The iron bars of the perimeter fence felt like they were branded into Ren's palms long after he turned his back. Every muscle in his body screamed to turn around, to throw himself back over the spikes and scream for the guards to take him instead.
But Jace's voice—that raw, commanding "RUN!"—echoed in his skull like a drumbeat he couldn't ignore.
Ren sprinted. He didn't know where he was going, only that the bright, manicured lights of the Laurent estate were fading into the gritty, orange glow of the city's back alleys. His lungs felt like they were filled with crushed glass. His silk shirt was hanging in rags, stained with Jace's blood and the soot of the catering tent.
He was the "Golden Boy" of the international stage, a prodigy worth millions, and right now, he looked like a ghost haunting the gutters.
He collapsed against a damp brick wall three blocks away, his knees hitting the pavement. The silence of the city was more terrifying than the shouting. In the distance, he heard the faint, fading wail of a police siren.
Jace. Ren's chest heaved as a jagged, broken sob finally ripped out of him. He looked at his hands—the hands that were supposed to play Mozart—and saw the dirt under his fingernails. He felt the phantom warmth of Jace's palm.
"I can't do this," Ren whispered into the dark, his forehead resting against the cold brick. "Jace, I'm not strong like you. I don't know how to be alone."
But then, he felt it. In the pocket of his torn slacks, his fingers brushed against something hard and cold. He pulled it out.
It was a silver spoon. One of the ones Jace had used to tap the rhythm on the pipes. Jace must have slipped it into Ren's pocket during that final, desperate embrace on the roof.
Ren gripped the spoon so hard the edges dug into his skin. The man in the grey coat. The "Red X" locker. Jace hadn't just saved him; he had given him a map. He had given him a future.
Back at the Laurent Estate, the "Gilded Cage" had turned into an interrogation room.
Jace wasn't in a cell. He was strapped to a chair in the middle of the soundproofed rehearsal hall, the very place where Ren had played his "Blood on the Keys" concerto only an hour before.
Arthur Laurent stood in front of him, his tuxedo jacket removed, his shirt sleeves rolled up with clinical precision. He looked at Jace not as a person, but as a smudge on a painting he had spent twenty years perfecting.
"Where is he going?" Arthur's voice was dangerously quiet.
Jace spat a mouthful of blood onto the polished marble floor. His left eye was swollen shut, and his ribs felt like they were grinding together with every breath, but his spirit was still standing tall. He looked up at Arthur and grinned—a bloody, terrifying sight.
"He's gone, Artie," Jace wheezed, his voice sounding like sandpaper. "He's somewhere you can't reach. Somewhere where the music doesn't have a price tag."
Arthur's hand flashed out, a sharp, backhanded strike that sent Jace's head snapping to the side. Jace didn't scream. He just hummed a low, vibrating note. Middle C.
"You think you're a hero?" Arthur hissed, grabbing Jace by the hair and forcing him to look at the empty piano bench. "You're a thief. You stole a masterpiece. And I always recover my property. My security teams are already blanketing the transit hubs. He won't make it to the border."
"He doesn't need the border," Jace whispered, his eyes gleaming with a manic light. "He's already free. Even if you catch him... you've already lost. He knows what the world smells like now. He knows what I smell like. You can't wash that off with silk and perfume."
Arthur leaned in, his voice a freezing breath against Jace's ear. "By the time I am done with you, boy, you will be begging for the police. And by the time I find Ren, he will be so broken that he will thank me for the cage."
Arthur turned to the two massive security guards standing in the shadows. "Take him to the cellar. No food. No light. And if he tries to make a sound... break a finger for every note."
As they unbolted the chair and dragged Jace toward the darkness, he didn't fight. He just looked up at the high, vaulted ceiling, thinking of a boy in a torn shirt running through the night.
Run, Ren, Jace thought as the cellar door slammed shut. Play the song I taught you.
Ren stood at the entrance of the central train station, the massive clock overhead ticking toward 3:00 AM. He looked down at the silver spoon in his hand, then at the crowded terminal.
He saw a man. Standing by the lockers near the "Red X" terminal.
Long grey coat. Fedora pulled low. Smoking a clove cigarette that smelled exactly like the warehouse in Berlin.
Ren took a breath, smoothed down his tattered shirt, and stepped out of the shadows. He wasn't the Golden Boy anymore. He was the Ghost of Berlin. And he was coming for his Drummer.