The lakeilluminates, 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 … butfrightening. 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’snothing.
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,smashat 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’dneedit.
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 Iignore, 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.
