Chapter 129: MUSIC

DIANA’S POV

Diana discovered days after returning to the Citadel that choosing Blackharrow had not made anything simpler.

Irritating.

Apparently, making an emotional decision did not require it to behave afterward.

Household Relief still had six active restitution cases. Julius Renn had requested copies of the altered-stone receiving records. Daric wanted confirmation of two family addresses tied to Third Watch, and Master Marlon believed the compensation form needed another line explaining appeals.

Diana believed the form had enough lines to qualify as architecture.

Work should have helped.

It usually did.

By evening, she had corrected the same paragraph twice and then discovered the first version had been better.

Master Marlon took the page away.

"Go."

Diana looked at him.

"Your Grace."

He pointed toward the door. "There are moments when persistence becomes sabotage."

Diana wrote: TREASON.

"Tomorrow."

He took the remaining files too.

Unacceptable.

Alma had gone to the lower household office to review staffing changes following the Valence delegation’s departure. Diana returned to her apartments without her, while the two Household Guards followed at their usual distance and resumed their posts outside the doors.

The violin case sat where Diana had left it.

The instrument inside was neither royal nor expensive. Its wood carried scratches from other hands, and one edge had been repaired before Alma ever bought it.

Diana loved it.

Inconvenient too.

She opened the case.

The bow needed rosin, and one string had begun drifting slightly flat.

Problems she understood.

Diana adjusted the string and tested the pitch.

The first note sounded too loud inside her apartments.

She lowered the bow.

The rooms felt wrong for music tonight. The locked drawer containing Maerissa’s letter was here, along with too many memories of practicing Selena’s name before the wedding.

Diana closed the case.

A moment later, she opened it again.

Ridiculous.

The Citadel maintained a small music room on the old household level. Diana had seen it during guest-wing inspections, mostly unused except for formal rehearsals and visiting musicians.

Good.

She carried the violin there.

Her guards accompanied her to the old household level and took position at the outer arch of the music-room corridor, close enough to control the approach without standing directly outside the room.

Diana entered alone.

Dust lay along the closed lid of the old keyboard instrument, though the music stands were clean. Someone still used the room often enough to care for them.

A cabinet along the wall held copied scores arranged by category: court music, religious pieces, military commemorations, and children’s exercises.

Diana opened one drawer and found three Valence arrangements.

She closed it.

The music had done nothing wrong merely because Valence played it. Diana simply did not want the South choosing what she heard tonight.

A narrow hearth held enough coals to warm the room. Two music stands waited near the wall, and an old keyboard instrument occupied one corner beneath a cloth.

Diana ignored all of them.

The violin was hers.

She took the center of the room.

No audience waited for her. There was no court program and nobody deciding whether the music proved which princess she was.

Diana chose the piece herself.

She loosened her shoulders and settled the violin under her chin.

The first piece had belonged to lessons.

Familiar. Structured. Safe.

She reached the second page before lowering the bow.

Then she began again.

This time, she changed the phrase.

Her old instructor would have objected. He had objected often.

Diana changed it anyway.

The original passage resolved too politely, and tonight she had no use for polite. She played the line harder and held one note longer before returning to the written phrase.

Better.

The music moved through the room.

No chalk required. No one waited for Diana to choose the correct name before understanding what she meant.

She increased the tempo because the anger in her wanted somewhere to go.

Maerissa’s sentence returned to her.

Diana played through it.

Then Raigoro’s voice from the relay shelter.

I was not going to keep reaching into places you clearly did not want me.

Her next phrase came softer.

Diana lowered the bow.

She had spent years making silence useful because she had needed it to be useful.

Music had always been different.

It did not require her to decide whether her silence meant dignity, fear, strategy, or damage.

Music simply gave her something else to say.

Diana rested the bow and flexed her aching fingertips.

The old violin answered every bad habit honestly. Too much pressure made the sound harsh. A weak left hand blurred the note. A careless shift exposed itself immediately.

Diana liked the certainty of it.

No court could rename a wrong pitch into a right one. No royal record could declare an unresolved note complete.

She began another piece.

It was older than the west-gallery song Rovel remembered, another piece Queen Elara had liked.

Diana remembered only part of it correctly.

The middle section had faded years ago, and at some point she had replaced the missing passage herself.

Perhaps badly.

She preferred her version now.

Her hand shook during the first attempt, and she lowered the bow when she reached the missing middle phrase.

For years, Diana had hated being unable to remember it exactly.

The gap had felt like another thing taken from her.

Tonight she tried filling it.

The first progression sounded wrong.

The second was too sentimental.

She tried a third.

Better.

Diana began again.

Her hand remained steady through the middle section this time.

By the third attempt, Maerissa had receded from her thoughts.

Then Valence did.

Then the covenant.

Diana thought about sound.

The bow. Pressure. The placement of her fingers.

How much force a string could take before the note became ugly, and how little was necessary when the movement was controlled.

At the final phrase, Diana slowed.

The written ending returned to its opening theme.

She disliked it.

She always had.

The ending wanted everything introduced at the beginning to return exactly where it started.

Diana changed the final three measures.

One note moved upward instead of down. The next avoided the written resolution, and the last returned only partly to the opening theme.

Different, but still part of the same music.

Diana lowered the bow.

Silence returned.

She preferred this silence.

Diana remained where she was until her breathing settled.

Only then did she listen for the corridor outside.

Nothing.

No approaching footsteps or servants. No polite applause.

Good.

She had not wanted anyone listening.

Diana put the violin away and closed the old case.

When she opened the music-room door, her guards remained at the outer arch. The corridor between them and Diana was empty.

She returned to her apartments with the violin beneath one arm.

The locked drawer remained locked.

Maerissa’s message still waited inside it, and Diana still had no answer for what to do with the truth.

For one hour, she had not needed one.