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.
Deep within the heart of the Imperial Stronghold, Kaan unlocks a chain threaded between two mammoth black wooden doors carved to look like a pair of warring Sabersythes going head-to-head, the handles twin tusks curling from their pronged faces. I cut a glance down the empty, dim-lit tunnel behind me as I wait for him to unwind the chain, tugging the left door open.
With a sweep of his hand, he gestures for me to step inside. The dark room. Ahead of him.
I don’t think so.
“You first.”
He sighs, charging into the gloom with a barrage of heavy footsteps.
I follow, sketching out the shape of the space, slivers of sun coming through from what I suppose are curtains over on the far side. Kaan moves toward them.
“Veil de nalui,” I whisper, whipping Clode into a giggling churn. She twirls across the room, tangles with the curtains, and rips them wide, dousing the room full of light.
Kaan stops before the glass doors, hand outstretched. He clears his throat. “Thanks.”
“Pleasure,” I say, taking in what I suppose is his personal suite based on the dominance of his warm scent. I’m certain he dabs something on his skin each aurora rise that makes him smell so inconveniently moreish.
This sitting room is packed with curved bookshelves, plush leather chaises, and a black rug stretched across the floor. Beside a deep, upholstered chair that’s worn to the padding in places sits a large string instrument resting on a stand, the frayed strings in desperate need of replacing. On the other side of the same chair is a small round table with a bottle of spirits, an empty glass, and a corked jar that holds something misty.
Swirling.
He snatches it, tucking it inside a drawer within the table.
I arch a brow. “Don’t want me to see your jar of mist?”
“Not particularly,” he murmurs, hanging his málmr on the instrument.
I look away, seeing various weapons haphazardly dumped on shelves and a pair of boots kicked off by the door. My stare glides to a map of the world that stretches across a large curve of wall, the yellowed parchment littered with tiny black crosses—most of which are south of Gore.