The Piano’s Lament

The smell of charred mahogany and melted ivory hung heavy in the midnight air, a bitter incense for the life I had just set ablaze. Behind the jagged glass of the Toorak mansion, the grand piano—the instrument meant to be my executioner’s block—was nothing more than a skeleton of wire and ash. I stood in the shadows of the garden, my breath hitching as the sirens screamed toward a tragedy I had choreographed myself. Alexander would find no body in the ruins of our engagement party, only the blackened remains of the lies he and Aurora had woven to ruin me. They wanted my hands shredded by hidden blades and my career crushed; instead, they got a haunting. As the first embers flickered out, the world believed Dora was dead. They were right. The girl who loved them perished in the flames, and the woman who survived is finished playing by their rules.