Serena:
The music room smelled of polished wood and old varnish, a scent that tightened something in my chest the moment I stepped inside. Instruments lined the walls: violins in velvet-lined cases, a cello propped against the far panel, and an expensive black piano near the windows where the late afternoon light pooled across its lacquered surface.
I found myself staring at it longer than I meant to, as if the sight of the keys could pull a memory from whatever part of me still remembered a life before collars and contracts.
“Serena.” Helena’s voice pulled me back.
She stood near the front of the room beside the instructor, whose name I had already forgotten. The other girls sat in rows, some pretending to pay attention while others watched me with the kind of curiosity that felt lik
