Chapter 1

The silence in the practice room was my favorite sound. It was a blank canvas, a quiet breath before the music began. Our quartet had spent years in rooms just like this, the air thick with the scent of rosin and old wood. Ethan Miller, our first violinist, flashed me a charming smile, his bow resting lightly on his strings. Noah Thompson, a presence so steady he felt like the floor beneath us, adjusted his viola, his eyes focused. And Chloe Davies, my stepsister and our second violinist, gave a little, impatient sigh.

We were more than just a quartet, we were a single entity, four parts of a whole. Our dream was a shared one, a single, shining point on the horizon: the New York Philharmonic. And the first step, the one that felt like a giant leap, was the Juilliard School audition. It was everything.

My secret was a small, fluttering thing in my chest. I was in love with Ethan. I had been for years. The way his brow furrowed when he played a difficult passage, the easy way he laughed, the warmth in his eyes when he looked at me. I thought he felt it too. Sometimes, after a long practice, his hand would linger on my arm, and he' d say, "You were incredible today, Avery." My heart would do a stupid little flip. I saw our future laid out, a perfect melody. Juilliard, the Philharmonic, him.

The night before my solo audition for the final scholarship spot, the one we all knew I was favored to win, I found them whispering in the hallway of the house I now shared with Chloe and her father. I had moved in after my mom married him, a transition that felt less like gaining a family and more like being a guest who had overstayed her welcome.

I paused, hidden by the turn in the stairs, my hand frozen on the banister.

"Are you sure about this?" Noah' s voice was a low rumble of doubt. "This is Avery we' re talking about."

"It' s the only way," Chloe' s voice was sharp, cutting through the quiet. "She gets everything. The solos, the praise, Professor Jenkins fawning all over her because of her dad. It' s my turn. With her out of the way, the scholarship is mine. And the quartet will finally get noticed for all of its members, not just Saint Avery."

My breath caught in my throat. I leaned forward, my body turning cold.

Then I heard Ethan' s voice, the voice I secretly replayed in my head. "Chloe' s right. It' s for the good of the quartet. Avery' s good, but she holds us back with all that... emotional playing. We need to be more professional. This will be better for everyone in the long run."

The words didn't just hurt, they erased something. They took the beautiful, perfect melody I had imagined for our future and twisted it into a horrifying, dissonant chord. Betrayal felt like this, a physical sickness twisting in my gut. He didn' t love me, he was just a part of this. They weren't my friends. They were my rivals.

The next day, during my audition, it happened. I placed my bow on the strings of my cello, my beautiful instrument passed down from my father, and began to play Bach' s Cello Suite No. 1. The notes were supposed to flow like water, a piece I knew better than my own name. But something was wrong. A string, the A-string, was loose. It buzzed horribly, flat and dead against my fingerboard. I tried to compensate, my fingers pressing harder, my bowing more aggressive, but it was no use. The pure, clean sound I had worked my entire life to perfect was gone, replaced by a grating, ugly noise.

Panic seized me. I saw the judges' faces, a mixture of pity and disappointment. I looked out into the small audience and saw them, Chloe, Ethan, and Noah, sitting together. Chloe had a small, triumphant smile on her face. Ethan wouldn' t meet my eyes. He just stared at the floor, his jaw tight. It wasn't an accident. They had done this. They had crept into the instrument room and loosened my string just enough for it to fail under the pressure of performance. My dream, my one shot, was over. I couldn' t even finish the piece. I just stopped, the ugly buzz of the string hanging in the dead air. Chloe won the scholarship.

The days that followed were a blur of forced smiles and cold shoulders. We still had quartet practice, a commitment we couldn' t break because of an upcoming local competition. But the space between us was no longer filled with shared music and easy camaraderie. It was a gaping chasm of silence and resentment. During practice, their eyes would slide past me, their conversations stopping the moment I entered the room.

"We should try the Dvořák again," Ethan would say, his voice clipped and professional, all the warmth gone. He spoke to the air in front of me, never directly to me.

"I agree," Chloe would add, looking at Ethan with an adoring expression that made me feel sick. "My part feels much more prominent now."

I looked from Ethan to Noah, searching for any sign of the friends I once knew. Noah just focused intently on his sheet music, his face a perfect mask of indifference. He was a chameleon, blending into whatever background offered him the most advantage. And right now, the advantage was with Chloe.

