Chapter 54
W ind snatches my hair and tosses it about, Clode’s song a mix of tittering mania and high-pitched screams. Like she’s working herself up to slit the atmosphere straight through its bulging, electrical gut.
I feel somewhat similar.
I charge down the esplanade in a flutter of black fabric, not bothering with my hood, the sun blocked by a boil of gray clouds burgeoning toward me like some rumbling beast—the horizon lost to a hazy smear that appears to be falling from the storm cloud’s underbelly.
So unlike the earlier bustle, the esplanade is empty and still. So at odds with the rowdy thump of my boots.
My thoughts toil with the churning wind, that phantom heaviness sitting on my chest like a mountain, each breath a labored pull.
Sighing, I recall the way Kaan’s eyes lost all their warmth when I offered him back his málmr …
He was hurting. I know he was.
I could see it.
Perhaps I should’ve explained. Told him the last fae who saved my life did it to her detriment. That folk who care about me enough to put themselves in harm’s way tend to end up dead. He dodged that blow in the crater battling Hock. I’m not stupid enough to believe he could dodge another.
Life doesn’t pat me on the head and praise me for making connections. It thunks arrows through hearts. Stabs bellies. It makes damn fucking sure I know loneliness is the only acquaintance I’ll ever have, waiting until the roots of connection bore deeper than I’d like to admit before it rips out flesh and bone. Sheds blood. Stops hearts.
Hardens mine with another calloused layer of disconnect.
But to explain, I would’ve been forced to fish heavy, painful memories from that ice-covered lake inside myself, and I’m not doing that. Going within is eerie enough as it is. I’ve dumped all sorts of shit down there, adding to whatever else is already hiding beneath the surface.
Who knows what I’d pull up.
Probably my illusive Other, and I’m really not in the mood to wake with more tendons between my teeth, strung up to endure another whipping, completely oblivious to whatever trail of carnage was left in my wake.
Nope.
Not happening.
That’s what led me here in the first place.
If Kaan wants me to keep his málmr, he might as well slip his head through a noose and tighten it himself, then hang his weight upon the loop until he chokes. And though that would’ve been a balm to my burning rage just a few short slumbers ago, the thought now plows its fist through my chest and rips, rips, rips at all my important bits.
I need to get out of here.
Casting my stare toward the plateau where I saw the Moltenmaw land, I slow, frowning. The assassin tack I ordered would’ve been handy, but fuck it. Looks like I’m going bare.
I’ve got a dagger. And Clode. Once I reach The Fade, I’ll work out the rest.
I charge down a side alley that appears to weave in the right direction, pausing when a drop of rain weeps right past my ear and splats against my shoulder.
My heart stills.
Grappling with my internal sound snare, I make sure it’s the right tautness. That I’ve got the right sieve tucked over the opening—the one that allows Clode to slip through but prevents Rayne’s frosty, snow-falling sobs from penetrating my brain.
Keeps her out .
I cast my stare upward, and another wailing bead plunges toward me. I flinch as it collides with my cheek in an agonized splat, my hand lifting to sweep its weeping corpse from my skin …
What’s happening?
I study the wetness smeared across my fingers like the anomaly it is, the raindrop’s forlorn whimper cleaving a crack through my chest. Like she broke apart on impact, achingly aware she’ll never be whole again.
Not as she was.
More heavy droplets wail as they plunge, singing foreign words I don’t understand, splashing upon the pavement by my feet. Howling from the shock of their savage deconstruction, like they’re begging the stone to absorb them.
To pull them back together.
I edge away from each sad little blotch wetting my heart in all the wrong ways …
This—
This is not good.
Eyes wide, I search the sky, chasing the cloud’s mournful tears as they sing their fatal song. Like each tiny raindrop is innately aware they’re caught in a descent that can only end one way. That they will never be more whole than they are right now, plummeting to their doom.
My hand flies to my chest to rest upon my thumping heart, the heartbreaking melody growing in strength as the rain falls harder.
Faster.
Pins prick the backs of my eyes, the same weeping upheaval threatening to mimic within me.
Again, I check my mental sound snare. Find no flaws.
None.
Meaning the song of rainfall must be a different frequency than I’m used to blocking …
Lovely .
This dae can go right ahead and eat a jar of spangle shit.
With a cautionary glance at the smudged wall of rain charging toward me, I realize I have no time to fiddle around and try to work out how to block myself from the encroaching clamor, cursing myself for throwing the fucking cuff in the Loff.
Idiot.
I tighten my mental sound snare until it’s squeezed entirely shut, gulping air as that sheet of water whips forward and crushes the space between us.
Drenching me.
