The Divorced Military Queen Awakens (by Sadie Baxter) novel Chapter 659

Chapter 659 Piano Prodigy Emerges.

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When Dawn lifted her small hands from the keys, a hush rippled through the ballroom. No one had imagined that a child not yet five–one who had only glimpsed a piano in passing–could finish an entire

Mozart concerto.

Emma’s smile wavered, the color draining from her face. She had hoped the orphan would embarrass herself, yet the girl had mirrored Emma’s own performance with unsettling precision.

Yes, Dawn’s play was bad, but for someone who had never taken a single lesson, her effort felt nothing short of miraculous.

“Imitation is still imitation,” a sycophantic youth proclaimed, eager to curry favor with Emma. “Listening to Emma is pure pleasure. That kid’s playing? My ears can barely stand it.”

Several others nodded, their laughter rolling like shallow waves, quick to echo whichever opinion kept them in Emma’s good graces.

After all, Dawn was merely adopted. Emma, they reminded themselves, was Edmund’s blood daughter.

Edmund raised a calming hand. “All right, Dawn, that’s enough. Come down now.”

The little girl remained seated. She drew a breath, lifted her fingers, and struck the opening chord once more, delicate yet deliberate.

The same notes spiraled into the chandeliered air, but this time they flowed cleaner, brighter, as though a veil had lifted from the melody.

One by one, people stopped laughing. Amazement replaced mockery in the listeners‘ widening eyes. “Goodness–she hit every single note! Not one mistake!” a woman gasped, unable to contain her awe.

Older children who had practiced for years still stumbled over this piece, yet the tiny orphan’s hands never faltered.

Just when the audience assumed the second run was the finale, Dawn began a third.

Now the music flowed without the earlier stutters, a seamless ribbon of sound unfurling across the marble. floor.

Then came a fourth pass, and a fifth, each rendition smoother, surer, as though time itself bent to her learning curve.

The derision on surrounding faces had long since melted into open–mouthed wonder.

Anyone could hear it: with every repetition, Dawn’s mastery leapt forward, and not once did she strike a wrong key.

By the fifth performance, her phrasing echoed Emma’s own style so closely that listeners glanced between the two girls in disbelief.

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Chapter 659 Piano Prodigy Emerges

No–echoed was too mild. She played it exactly the same.

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A child who had never played piano before could rival peers who had learned it for years just by watching and imitating?

If Emma was considered a prodigy, then what label could possibly fit Dawn? Super–prodigy? Miracle?

Were they, witnessing the birth of a legend?

The thought ignited a new heat in inany eyes, a hunger to glimpse genius at its first spark.

When the fifth rendition ended, the ballroom crupted. Applause thundered like a summer storm against the high glass ceiling.

“Incredible! She truly matches Emma’s level!” someone shouted over the clamor.

“If an even better pianist played before her, could she copy that, too?” another voice wondered aloud.

“Does that mean this little one might one day surpass Emma entirely?” a third guest murmured, half frightened by the possibility.

All around, people could only marvel, caught between disbelief and delight at the tiny virtuoso who had turned an evening party into living history.

Emma’s cheeks flared so red they seemed ready to scorch the polished ivory under her fingertips. Shame pressed against her skin like heat from a furnace.

She had set out to make Dawn Whitethorn trip over herself in public, yet the plan had spun around and cut her instead, neat as a razor.

For as long as she could remember, Emma had worn her piano talent like a medal–shining, enviable, unquestioned.

But Dawn’s entrance felt like a mountain rearing up in front of her, blocking the sunlight Emma once thought belonged only to her.

Here stood a girl several years younger–one who had never taken a single piano lesson–yet she had recreated the piece Emma had sweated over for months, matching every flourish, every breath, as though reading Emma’s mind.

If Dawn could reach such heights by mere imitation, what was she truly capable of?

For the first time in her life, Emma tasted real fear–the cold, silencing kind that told her she might never again be the brightest star in the room.

Emma’s teacher, Jessie Bellamy–the town’s celebrated pianist–watched the scene with widening eyes, her practiced composure cracking like thin ice.

She glided across the parquet floor, the hem of her emerald gown whispering against her heels before she stopped directly in front of Dawn. “Have you truly never touched a piano before?” she asked, voice gentle yet vibrating with disbelief.

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