We used to have a promise. The four of us, after our first successful performance as kids, had linked our pinkies and sworn we' d take the stage at Carnegie Hall together one day. It was a childish promise, but it had felt sacred, like a secret pact against the world. Now, that memory was just another source of pain. I would look at their hands, at the fingers that had intertwined with mine, and feel nothing but the bitter sting of their betrayal. The promise was a lie, and every moment we spent together was a painful reminder of how naive I had been.

One afternoon, I arrived at practice early and found Chloe alone, running her hand over my cello case.

"What are you doing?" I asked, my voice sharper than I intended.

She jumped, snatching her hand back. "Nothing. Just admiring it. It' s a beautiful instrument. A shame it' s wasted on someone who gets performance anxiety." Her words were casual, but her eyes were filled with malice.

"I don' t get anxiety, Chloe. You know what happened."

She laughed, a high, tinkling sound that grated on my nerves. "Do I? All I know is that I played my heart out, and I won. Some people just can' t handle the pressure."

Ethan and Noah walked in then, catching the tail end of our conversation. Ethan shot me a warning look, a silent plea to drop it. Noah just walked past us to his chair, completely ignoring the tension in the room. I felt a surge of helpless anger. They stood together, a united front against me, and I was utterly alone.

That night, locked in my room, the reality of my situation crashed down on me. This house was not my home. These people were not my friends. My dream of Juilliard was gone, stolen by the very people I thought would be by my side to celebrate it. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't let them grind me down until there was nothing left.

I sat at my laptop, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. The name of the school felt foreign on my tongue, a world away. The Royal Academy of Music in London. It was a crazy idea, a desperate long shot. The application deadline was in two days. But it was a way out. It was a path that was entirely my own, a future they couldn't touch. With a deep breath, I started to fill out the form. It was a secret, a tiny spark of hope in the suffocating darkness.

The atmosphere at home grew worse. Dinners were exercises in silent torture. My mother and my stepfather, Chloe' s father, doted on Chloe, celebrating her scholarship, her "brilliant" future.

"We' re so proud of you, sweetheart," her father would boom across the table, beaming at her. "You' ve earned this."

My mother would nod in agreement, her smile tight. "Yes, Chloe. We' re all so happy for you." She would glance at me for a second, her eyes holding a mixture of pity and disappointment, as if my failure was a personal embarrassment to her. They never asked me what happened. They never questioned Chloe' s sudden triumph. It was easier to accept the version of the story where I had simply choked.

One evening, Chloe was showing off a new, expensive violin bow her father had bought her. "It' s Pernambuco wood," she said, her voice dripping with pride. "It makes such a difference to my sound."

My stepfather then turned to me. "Avery, you should let Chloe borrow your father' s cello for the competition. A good instrument can make all the difference, and since you won' t be going to Juilliard, it' s only fair that Chloe gets every advantage."

I stared at him, my fork frozen halfway to my mouth. My cello wasn't just an instrument, it was the last piece of my father I had. The thought of Chloe' s hands on it, claiming it as her own, made me feel a rage so hot it was hard to breathe.

"No," I said, my voice quiet but firm. "Absolutely not."

The next day at practice, Noah cornered me while Chloe and Ethan were talking. "You know," he said, his tone deceptively casual, "you' re being really selfish about this. We' re a quartet. We' re supposed to support each other. Chloe winning that scholarship is good for all of us."

"Support?" I couldn' t keep the bitterness out of my voice. "Is that what you call sabotaging my audition?"

He had the grace to look away, a faint flush creeping up his neck. "I don' t know what you' re talking about. All I see is you trying to make this all about you, again. You need to get over it, Avery. For the good of the team."

The final blow came that afternoon. The organizer for the local competition, a man who had known our quartet for years, called a meeting. We all sat in his office, the air stale with the smell of old paper.

"I' ve listened to your recent recordings," he said, looking over his glasses at us. "And I' ve made a decision. For the centerpiece, the Bach concerto, Chloe will take the lead violin part, and Avery, you' ll be on cello continuo."

It was a demotion. A public humiliation. The concerto had a prominent cello part, a part I had been working on for months. Continuo was background, a supporting role. I looked at Ethan, the leader of our quartet. He should have fought for me. He should have said something.

He just nodded. "I think that' s a wise decision. It plays to our strengths."

Chloe preened, a smug smile playing on her lips. They had done this. They had gone to him behind my back, using their recording from after my audition, where my playing was tentative and broken, as proof. They were systematically stripping me of everything, piece by piece.