My snare wobbles like pinched lips desperate to part. To draw breath and scream . I barely get a chance to brace before it erupts—Rayne’s devastating song spewing through me like iron-tipped lashes to my unguarded eardrums.
My unguarded heart .
A sob dredges up my throat—an ugly splat of unwelcome sound.
I stumble back a step, another, scrambling to tighten the snare and shut myself off. But it’s like contracting a muscle that’s never been used. Not against this blaring force. And Rayne—
She’s everywhere .
Screaming past me, drenching my hair, dribbling down my skin. She’s splashing up at me from the puddles forming around my feet—a sloshing melody that grips my frayed heartstrings in clenched fists and rips .
Rips.
Rips.
Like plucking feathers from my heart.
Like poking fingers through the holes.
Like packing salt in the now-gaping wounds.
My face twists, the pain in my chest pulling me into a bunched knot. “S-stop …”
Hands clapped over my ears, I stagger toward a stubby awning and spin, forehead pressed against the stone as something inside me splits open like the gates of a gushing dam.
And I cry.
Like I’ve never cried before.
Warm tears leak down my cheeks that only add to the gut-wrenching clamor flaying me with small, precise slits.
And it doesn’t
stop
cutting.
No matter how hard I crush my palms against my ears, I can’t escape the shrieking wails that echo within me. That shatter my composure with the force of a fallen moon, scattering the bits so far and wide I can’t see them.
Can’t feel them.
“Stop,” I sob.
Beg.
Scream.
“ STOP-STOP-STOP-STOP-STOP-ST —”
A hard warmth presses against me from behind, shielding me from the rain. Pulling my hands from my ears and wrapping them around my chest, encasing me in a snug, sturdy embrace.
I know it’s Kaan even before he speaks, my posture folding into his. Seeking a silent refuge in his comforting presence and the strong bind of his powerful arms.
More ugly, messy sobs wrestle up my throat unchecked.
Unguarded.
Raw.
“I once knew a female who’d cry when it rained, though she thought I never noticed,” he murmurs against my ear, his dense words battling the torrent of mournful cries like a boom of thunder. “Her name was—”
“ Elluin .”
His arms tighten, my body a pool melding with the stony slabs of his resilient form. “The cuff was a kindness, Moonbeam. There is little need to weaponize yourself here, but it storms. Often. Violently .”
Hindsight.
My least favorite way to learn.
Clode squeals a slashing melody, like she’s pissed at the rain for existing —something I can commiserate with her over. Her air-tossing tantrum dredges a torrent of rain into a horizontal sheet, lashing the side of my face.
Rayne weeps with newfound ferocity, like she just crushed her body into a ball, wrapped her arms around her legs, tipped her scrunching face to the sky, and unleashed .
My knees wobble, threatening to buckle from the weight of her deep, mournful yowls. “Give me something else to focus on. Please .”
The words have barely left my lips when Kaan presses his against my ear, a dense hum rumbling from his chest and cutting through the din as he tucks me impossibly close.
A song I’m achingly familiar with.
I don’t dissect it—not right now—allowing myself to fall into his calming baritone, letting the melody seep through my pores like grains of stone that gather in all my dips and hollows, weighing me down in a comforting crush. Sanding the jagged sadness in my chest into something rounded and smooth.
My shuddered inhales begin to lose their shake …
Still, he hums … threading me together one familiar note at a time until I can draw enough steady breaths to sing along with the tune. Words I’ve only ever heard murmured through the hollow of my mind—distant echoes I’ve never been able to grasp the dusky origin of.
Words that have given me solace in times I’ve felt alone or uncertain. Brought me peace when my soul screamed the opposite. Words I think might’ve belonged to somebody special … once.
In another life.
Another time.
The storm stops just as abruptly as it began, Kaan planting the final note against the arch of my neck like a phantom kiss—the tender press of his lips infusing me with a burst of knee-buckling familiarity. Like I’ve been here before. Caught in his grasp. Crushed close to his chest.
Kissed.
Like I’ve been lulled by his comforting presence in a dream I can barely remember the shape of.
Only the sturdy bind of his arms keeps me from crumbling into a heap on the puddled ground, my lungs now powering for a different reason …
“You know my song,” I whisper.
Silence ensues—so thick and heavy my heart rate spikes.
“How, Kaan?”
I regret the question the moment it falls from my lips, a bulb of dread swelling in the back of my throat. Threatening to choke me.
What if he says something too big and painful for me to discard? What if his words resonate with another unsettling strike of familiarity? Drains more of my icy lake? Exposes more stones?
What then?
“There’s something I need to show you,” he murmurs against my neck, then grabs my hand, plants a warm kiss upon my blanched knuckles, and tugs .
For some strange, uncertain reason … I don’t argue. Don’t dig my heels into the ground.
I follow.