Stella Monroe - POV
Victor Rothschild's office is a mausoleum, and I'm reading my own obituary written twenty years too early.
Two AM. The conservatory is dark and quiet. Most students sleep in their dorms. The four heirs are wherever they go at night. I'm alone with a brass key and three hours before sunrise.
The office is on the third floor, east wing. Exactly where Callum said. A heavy mahogany door with a brass nameplate. Victor Rothschild. Patriarch. Executor. Murderer.
The key slides into the lock smoothly. Like it's been waiting for me.
Inside, the office is a shrine to the Rothschild dynasty. Framed photographs of famous conductors and musicians. Awards spanning four generations. A wall of original compositions by composers who've been dead for centuries. Everything preserved. Everything precious.
But it's wrong. Something about this room feels like a tomb.
I close the door carefully. Use my phone flashlight to navigate. Keep the beam low.
Behind the desk is a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. I run my fingers along the spines. First editions. Rare manuscripts. Nothing I'm looking for.
There has to be something hidden.
I push on the bookcase. Nothing. Try the panels on the side. Still nothing. My heart starts racing. What if Callum lied? What if the records don't exist?
Then I find it. A small indentation in the woodwork beside the desk. The same old brass as the key I'm holding.
I press it.
The panel slides open. Behind it, a safe. Old. Very old. Maybe original to when the building was built.
The key fits. The lock turns.
Inside are leather-bound journals. Dozens of them. Stacked carefully. Preserved obsessively.
I pull them out slowly. Read the spines.
Eleanor Voss. 1924-1930. Catherine Ward. 1931-1937. Miriam Chen. 1938-1945. Josephine Cross. 1946-1953.
The names keep going. Generation after generation. Each one with a start date and an end date.
None of them go past age thirty.
My hands shake as I flip through them. Eleanor Voss died at twenty-four. Catherine Ward at twenty-six. Miriam Chen died during childbirth at twenty-eight. Josephine Cross. Marion Frost. Elizabeth Hart.
The pattern is always the same. Young women. Bound to musicians with supernatural gifts. Serving for five to eight years. Then death.
The journals get more recent. More recent means closer to my mother.
Then I find it.
Rebecca Monroe. 1999-2005. My mother.
The handwriting is hers. I know it from the notes she left me over the years. The way she curves her Rs. The way she dots her Is.
I open the first entry.
"Bound to the Rothschild heir today. Four music prodigy brothers. They promised me the ability to save lives. Said my gift would be amplified. I could prevent deaths instead of just predicting them. This is what I've been searching for my whole life. Purpose. Meaning. A way to use this curse like a blessing."
The entry is dated June 12, 1999. My mother was nineteen.
I turn the pages carefully. The early entries are hopeful. She describes her power growing. Saving people. Preventing accidents, illnesses, tragedies. She sounds happy.
"Saved a woman from a car accident today. Heard her death song and played a melody that made her miss her train. The train derailed ten miles outside the city. Forty-three people would have died. Forty-three lives because I can hear music no one else can hear. This is everything I wanted."
But then the entries change.
"The power is getting harder to control. Sometimes I hear death songs I don't want to hear. Can't unhear them. A child in the supermarket yesterday. Death song so clear I couldn't ignore it. Tried to prevent it. Couldn't. The child died anyway. Car accident two blocks from the store. How many deaths do I fail to prevent before I go insane like the others?"
The handwriting gets messier. More frantic.
"Victor says all Conduits eventually break. Says my mother was the same. Says I should just accept that I'll lose my mind before I die. What kind of encouragement is that? What kind of system keeps enslaving women to gifts that destroy them?"
The final entries are barely legible. Paranoid. Desperate.
"They're watching me. All four of them. Every moment. Can't escape. Can't leave. The binding won't allow it. I tried last week. Felt like my insides were tearing apart. The connection pulled me back. They're linked to me now. I'm linked to them. We're locked together and I'm drowning."
The last entry is dated three months before she died.
"I found it. The First Score. The original binding composition from 1924. There's something hidden in it. A counter-melody in the bass clef that none of us ever noticed. If I'm right, it's not a binding at all. It's a lock. And every lock has a key. If anything happens to me, someone needs to find Marcus Rothschild Sr.'s original manuscript. He hid it because he knew what it really was. A prison sentence written in music."
The final words are underlined. Emphasized. Like she was screaming them onto the page.
"Stella. If you're reading this. RUN."
My hands go numb.
The lock. The key. The First Score. My mother left me a map to escape, and I didn't even know it.
Footsteps.
Coming down the hallway. Multiple people. Getting closer.
I shove the journals back into the safe. My hands are shaking so badly I drop one. Pick it up. Push the journals back hastily. The safe door closes. The panel slides shut.
