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.