer, wanting to get nearer to the music. The blanket, my thin security, fell off my shoulders and draped over my arms like a shawl as I stood at the cluttered table, keeping it between myself and Rune as a last-ditch effort not to get too close.
But I wanted to be close. The music was like a siren to my soul and I loved it, even if I knew it could crush me. It was more than a melody and somehow, I knew it was becausehewas playing it.
When the song finished, the echo of it remained for a while, slowly dissipating and leaving us both in silence once more. I blinked, coming back to reality—or a version of it—and looked up at Rune to see his eyes peering down at me with a tenderness I had not yet seen from him.
“You see?” he said softly. “It ends with hope.”
“It’s beautiful.”
He gently placed the viola on the table with its bow and sighed.
“When this room echoes the music, it does not echo the wailing.”
“Wailing? The souls, you mean.”
He nodded. “There was a time they weren’t so loud.”
“When was that?”
His eyes met mine and he smirked devilishly. “You don’t want to know.”
Something in me did want to know, but I didn’t push it. Rune was studying me again and it made me feel naked, so I pulled the blanket up once more, pretending to get a chill.
“You’ve been spending time with Petris,” he said.
“He’s been kind to me,” I said, uncertain how the king would react.
Strangely, instead of acting the part of a jealous lord, he dipped his head with a long exhale, rubbing tension from the back of his neck.
“He’s often the things I cannot be.”
“He said the two of you are close. What does that mean?”
“It means just that. We’re close.”
I wasn’t going to get answers from him. I wasn’t going to get answers from anyone. Not ones I could accept. But I was used to not having answers and even more used to having questions, so I bit my tongue and let it go. But as I was thinking of what else to say, Rune moved slowly around the table toward me. My body went rigid as I backed up a step. But then I decided I needed to hold my ground and wondered if running would only make things worse. It always did at Southminster.
But this isn’t Southminster.
“I’ve made you fear me,” he whispered. His hand came up to brush my cheek with the backs of his fingers. I flinched a bit but tried not to turn from his touch. It didn’t stop my heart from galloping in my chest. “But at the masquerade, you mentioned how terror was a comfort. What has changed, I wonder.”
“I woke from one dream and fell into another,” I admitted. “Nothing is ever real. But something about this place scares me more than dreams or nightmares ever could. I suppose it’s a different fear. One that does not let me breathe.”
His fingers skimmed my jaw and slid gently down the side of my neck to the place my necklace would have been if he hadn’t crushed it to dust.
“Because your demons are here,” he whispered. “All you left behind remains in these walls. You know it.”
“I know nothing.”
My heart ached at the confession. I knew nothing. I never had and I never would. I was stuck in limbo as much as the souls in that Labyrinth were. Everything he said—everything Father Eli ever said—trapped me behind another lock I had no key for.