I'm pressing the bookcase back into place when the office door opens.
Two people enter. A man and a woman. The man is older. Silver hair. Sharp face. Victor Rothschild. I'd recognize him anywhere. He looks exactly like an older version of Callum.
The woman is younger. Midthirties maybe. Beautiful. Intelligent. She moves like she owns the room.
"The new Conduit is more powerful than we anticipated." The woman's voice is cultured. Smooth. "My research confirms it. She heard multiple death songs simultaneously during the binding. Previous generations reported only one or two at a time."
I'm frozen behind the bookcase. Trapped. If they walk this way, they'll see me.
Victor moves to his desk. Sits. "How much do you know?"
"Everything." The woman pulls out a chair. Sits across from him. "My grandmother was a Conduit. Failed one. She went insane serving your family. Took her own life in the practice rooms of this conservatory." Her voice stays calm, but there's something underneath. Rage. Deep and controlled.
"I'm aware of your family's history, Miss Carmichael." Victor's tone is dismissive.
"Isabella." She leans forward. "My name is Isabella. And you should be aware of what's about to happen. Marcus Rothschild's death. It wasn't a natural heart attack."
Victor's expression doesn't change. But something shifts in the room.
"You triggered it." Isabella continues. "You wanted to test if the new Conduit could hear a death song before it happened. She could. She did. Which confirms everything my research has documented about hereditary musical abilities."
"Your research." Victor stands. Walks to a painting on his wall. A portrait of an old man. Marcus Rothschild Sr. The founder. "And what exactly do you plan to do with this research?"
"Expose you." Isabella says it simply. Like she's ordering coffee. "The Rothschild family. The Cross family. The Sterling family. The Vaughn family. All of you have been exploiting Conduits for a hundred years. Using their bodies. Draining their lives. Destroying them. My grandmother is just one of dozens."
"And the new Conduit?" Victor turns back to face her. "What's your plan for Miss Monroe?"
"The same plan I have for you." Isabella stands. "Truth. Documentation. Exposure."
"Interesting." Victor returns to his desk. "And if I told you the new Conduit has already been bound? That she's now tied to four musicians who will die if she fails to serve her purpose?"
Isabella's expression flickers. Just slightly. But I see it.
"I'd say you were planning something." She pauses. "What happens Friday night?"
"Callum's engagement party." Victor pulls out a folder. Inside are photographs. Stella Monroe. Me. My photo from my Juilliard application. My photo from the conservatory enrollment. "We've prepared a demonstration. A performance during the party. The new Conduit will play while bound to the four heirs. Their amplified gifts combined will create something unprecedented. Mass manipulation. Two hundred of New York's most influential people will witness a performance that convinces them the Rothschild family is completely legitimate. Philanthropic. Noble."
"And if she fails to amplify them?"
"Then we'll know her power is insufficient. We'll move to the backup plan." Victor closes the folder. "The neural implant. We can artificially replicate what a Conduit provides using technology. Your grandmother's research was quite helpful in that regard."
My blood goes cold.
"The backup plan kills her." Isabella's voice is flat. "The implant surgery. It's experimental. The mortality rate is ninety percent."
"Hence the term backup plan." Victor stands. "But first, we test. Friday night. Callum performs with the new Conduit. If she can amplify him enough to control an entire ballroom, she survives to serve her sentence. If she fails, she's useless anyway."
Isabella moves toward the door. Stops.
"What about the son? Does he know his father is planning to have him perform a binding ritual in front of witnesses?"
"Callum knows exactly what's happening." Victor's smile is cold. "He volunteered for the exposure. For the legacy."
"And does he know about the death sentence?" Isabella's voice cuts like a blade. "That he's going to die during that performance unless the Conduit learns to prevent his death in four days?"
Victor's expression finally changes. Just for a moment. Something like satisfaction.
"Four days to learn a gift she's never controlled. Four days to save his life and her own. The odds are amusing, don't you think?"
Isabella leaves. Victor remains at his desk, making notes.
I stay behind the bookcase until his footsteps fade. Until the office is silent again.
Then I run.
My mother was right. This isn't a binding. It's a lock.
And I'm not just trapped inside it.
I'm the only key that can open it from the inside.
But the men I'm bound to don't want me to escape. They want me to perform. To prove my worth. To survive four days to do the impossible.
And if I fail, Callum dies. The binding collapses. Everyone connected dies.
Including me.
The First Score. My mother's journal said it was the key. Hidden somewhere in this building. Composed in 1924 by Marcus Rothschild Sr. with a counter-melody that could break the binding without death.
I have to find it before Friday.
I have four days to learn how to prevent death. Four days to find a composition that might not even exist. Four days to discover whether my mother died trying to escape or died because she loved them anyway.
Four days before everything burns.