Dissonance (The Falling Star Trilogy #1)

Prologue

The lights are too bright. They burn through my skull and pulse with every hit of the kick drum. The crowd’s screaming my name, but all I hear is static...like someone tuned life to the wrong goddamn station.

Nolan said one more hit would “take the edge off.” But it’s consuming me from the inside out, and I feel like my feet are melting into the stage. I drag the mic stand close and lean in. My throat’s raw, and my hands won’t stop fucking shaking.

The first note rips out of me anyway. They think it’s passion, but it’s just pain making noise.

I can taste copper.

I feel the world tilt, and it’s like slow motion. People in the pit reach up, their phones flashing. Mouths are open and screaming, and I think, yeah, get the picture, you vultures. Get your proof that I was real.

Then everything cuts. The sound is gone.

Lights out. It’s so sudden, like a drumline fell out of sync between beats.

My head hits the floor, and cold concrete scratches my cheek.

Somewhere behind the curtain, Nolan’s yelling orders, snapping fingers for medics.

Heat explodes under my ribs. My chest seizes, my vision warps, the edges darkening.

I can’t breathe. Can’t move. My body jerks once, twice. I hear myself choke. Maybe I’m laughing—maybe I’m dying.

“Bring him back!” he urges, panicked.

Too much.

I know it’s too much. And it fucking hurts.

I try to tell him, but my mouth won’t function. My jaw’s locked. My heartbeat turns into a siren in my ears, and it’s fading fast. I smell my own sweat, burnt plastic, that sweet rot of the stuff that killed me. And all I can think is—

Finally.

That was the first fucking time I physically died. Even if my soul’s been gone for years. And when I awoke, I was met with the brutal reality of what my life had become.