Page 122 of The Silent
Reshon, you need to do something. We aredying.
* * *
Kyra satup and pushed the red veil from her mind. The Fallen’s scream had taken her to the ground. She had hit so hard she was seeingstars.
She was seeingstars.
Kyra struggled through the pain and focused on the beating pulse of Arindam’s song. It was a grinding noise. A pulse and a wave. She focused on isolating everything else from the noise of the angel until the pulse turned into light. The light glowed brighter against the night. Every beat shot like a star across theblackness.
A star. Another star. They moved and danced. Crossing each other. Rising andfalling.
Rising andfalling.
Waves.
Intervals.
She saw them and she heard them. They chased each other across the night of her vision. Stars scattering. Waves rising andfalling.
Do you seeityet?
Look.
Her vision wasn’t black anymore. It was filled with stars, glowing in the night sky. She isolated those of the angel, reached for Prija’s quiet presence, and threw her mind wide-open to the other woman. She knocked down a century’s worth of walls, threw open every door, and stripped her mindnaked.
Look.
Kyra kept her eyes closed and watched the rising and falling stars. She watched a few spike like glowing plumes, rising above the waves, and they pierced her mind like needles. But as she watched, Kyra saw more stars. Morewaves.
They began in a low thrum that ran beneath the waves. At first they pushed up, barely a ripple beneath the glittering sea. But then the thrum rose higher. Andhigher.
Kyra heard the drone of Prija’sinstrument.
She didn’t ask what thekareshtawas doing because she saw it. When the angel’s song went high, Prija’s song went low. In time, the thrumming notes from Prija’s instrument matched the waves from the Fallen. Then another note joined the first, waiting for the rhythm of the spiked plumes and matching them with a plucked note, canceling out thenoise.
The painful spikes wentsilent.
* * *
“What’s happening?”Leoasked.
At first it was subtle. The flames around them grew dimmer. The fire started to burn out. But then, as the sun began to rise above the Bagan plain, Leo noticedsomethingelse.
“He’s… he’s losing his form,”Leosaid.
“Prija,” Niran whispered. “My warrior sister. You did itagain.”
The red veil around the Fallen wavered. The gold-tipped beak went first. Then the burning snakes around hiswrists.
“What is shedoing?”
“I don’t know what it is,” Niran said. “But he’ll beweakernow.”
In the distance, Leo heard the faint strains of something like a violin as Arindam tumbled and fell to theground.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The music was everything now.When Arindam’s song rose, Prija’s fell. Kyra kept the connection between their minds, worried that if Prija couldn’t see the waves of Arindam’s song, she wouldn’t be able to play whatever it was she was playing. Because whatever she was playing canceled out the painful waves of music emanating from theFallen.
