Rhythmic scales soon swept away the rain, the whispers, and her husband’s aura. They vibrated at the corners of Aleiya’s eyes—as if the world were unraveling, note by note. The gentle cadence of the band gave way to a crescendo that pulled at something buried. Something deep.

  A feeling she was certain had been long dead.

  The deafening drums and fluttering strings entwined with impassioned prose—stunning, chaotic, and overwhelming. She wanted to stay lost in this strange, glittering world. Stay rooted in the place where sound didn’t just soothe, but smothered every thought.

  Even if the unfamiliar feelings it resurrected overwhelmed her senses.

  She wanted to hold her fears beneath these waves and drown them in these melodies. She had never heard such music in all her years. But still it was beautiful.

  She filled her lungs with a long, deep breath, preparing to plunge back in.

  She had only ever known the soft breath of pan flutes, the thrum of hide-bound drums beneath layered chants. These Old World instruments were an unfamiliar wonder.

  Their music sent the wisping strings at the edges of her vision to quiver as if plucked. A new reaction that danced with the same rhythm flowing through her. With them, she felt as if she was being taken to another world entirely.

  Her gaze was pulled by the string’s demand for her attention. Her witness. They were childish like that. They fluttered about the dancers, delicate yet wild. With each step, each movement of unshackled grace, Aleiya was reminded of butterfly wings.

  Oh, how she wished she could be as free.

  Without her notice, her body yielded to the rhythm, her gentle sway, though still restrained, stirred a sort of lightness in her chest. For the first time in centuries, the world felt open. It was vast. Unrestrained. A world so full of life that she could revel in its embrace.

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  She was awed and suffocated by its intoxicating bliss.

  It was so far removed from her time locked within the Crystal Palace. She didn’t just feel like a fish out of water, but one that grew wings and was told to fly.

  Those castle walls, hemmed in by an endless ocean of forest, were all she had ever known. Yet in this moment, a tidal wave of symphony all-encompassing and visceral crashed over her.

  She sank like a stone. Her soul ached to slip deeper, to vanish into bottomless bliss.

  Until a presence slithered beneath her skin—pushing to break free.

  A whisper, an absence, an omen.

  The rich warmth of the room turned stale, the music stretched too thin. Aleiya felt it coil over every limb, hooking into her fingernails as if to pull her veins from them.

  A shadow of the past weighed heavily on her delicate shoulders, growing, pressing—crushing—as if awaiting her notice.

  Her quiet contentment faltered, wrenched away by thin, bony fingers that ghosted along her skin—trailing, then curling, then sinking deep into her bones.

  The sensation froze her solid.

  Her breath hitched. Caught.

  The familiarity should have been a comfort, but it curdled, thick and viscous, in the pit of her stomach.

  The music, once blaring with glorious pride, receded like the tide. A lost and distant hum. Dancers and drinkers blurred into fog, then melted away. The fates that normally decorated her vision with tucks and weaves were overtaken by the bulbs of light.

  Now far too bright, too alien, too distant.

  The darkness in the corners of the room overtook the clarity and the wonder as they closed in tighter. Her breath stuttered, caught in between breaths. Her throat clamped shut. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes as painted lips delicately pressed against her ear.

  “Such vulgarity is beneath you, my sweet.”

  “We wouldn’t want you to embarrass yourself, now would we?”

  Venom dripped from the words onto her shoulders and burned like acid. In that moment, she knew she had forgotten herself.

  Mortified, she hung her head, tearing her eyes away from the beautiful sight. Her hands twisted tighter into her dress, desperately trying to keep herself from falling to pieces.

  The warm, inviting glow of the celebration in her name was now a flickering distant haze—for she herself was an uninvited guest.

  An intruder.

  Just as the thought crossed her mind, just as darkness was about to swallow her whole, just as she sank deeper into depths too dreadful to know, she was dragged back to the surface.