The night deepened, and so did their words.
After dinner, they walked through the garden. Fireflies floated around them like sparks of something ancient, and the scent of lavender wrapped them in a quiet kind of enchantment.
They didn't touch.
Not yet.
But their words were the kind of touches that mattered—truthful, raw, slow-burning.
"Do you still play?" Lucien asked, his hands tucked behind his back.
"No," she said. "I stopped three years ago."
"Why?"
She hesitated. "Because the last time I played… was for someone I loved. And I buried him the next morning."
Lucien froze.
She didn't turn to him. She kept walking, her voice a thread of shadow in the moonlight.
"His name was Rafael. A violinist. We toured together, played the greatest stages in Europe. He used to tell me that my hands had their own language. That my silence spoke louder than words. I didn't know it was a premonition."
Lucien said nothing, letting her speak.
"One night, after a performance in Vienna, he proposed. We celebrated. Laughed. We were already planning the wedding. And then…"
Her breath hitched.
"And then he was gone. Car accident. They said he died instantly. I wish I had, too."
She stopped walking.
Lucien reached for her, gently turning her toward him.
"Don't say that."
Her eyes filled. "I haven't played since. Because the piano became a grave. Every key I touched felt like I was touching his memory. I couldn't breathe through it."
His thumb brushed away a tear from her cheek, slowly, reverently.
"I brought you here to teach Adriana," he said. "But maybe this place is meant to teach you too."
She closed her eyes. "What if I don't know how to come back?"
Lucien leaned in, his breath mingling with hers.
"Then let me help you."
He didn't kiss her.
Not yet.
But she felt it.
The promise of it.
It hung between them like the beginning of a song.
Something real.
Something that might break her again—or save her entirely.
---
They returned to the villa, the quiet still heavy but no longer hollow.
Elena sat alone in the conservatory later that night, her fingers resting on the piano keys. She didn't play. Not yet. But her hands no longer trembled when they touched ivory.
Lucien watched from the doorway, unnoticed.
In that moment, he didn't see the broken woman the world had turned its back on.
He saw a warrior.
And somewhere deep inside his carefully locked heart, he felt something shift.
A door.
A note.
A possibility.