Chapter 1050
“This piece,” Liam said into the mic, his eyes scanning the crowd until they locked onto Skye, “is dedicated to my fiancée.”
He raised his hands and brought them down on the keys.
Skye froze. The glass of water slipped from her fingers and shattered on the marble floor. No one noticed.
He wasn’t playing a classical waltz or a romantic ballad.
He was playing a lullaby. A simple, haunting, melancholic melody.
It was the exact tune Skye used to hum to him in the dark, years ago in reality, when his insomnia was tearing him apart and he was too proud to admit he was breaking. It was a deeply guarded secret between them—a fragile relic of a time when she had loved him unconditionally—a melody she hadn’t thought about in years and had certainly never mentioned to anyone else. How did the dream know this song? It had to be pulling directly from the deepest, most locked-away archives of her own mind.
Skye stared at Liam. His posture at the piano was rigid. His eyes, fixed on her, were no longer filled with blind adoration. They were wide, frantic, and filled with a desperate, agonizing clarity.
It was as if the real Liam’s consciousness was bleeding through the fabric of the dream, using the music as a battering ram to reach her.
The melody grew faster, harsher. The soft lullaby warped into a discordant, aggressive march that clashed violently with the elegant atmosphere of the banquet.
𝘛𝘩е 𝘮𝗼𝗌𝗍 рo𝘱𝘶𝗹𝖺𝗋 𝗻𝗈𝗏e𝗹s 𝗈𝗻 𝗀а𝗅𝗇𝗼𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴.𝘤𝗼𝘮
The guests stopped talking. They exchanged confused, uncomfortable glances. Bastian Kensington’s fake, benevolent smile vanished, replaced by a deep scowl.
Liam slammed both fists onto the keys, producing a horrific, atonal crash.
He stopped playing. He hunched over the piano and grabbed his head with both hands, fingers digging into his hair.
“Where…” Liam gasped into the microphone, his voice echoing through the silent ballroom. “Where am I? This isn’t real. Skye!”
The dream reacted instantly to the anomaly.
The massive crystal chandeliers above flickered rapidly. The temperature in the room plummeted. The string quartet froze mid-bow, like characters in a paused film.
Then Julian was there.
He materialized out of nowhere, standing directly behind the piano bench. He placed a firm, heavy hand on Liam’s shoulder.
“You’re tired, Liam,” Julian said. His voice wasn’t warm anymore. It was a command—a line of code executing an override. “You’ve had too much to drink. Go upstairs and rest.”
Liam’s struggling ceased immediately. His hands dropped from his head. The desperate clarity in his eyes glazed over, returning to the dull, adoring emptiness of before.
“Yes,” Liam murmured, rising robotically. “I’m… I’m a bit dizzy. I’ll go rest.”
He walked away, disappearing into the frozen crowd.
Skye rushed forward and grabbed Julian’s arm. “What did you just do? He was waking up! He was remembering!”
Julian turned to face her. The sorrow she had glimpsed in the shadows was back, heavier than before.