Chapter 2

Freya's POV

Before long, the sound of a cello drifted out from the theater's rehearsal hall.

Daphne was playing Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor.

That had once been my signature piece—the version Valerian had arranged himself, just for me.

I leaned against the corner of the corridor, gripping a handful of painkillers, and forced them down dry.

My stomach churned violently, but I bit down on my lip and refused to let a single sound escape.

"Still the same as you were—like a rat hiding in the gutter."

A woman's voice echoed from the far end of the hallway.

I lifted my head and saw Mrs. Carlisle, draped in an expensive fur coat.

Valerian's mother. Now the biggest patron in New York's classical music scene.

She walked toward me in her heels, contempt written across her face.

"I thought that check seven years ago was enough to get you out of Valerian's world for good. I never imagined you'd still be clinging to him."

The needling pain returned to my chest.

It brought me back to that winter, seven years ago.

Back then, Valerian had still been a student in the conducting program at Juilliard—young, but already staggeringly talented, the kind of prodigy every music master in the city was watching, the one everyone agreed would define the next era.

The Vienna Philharmonic had offered him a coveted spot as a young apprentice conductor—the golden starting point recognized across the entire classical music world. Miss it, and you might never get a second chance in your lifetime.

But he turned them down. Again and again.

"I'm not going to Vienna." He'd crumpled the acceptance letter into a ball and thrown it into the fireplace. "We agreed—we were staying in New York together. No one is going to tear us apart."

He was willing to give up a path the entire world had laid out for him. All for me.

That same winter, I received my test results.

Bone cancer. Advanced stage.

The doctor told me I didn't have much time left—even with aggressive treatment, I'd only buy myself a few more years, clinging to life, and I was certain to lose the use of my hands for the cello forever.

I stood outside in the snow, holding that report, for an entire night.

The next day, Mrs. Carlisle found me.

She threw a check for an enormous sum in my face.

"You're nothing but the daughter of a laborer. You don't belong in my son's world, and you certainly won't be the one to ruin his future. Take the money. Get out of his life. Let him go to Vienna without a single thing holding him back."

I took the check.

Not for myself. But so Valerian wouldn't be trapped, wasting away in a city he was destined to soar out of.

I locked that check away in an old tin box, buried at the bottom of my closet. I never touched it again.

Later, when I scrambled to find money for my treatment—even pawning the one ring my mother had left me—I never touched a cent of it.

Because I knew, deep down, that spending that money would be the true betrayal of Valerian.

I couldn't let it taint the one beautiful thing we'd once had together.

So I followed Mrs. Carlisle's plan and staged a "betrayal."

The night Valerian turned down Vienna for the third time, I put on the most revealing dress I owned, hung on the arm of a wealthy man with a notorious reputation, and appeared right in front of him.

I faked an affair. I forced Valerian to end things with me. I pushed him, without mercy, onto that plane bound for Vienna.

I watched the devastation shatter across his face. I listened to him scream that he'd make me pay for what I'd done.

I only turned away, calm, and swallowed the blood filling my mouth.

"Mrs. Carlisle, don't worry. I won't live much longer. I won't be a problem for him."

I came back to the present, looking at the woman standing over me, so sure of her place above me.

Mrs. Carlisle let out a cold laugh.

"Good. The sooner, the better. But until then, you still have some use to me."

She pulled a document from her bag and dropped it at my feet.

"Tomorrow night is the gala concert for Valerian's appointment as director. Daphne will perform as principal cellist. I want you in your cleaning uniform, standing at the edge of the stage, carrying her train and moving the cello stool for her."

A shudder ran through my whole body. I stared at her, unable to believe what I'd just heard.

She wanted me—the cellist once hailed as a prodigy—to stand under the spotlight like a servant, waiting on the woman who had taken my place.

It was the most complete violation of my dignity imaginable.

"What, you don't want to?" Mrs. Carlisle leaned in slightly. "Refuse, and I'll have security throw you out of this theater right now. You'll never lay eyes on Valerian again as long as you live."

My fingers clenched into the fabric of my uniform, my nails digging into my palms hard enough to draw blood.

I wanted so badly to see him conduct.

Seven years. I had survived countless unbearable nights on nothing but memories and painkillers.

All I wanted, before I died, was to see him standing in the place that belonged to him—bathed in light, exactly where he was always meant to be.

"Fine."

I heard my own hoarse voice echo down the corridor.

"I'll do it."