Lev knows exactly who Bjarke is. Bjarke has no idea who Lev is.

Ten years ago in Vienna, a twenty-five-year-old violinist played his heart out for Sonda, the band half the world can hum. Someone in the hall clapped. Then a voice came down the aisle and turned him into a joke. He shut his violin case that day and never opened it again.

Lev Kuhar was the one who clapped. And he said nothing.

For twenty years Lev was the half of Sonda nobody saw. He wrote the music. Someone else took the stage and the credit. A year ago Lev walked away without a word and went home to the Soča valley, to his bees, his sister's boats and a music room he hasn't opened since.

Then a Danish folk singer who hides his face behind a stag skull walks across a festival courtyard in Ljubljana, and Lev would know that walk anywhere. He follows him into a cellar. He doesn't give his name. Afterwards, still breathing hard, Bjarke tells him exactly what he thinks of Sonda.

Lev runs. Then he comes back and holds out his hand.

What follows is one summer. A valley, a river the colour of its name, a two-week list that keeps getting longer. Bjarke picks up a violin for the first time in ten years, and Lev plays beside him. The man Bjarke is falling for belongs to the band he has hated for a decade, and every day Lev keeps quiet, the truth costs more.

Then the past calls. The man who owned Lev's silence for twenty years wants his signature, and the leverage is Bjarke.

Some names stay off the record. Some get said out loud.

MM · hidden identity · enemies without knowing it · hurt/comfort · found family · high heat · HEA · standalone, Book Two of The Four Corners of Slovenia