Page 253 of Every Almost

Katie never pushed Charlie, but she would go ahead and just say it again three months later.

She told me I could sing pretty damn well.

Charlie looked over at Reyna, and suddenly, everything was clear as day.

I'd do anything for her.

Well, that settled it.

And then, the song was just there.

So maybe Charlie couldn't say what she wanted to say to Reyna.

But maybe shecouldsing it.

Charlie let out a long breath and walked up to the front, next to where Tavi was standing. The library erupted in cheers again.

"So, Charlie," Tavi said from his chair. "What's it gonna be?"

Charlie took a deep breath. "Turn off the music."

Tavi killed the bright lights,leaving only Maren's, the glow strung along the shelves. Charlie listened as forty people in a library went so quiet all you could hear was the hum of the Emberkind's engines under their feet.

Charlie stood in the middle of it with her hands at her sides. She realized she had nowhere to put them, as she'd never once done anything without something in her hands.

She looked out over the crowd of the crew until she found Reyna at the back of the room, watching her.

And in a single instant, Charlie knew that was all she needed. She realized she wasn't going to be able to do this without staying locked on Reyna's gaze as an anchor. And as she held her eyes, she felt Reyna know this to be true, because she wasn't looking away.

And Charlie had never felt more ready.

Charlie opened her mouth and sang.

"Songbird."

Christine McVie wrote it in one night in 1977, sitting down at a piano at three in the morning with the whole thing already finished in her head. Charlie had known it by heart since she was seventeen years old and had never once sung it where anyone other than maybe Katie could hear her.

It was the simplest song she had. There was no metaphor, nothing clever, nothing standing in the way of a hidden message. It was just a woman promising somebody there would be no more crying, not if she had any say in it. That the world looked different now. That everything did, all because this somebody was now in it.

And then she says she loves them, three times in a row. As though once wasn't going to cover it, and twice wasn't enough, so she just keeps going.

And Charlie Wickett sang this song with no music to Reyna Solas in front of forty people on her birthday. And she did not look away once from those amber eyes across the library.

It took three minutes.

Reyna's markings stayed gold. Steady, unmoving gold, from the first note to the last.

Except for one iridescent pulse, just like the one Charlie had glimpsed in the flooded bay. Just one, as Charlie echoed the last line three times, closing out the song.

The last note went up into the shelves before it thinned out and was gone.

For about a second and a half, the Emberkind's library was the quietest room Charlie had ever stood in.

Then the place came apart.

"CHARLIE, WHAT THE HELL?!"

It hit her from every direction at once. Tons of crew members, all of them talking and commenting loudly. Hands were on her shoulders and arms, and somebody even had her by both wrists. She soon realized it was Tavi, who was screaming something at her over the roar of the crowd that she couldn't make out. But of all things, she did hear Borran's laugh come up out of the middle of the chaos.