Chapter 13
A myriad of emotions burn in Kaan’s eyes like a forest set to flame, but one overrides the rest. Mimics the way I’m feeling in gut-wrenching synchrony.
Horror.
“Ohhhh fuck,” Pyrok says, perhaps noticing me. Though I can’t bring myself to rip my gaze from the beautiful male rowing that Creators-damn boat toward his oblivion.
Fear grips my heart and squeezes so hard I choke through my next breath. And decimating rage for the situation he’s somehow landed himself in.
We open our mouths at the same time—
More bells tinkle their airy wake-up call. Close.
Too close.
The glowing bugs on the stalactites begin to blink out as the atmosphere turns parched and hollow. Like it just withered up and died with the remnants of my composure.
I snarl, stalking toward the rippling water that’s losing more of its speckled luster, Kaan’s eyes widening with a surge of wild emotion.
Distracting emotion.
I look away.
“Raeve—”
His gravelly voice becomes background noise as I grab my iron ring and rip it off, pocketing it. Clode’s chaotic squeals slit my eardrums with brutal precision.
She really doesn’t like being ignored.
“Deil de lu, no veirie lui sois teil nahh de larughe,” I whisper-sing—a lullaby that speaks of her gusty allure, glorifying her strength and majesty.
Charming her.
Clode’s violent melody lolls a little, and she leans into my song, preening for it.
“Hailen es ta vuilo de.”
She’s coaxed into a giddy dance that does nothing to mimic my own catatonic emotions, swirling around me, lifting my cloak.
“Glei, ei asha tui!” I tack on, and she cuts across the water, leaving a trail of spray. She powers toward Kaan, who’s roaring something I can’t hear, his face a savage twist of rage that only spurs the emotion fizzing through my veins.
Pyrok wobbles to a stand, blade drawn. He leaps, lands on the second boat, and begins hacking at the prisoner’s binds.
Clode appears to slap her airy hands against the whitewashed vessels, shoving both toward the pier. They plane across the surface with such gusto their peaked noses rear up, tossing all three passengers back into the hulls.
They overshoot the pier’s end and power toward the lake’s near-vertical shore, left of the exit. As if Clode decided this is a fantastic moment to prove just how fucking brilliant she is, taking my instruction, then doubling the effort required.
I barely have the chance to pull a breath before they smash against the stone, hulls cracking open like split skulls. I wince as Kaan, Pyrok, and the prisoner are unceremoniously dumped backward into the water.
Creators, I hope they can swim …
The lake illuminates, like it just swallowed a Moonplume moon.
Meaning—
I whip around and look down the cave. Take in the pale, lustrous creature gusting through the water in incremental bursts.
The anthe.
My heart stills at the sight of her. Hauntingly beautiful, with multiple limbs that remind me of the white branches of a weeping wisp—long and delicate.
Lacy scraps of membrane are pinched in the junction between limbs and her tendriled torso, ballooning and deflating with each burst of motion toward the others floundering for the shore.
Beautiful, yes … but frightening. Like a star shot through the sky, hunting something to obliterate.
Helpless fear paralyzes me, time stretching as I study the distance between her and the others trying to push past the upturned boats …
She’s going to make it to them before they have a chance to climb through the exit. She’s going to suckle Kaan into oblivion. Take his soul like it’s nothing. Like he’s nothing.
I’m about to watch somebody else I love die—
No.
A savage compulsion pops into place like a relocating bone, something fierce and primal rising within. A shiver shakes my spine until it’s straight and solid, the knowledge of what I must do impaling me. And I dive—headfirst into myself.
Straight toward my icy lake.
Vaguely aware of the bellowing world beyond, I land on the frosty expanse with a fist full of fury, powering it at the ice with white-knuckled blows.
Bolts of pain shudder through my soul as I smash, smash, smash at it, busting a hole I’m about to dive through, when something on the shore catches my eye.
A tear-shaped crystal glinting in the dim. Like my Other carried it up from the depths and set it there, ready for me. Knowing I’d return for it.
That I’d need it.
Curiously convenient …
I snatch the thing, releasing an anguished howl as Rayne’s melody infests my system like a morbid disease, making me so achingly heavy. Like someone just tore my heart open, packed it full of rocks, then stitched it back together with a rusty needle.
More drips of Rayne’s mournful melody puddle within my soul while I clamber toward the surface of my conscious state, only halfway up before I convulse against its depressive might, dropping the teardrop with a frustrated scream.
It smashes through the ice and sinks so fast I’d waste precious time swimming all the way down to fetch the wretched thing again—
Fuck it.
Teeth gritted, I keep climbing, emerging with a gasp. See the world has shifted; the anthe closer, two of the three males now scaling the steep shore, but not fast enough.
I ease forward another step, toes kissing the water’s edge. Kaan screams my name so loud I hear it over Clode’s violent shrieks.
Answering would require me to split my concentration. I could do that were I about to speak with my favored Air Goddess.
But I’m not.
Gathering all the grieving segments of Rayne’s broken language, I crack my neck, toiling over how to shape the sounds into a sequence that might work. I adjust my mental sound snare, almost the right size to isolate Rayne, then draw breath. Grit my teeth.
Brace myself.
Release—
Rayne’s song splashes against me with such heartbreaking might that my knees threaten to buckle, my throat thickening with a surge of unwanted emotion.
Tears burn my eyes. Tears I ignore, just as I ignore Kaan’s raging screams as I step into the water, drop my shoulders, and pull my lungs full of breath.
And I sing.
It’s not a pretty song, like a puzzle missing too many pieces, my mouth and tongue not adept to shaping such a rolling, gut-dredging melody. But as I step farther into the water, singing the unfamiliar yet strangely familiar tune, something incredible happens.
Rayne stops singing her puddled song of sorrow, despair, and hollow love …
She stops singing, and she listens.