The conservatory was an old, echoing building that never truly slept.

Even at dusk, music leaked from behind heavy doors—scales repeated like incantations, fragments of Chopin dissolving into silence, the soft violence of keys struck too hard by ambition. The floors bore the marks of decades of nervous pacing. The air smelled faintly of polished wood and dust.

Bertie Carvel had taught piano there for years.

He was not the kind of professor who smiled easily. His reputation preceded him: technically brilliant, unforgiving about precision, intolerant of laziness—but devastatingly loyal to students who proved they listened. He wore dark suits even to lessons, sleeves rolled back only when demonstrating phrasing, fingers long and controlled, touch economical but expressive.

When she was assigned to his studio, it wasn’t random.

She was talented, a young prodigy, talented, mature, but still not quite experienced.

Their first lesson was quiet.

He didn’t ask about her background. Didn’t flatter her technique. He listened. Truly listened. Let her play uninterrupted, even when she faltered, even when nerves crept into her wrists.

When the last note faded, he waited.

“You think too much about being correct,” he said at last. “And not enough about being necessary.”

It wasn’t cruel. It was exact.

From then on, lessons became something closer to ritual.

She learned his silences—the way he paused before correcting, how he circled the piano rather than sitting immediately, how he removed his glasses when focusing intensely. He never touched her hands without asking. Never raised his voice. Authority lived in restraint.

And yet—music did something dangerous.

Late afternoon sessions stretched into evening. Rain against tall windows. The lamp by the piano casting long shadows over sheet music marked with his annotations. He demonstrated passages for her, leaning close enough that she could feel the sound before hearing it, breath controlled, presence overwhelming.

“You’re holding back,” he told her once, quietly. “From what?” she asked. “From yourself,” he replied, eyes steady. “Which is usually fear disguised as discipline.”

The attraction was not immediate. It was earned.

Built from mutual respect. From long looks held a second too long after a phrase landed perfectly. From moments where he forgot to step back, and she forgot to look away. From the shared understanding that music stripped people bare in ways conversation never could.

They never crossed a line.

But they stood very close to it, a desire growing in the shadows, a quiet yearn.