Secrets in Ivory (SebastianxReader)

The piano.

You weren’t very talented at playing it but you certainly did your best. It was the last thing your father taught you before he passed away, leaving you alone in a mansion suitable for a large family.

You practiced everyday, especially when you felt depressed over your loss. It was soothing, therapeutic. The servants and maids went about their daily business of cleaning and cooking while your butler oversaw that they didn’t enter the piano room while you were playing.

The grand piano made of polished, dark wood was your only friend. It whispered secrets to you. Secrets that had long been hidden beneath it’s polished hood.

Maids pleasuring lords on it’s sturdy bench, serving girls chittering rumors as they dusted it’s surface, a shattered glass that a servant cleaned up but didn’t replace, and a murder.

It wouldn’t tell you the details, only that someone died and when it wasn’t their time.

Your father.

You stepped into the large, mostly empty room and your butler locked the door behind you, trapping you in the room. You smiled at your piano, folding your skirts under your stocking-covered legs as you sat on the bench and lightly rested your fingers over the keys.

Closing your eyes, you slid a single finger down the keys until it dropped heavily. You winked open an eye as the note sang out.

C in E sharp.

Your finger lingered on that key for three measures of 2/2 time before spilling out over the keys in notes that were whispered to you through the ivory.

Gustav Mahler. Symphony No.5.

As you played the piano whispered a new secret to you, one which had hid waiting between the polished keys. Waiting for you to be ready.

The dark sound of the bass keys wove into the brighter harmony as the secret was revealed to you.

Your father, sitting on the bench as your butler stood by, watching. He poured wine into the glass in your father’s hand and watched as he took a sip. A moment later, your father sputtered, choking. He clutched at his throat, dropping the wine glass. Your butler stood by as he coughed and gasped, one hand reaching up to the piano keys and causing a clash of notes to form a deathly chord.

The last thing he would ever hear.

The butler- your butler- calmly walked to the corpse after he had stopped twitching, picked up the larger shards of glass, and cleaned up the spilled wine before leaving the room, locking the door behind him.

Your fingers slipped as you missed a note. A gruesome chord rang out and you cringed. Hands shaking, you recovered the ivory keys, leaving your symphony unfinished as you knocked three times on the door.

Your butler unlocked it and stared at you. “That was a rather short performance, my lady,” he told you with a stiff bow.

“I just remembered I have other matters to attend to,” you retorted, brushing past him and into the kitchen.

You dismissed the one cook still lingering- told her to take the rest of the day off as you fingered the large carving knife on the counter next to her.

She nodded, grateful, before rushing out of the room.

Smiling to yourself, you ran a long finger over the polished blade, which whispered to you now as the piano always had. It told you your task and how you must accomplish it. Closing your eyes, you picked up the blade in your soft palm and began walking to where it told you to go.

The newspaper the next day said nothing of the missing butler, but there was a mention of the possibility of the Scotland Yard reopening a case regarding a lord who had died of a heart attack.

Ciel Phantomhive had been sent to make sure there was nothing going on with the case.

He knocked on the door, tall butler looming up behind him as a mousy-looking maid peeked through a crack in the curtains. The butler smiled at her and she jumped, scurrying to allow the lord and his butler into the mansion.

“Lady (L/n) isn’t taking visitors right now.”

“Why not?” Ciel snapped, glaring up at the girl.

The maid jumped, looking fearfully back into the darkened halls. “She’s in the piano room.”

The butler’s eyes narrowed as Ciel shoved past the girl. “We won’t take long,” he told her. He followed the sound of piano playing to the only closed door he had seen in the whole building, then signaled for his butler to open the locked doors.

You didn’t falter in your piano playing as the heavy oak doors behind you burst open. You were lost to the world of liars and murderers. It was now just you and the piano. And you knew it would protect you from any demon who dressed in a butler’s garb.

Until he smashed it and all your secrets spilled out.