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The silent promise made breathing easier. Became a balm for my broken soul.
And then I knew what I wanted to sing.
Primal Ethos’ Anthem of the Broken filtered past my lips, quiet at first, no more than a whisper. I felt the lyrics in my bones, filling in the cracks and fissures, mending me as I let the song carry me away from all the dark awful things swirling just out of reach in my mind.
There was only me and this song. This moment and the words.
Knowing that there was at least one other person in this world who knew what it felt like to have this hollow pit inside, so deep there was no hope of it ever being filled, made me feel like I wasn’t alone.
Somewhere out there, someone understood.
Someone had felt the betrayal. The loss. The heartache. The confusion. The fuckingpainI’d felt, and they made this song.
My voice began to crack as the final lyric leaked out, my throat burning at the release and the acknowledgement I hadn’t allowed myself since the day it happened.
He was really gone.
He wasn’t coming back this time.
The dam I’d been struggling to hold up all these past weeks crumpled in an instant, and I wasn’t fast enough to hold my breath before the waves of my anger and grief crashed over my head. Filled my lungs until I choked. Until I was so full of it that it leaked out, dripping down my face, onto the floor as I crouched, clutching my skull between my stiff hands.
I’d never sing for Dad again.
He’d never stumble home drunk of the rush of a win and declare it Ava Jade Day at five in the morning and demand that I get dressed because we were going for ice cream.
Not ever again.
It could have been only minutes, but it felt like hours as I cried for the first time in...I couldn’t even remember how long. By the time the tears slowed and then stopped, my eyes burned and my nose was so stuffed up that I probably wouldn’t breathe right for days. But I felt somehow better, like a weight had lifted from my chest and getting back to my feet felt just a little bit easier than before.
I switched off the microphone and used the hem of my shirt to dry away the tears still wet on my cheeks, and stepped out of the closet.
Corvus sat barely six feet away, folding chair facing the closet door. His body bent, elbows on knees, fingers pressed together in front of his lips like a prayer. His eyes, shadowed by the sweep of hair hanging low on his brow, found me from their darkness. His jaw twitched, clenching as he stared.
My stomach twisted.
“How much did you hear?” I demanded, my voice still half broken from crying.
He dropped his hands and looked away. “Enough.”
I swiveled my head, finding the computer screens along the desk all powered on, a little red microphone light in the software he had open blinking instead of solid now that the mic was shut off.
My hands clenched to fists.
“You’re an incredible singer,” he said, meeting my spiteful stare again. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
“And you’re a hateful prick,” I hissed, hating how my lungs were constricting in my chest. How my stomach plummeted to my toes. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
He didn’t reply. Didn’t even look angry at my barb.
“What do you even use that room for anyway,hmmm?Fancy yourself a fucking rock god or some shit? Or does the sound of your own voice turn you on so much that you have to record—”
“I turned it off,” he interrupted, completely ignoring every word I said. “When you started...I turned it off. I didn’t listen.”
“Oh, so I should thank you then?”
“Sparrow—”
“I’m not your fucking Sparrow!” I yelled, my nostrils flaring as a wicked heat sizzled up my spine.
